ROM Hacks: Mario Kart Super Circuit HQ Music - The Final Update!

[RHDNBot]

Update By: RunTheCoins

This is a complete sound improvement of the samples in Mario Kart Super Circuit, this changes both the sound engine and the limitations of how the samples are played, so they can be played at a higher rate!

This rewrites the games sound engine completely, and adds longer samples in so you can enjoy the game in pristine quality audio! This was done by researching some of the Code in the prototype Ique Builds, as they have a newer sound engine that allows playback of wav files. Over the last two weeks the author was able to use the decomp and took advantage of the limitations being removed, but since the decomp isn't complete The author had to copy the new data into the other rom the author was using, now the games audio runs well and sounds crisp! The game's audio is also now in stereo!

 The project is now complete and the author would want to thank Church of Kondo
: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChurchofKondoh  For giving the author the samples needed to make this mod. The author would also like to thank the people Decomping Mario Kart Super Circuit : https://github.com/jellees/mksc
for making this mod possible as well. The author would lastly like to thank Cloou for good documentation on the samples used in game, : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtYfookH4LHqXGLEaevsrQg The author would of never been able to figure it all by himself if it wasn't for these guys.


P.S. A full color restoration is now in the works, though It's gonna be awhile before it will be finished, so just wait a little bit, The author will post updates on this new mod in the future.

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[ShadowOne333]

I'm really glad to see this project reach its final update!
I'm even more hyped and intrigued about the project due to the upcoming color restoration mod!
Super Circuit was one game that really needed one, it's one of the worst examples of washed out colours for the original GBA, but hopefully with this new colour rework, Super Circuit will now have a proper definitive version available!

[EvilJagaGenius]

Good to hear.  Patch works fine, I patched the existing character voice and color hacks on top of it and those appear to be working too.  Good luck on the color hack, I'll be looking forward to it!

[vic_viper_001]

For people like me who aren't experts with emulation and settings, what do I need to do to hear the difference? I have excellent hearing. I own a pretty solid pair of headphones, and I have the volume on my PC set to 60%. I tried using the MGBA, GPSP, and VBAnext cores in Retroarch, as well as standalone VBA, No$GBA, and MGBA. I've tried every single version of this sound improvement hack, including 5.0, and simply cannot hear the difference. The patched and un-edited roms sound 100% identical in each emulator. I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm starting to wonder if this is a troll-hack. There is no readme file, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

[RunTheCoins]

For people like me who aren't experts with emulation and settings, what do I need to do to hear the difference? I have excellent hearing. I own a pretty solid pair of headphones, and I have the volume on my PC set to 60%. I tried using the MGBA, GPSP, and VBAnext cores in Retroarch, as well as standalone VBA, No$GBA, and MGBA. I've tried every single version of this sound improvement hack, including 5.0, and simply cannot hear the difference. The patched and un-edited roms sound 100% identical in each emulator. I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm starting to wonder if this is a troll-hack. There is no readme file, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

First, I suggest using MGBA, I be, and well the reason why you can't hear much of a difference Is more then likely the emulators your using is set to 44100 in sample quality, which ends up playing way to loud, I know this is gonna sound stupid, but I suggest setting it to 32MHZ or 22MHZ, I made the system compress the samples that way so on real hardware it would sound crisp, but on 44100 (or higher) the samples sound really loud because real hardware can't handle that. I also would like to mention if you expect 100% crisp audio like what Church of Kondo produced, it's just not possible on real hardware, so I compressed the samples and the GBA plays it at about 32MHZ, but it's still way more compressed then that, but there is indeed differences, I actually suggest using Headphones, you can hear a lot of the differences better that way. Yes 4.0 and below really sucked, but this version actually sound really good in my opinion.

Also if you really need convincing, Go play Boo Lake, that piano sounds a lot better in my opinion compared to the original. Also if you're using any other patch along side it, that might be way as well, I should test the US voice mod with it and test to see if it still works.


I hope though that somehow this helps! Thank you for showing intrust in this mod, and If i can improve this mod, I will, but I also want a break from editing the sappy engine for a bit so yeah. I hope this helps though.

[Nintenja]

I included this hack in my Mario Kart-Super Circuit-Freemastered compilation hack.it can be downloaded as one patch at https://archive.org/details/mario-kart-super-circuit-freemastered

It includes in just one .ips patch:
1.HQ Music Restore v5.1  by "Run the Coins"
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6774/
2.N64 Voices(local voices v1.0) by "Emilianomario27"
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5135/
3.Widescreen patch by "gamemasterplc"
4.Better Colors v1.1 by "N.Dpendent"
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4879/
5.Original Sunset Wilds title card & sprites SCD

So a few thingz..i played the whole game in 50cc vanilla audio.and also with these patches applied..with the volume all the way up..audio is cleaner..audio definitely was improved and has basically more stereo sound.im no audio expert though but i have a pretty keen ear for music. This is a great piece of work and thanks for your hard work on it. The version i created with all 5 hacks didnt need much extra love aside from proper patching order to run flawlessly but i couldnt have created it without your 5.1 version..ive been creating and playing this version with everything included since like v2.0..if you create any other hacks ill definitely consider adding them to the mix in a future version..if you dont mind of course. Thank you.