ActRaiser 2 (USA)
0000
act2_1 (Sluffy's act2-0c + FastROM)
https://www.sendspace.com/file/kuirgi- Should fix all slowROM related issues. But...
- Needs confirmation that it's actually running in fastROM, I don't really know the exact differences to compare.

- Top and bottom line issues are from act2-0c patch.
I'm not sure if anybody remembers, but Sluffy made a brief attempt at circumventing the slowROM check, unfortunately it didn't work.
BUT! He figured that it was due to APU timings. And he was absolutely on the right track!
This was proven when I completely stopped communication between APU and CPU (shut off sound).
The game loaded and played perfectly fine in fastROM with no black screens, albeit with no sound.

I know little about ROM hacking, and even less about the APU. But I believe the APU uses an uploader that is very timing specific if I'm not mistaken.
Anyways, long story short, APU timings = slowROM check for ActRaiser 2.

Like I said, I'm not very good at ANY of this, so I tried to think of a work-around for this issue.
I spent DAYS trying all sorts of different things, until I thought of something a bit different (and much more simple).
What I did was turn OFF fastROM right before APU communication, and then turn fastROM back ON right after APU communication completes.
To my surprise, it actually worked in Canoe!

Now, I don't really know the exact differences between ActRaiser 2 in fastROM compared to slowROM, so testing is required to confirm all of this.
Although, PC emulators state that the exact same ROM is running in fastROM (3.58 MHz) so it should be doing the same in Canoe.
And my apologies SupaSAIAN, I've been spending most of my free time working on ActRaiser 2, so I've only done a couple of tests so far with Ganbare! Daiku no Gen-san.
But I'll start spending some more time with that game now.
EDIT:After a bit more testing, looks like that "work-around" is a no-go at the moment. Back to the drawing board I guess.

I'll forget about ActRaiser 2 for now though, and start doing some testing on Ganbare! Daiku no Gen-san.