[KingMike]

Yep, Nestopia tried to silently abolish mapper 23, in particular, by detecting original game ROMs and doing whatever it does after that.
That change happened shortly after I had released a translation patch for Dragon Scroll (one of the affected games). As in, I had tested it on emulators including Nestopia fine (as I recall, but that's already 7 years ago ), released the patch. Soon after Nestopia released a version with the patch-breaking update and I got reports the patch didn't work. Can't really do anything about that but say Nestopia changed how it handles the ROM, making hacks effectively unsupported.

[SunGodPortal]

Soon after Nestopia released a version with the patch-breaking update and I got reports the patch didn't work. Can't really do anything about that but say Nestopia changed how it handles the ROM, making hacks effectively unsupported.

Damn. That sounds shitty. I know what emulator I'll never be using then.

[Maeson]

Oh, so that's the reason.... Curiously enough, I tried lots of translations, and even my own rom hacking experiments and they load fine (At least on the Wii release of course, I don't use emulators on PC except for testing matters, my computer is PURE crap).

In fact that hack I made for FF3J was not only tested but played in it's enterity on a Nestopia core. And that's a "fantranslated+mod hack" combo", two translations in fact (one that expands the rom, lol).

So it may depend on the game, but that's sad to hear nonetheless.

Why would they remove a feature that was already being used? I'm totally ignorant on "The History of the Emulators", but that sounds like a bad idea, even more if it is going to reduce the number of games you can play in a language you can understand...

[SunGodPortal]

Why would they remove a feature that was already being used?

"accuracy" LOL

[Disch]

EDIT:

I was calling bullshit on you with your "abolishing support for mapper 23" comment, as that seems incredibly unlikely, and a glance at the NEStopia support indicates it still supports mapper 23.

But honestly, I don't care.  Blame the emu if you want.  Whatever.


EDIT 2:

Let me start out by saying I owe you a big fat apology.  Now that I got some more sleep and am less cranky, I looked at the source a bit closer and it does in fact look like you are mostly right.

The thing about mapper 23 is that it represents multiple board types.  In an effort to differentiate which one to emulate, NEStopia is searching for the board name in the database....

... which doesn't make sense, because if you're using the database, then why do you need the mapper number?
... and if you're relying on the mapper number then the file obviously wasn't in the database...

I don't know if this was an oversight, a bug, or just shitty design, but yeah.  It's fucked.  You're totally right.


What it isn't, though, is "accuracy".

[AWJ]

EDIT:

I was calling bullshit on you with your "abolishing support for mapper 23" comment, as that seems incredibly unlikely, and a glance at the NEStopia support indicates it still supports mapper 23.

But honestly, I don't care.  Blame the emu if you want.  Whatever.


EDIT 2:

Let me start out by saying I owe you a big fat apology.  Now that I got some more sleep and am less cranky, I looked at the source a bit closer and it does in fact look like you are mostly right.

The thing about mapper 23 is that it represents multiple board types.  In an effort to differentiate which one to emulate, NEStopia is searching for the board name in the database....

... which doesn't make sense, because if you're using the database, then why do you need the mapper number?
... and if you're relying on the mapper number then the file obviously wasn't in the database...

I don't know if this was an oversight, a bug, or just shitty design, but yeah.  It's fucked.  You're totally right.


What it isn't, though, is "accuracy".

The problem is that you can't tell from the mapper number which of the boards it is. Given a ROM with a header that only specifies "mapper 23", you have no choice but to hash the ROM contents to identify the correct board to emulate. It's an outright error in the iNES spec, having the same mapper number assigned to several mutually-incompatible boards (and mapper 23 is far from the only one). iNES 2.0 supposedly resolves these errors by renumbering some mappers and adding a "submapper" field to enumerate minor variations, but obviously you need a ROM with an iNES 2.0 header for that to work (and does Nestopia even support iNES 2.0? It's a pretty new specification, and I'm under the impression the current maintainers of Nestopia are more interested in adding enhancement features and ports than in keeping the emulation state-of-the-art)

ETA: I looked at Nestopia's Github repo and it looks like they've started adding support for iNES 2.0 submappers just a couple months ago.

[Disch]

Is there any official listing of sub-mapper numbers anywhere?  I mean -- the number itself is formalized in the header, but I've never actually seen a list of what the number actually signifies.

EDIT:

Regardless -- completely breaking mapper support for any ROM that isn't in the database is an indefensible solution.

[KingMike]

I hear the Konami mappers were so mixed that...
it sounds like even Konami themselves may have confused them. I haven't played the game but I've heard reports of the first Goemon Gaiden having graphics glitches in the ending, on real hardware with a real cart. Supposedly whoever programmed the ending was planning on a different mapper variant (I read they're basically the same mapper but with register addresses swapped).
I can't remember, maybe Konami released a fixed print of the game as well?

[Maeson]

Looking a bit I found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_4J5zZpivc

I rather not wach it as I haven't played Goemon Gaiden. But it seems that fixing the ending screws up the title screen. Weird indeed. If it is a "FIX" made by this person I guess there is not an official fixed one...

...Which is kind of puzzling, How did it happen? I mean, it's the ENDING. Not a small optional conversation or something similar, lol.

The games I was talking about are things like I'm Kid Dracula or Bio Miracle Baby Upa.