Homebrew Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean

[Batman55]

I want to play these two games and I found versions that have been unofficially translated. However, when I try to run them, I just get black screens. Does anyone know if snemulds can play translated snes games?

They both look really fun and I want to try them, but I don't know japanese. I also can't play the GBA english TOP version because I don't have a slot 2 card.

 

[Lumstar]

Even if you do make them run, it probably wouldn't be worth the bother. Emulating snes on ds can take quite a lot of frameskip.

 

[DanTheManMS]

Even if you do make them run, it probably wouldn't be worth the bother. Emulating snes on ds can take quite a lot of frameskip.

Actually there is no frameskip used at all. It wouldn't do anything, as less than 5% of the CPU time is spent drawing to the screen. This is because the SNES emulators for the DS utilize the DS's dedicated 2D hardware for drawing to the screen. This gives them a chance at running at full speed but introduces graphical errors as a result. If they used a software emulator instead, the graphics would be better but you would need to use frameskip to maintain a playable speed. For a quick comparison, play the same game in both NES DS and NesterDS (which recently received an update giving it DLDL support, so it's easy to test). NES DS uses a hardware renderer and thus runs very quickly, while NesterDS requires a modest frameskip (3-5 for most games) just to maintain full speed.

In answer to the question, SNEmulDS usually doesn't fare too well with rom hacks, though usually translations work fine. I guess in this case it just doesn't work, no real way to explain it better. You can try disabling sound, but if that doesn't get you in-game then I don't think anything will.

 

[GameDragon]

Tales of Phantasia I don't know about, but Star Ocean is not compatible and probably won't be for a long time. It uses a special graphic hardware which currently isn't emulated by the DS.

 

[AMPonzi]

Tales of Phantasia is 48Mbit... may be too much for the memory to handle and I think it uses a special graphics hardware as well.

 

[DanTheManMS]

Ah right, Star Ocean uses a special chip according to http://wiki.pocketheaven.com/SNES_games_with_special_chips while SNEmulDS can't handle games over 4 MBytes (32 MBits) if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Lumstar]

Correct. Star Ocean both uses a special chip, and is over 4 MBytes. So that's two things an emulator needs to support for it.

 

[Batman55]

Thanks for the help guys. I just want a good ARPG with that kind of classic sidescrolling combat. But not a real problem, I will continue to play TWEWY until something new comes out.

 

[Lumstar]

With these two specific games, Wii or PSP handle them better. They should run on the SNES9x Wii port.

While the PS1 Tales of Phantasia would likely perform well on PSP's emulator, and both have actual PSP ports in Japan if you know the language.

 

[dib]

They did port ToP to GBA..and the DS technically plays GBA games...so if we add 1 + 1, we get..?

 

[s0ldats]

better off playing the ToP GBA port on a slot2 card. Star Ocean for snes used the SDD1 chip which wasn't even emulated until late in the development of snes9x and zsnes.

if i'm not mistaken there's a port of snes9x for psp? it should run on that, and quite well.

 

[Lumstar]

Maybe, but psp has less than half the cpu speed of wii.

 

[manias]

for the psp there's a 100% translation patch for the ps1 iso of tales of phantasia, and for star ocean there's a translation patch for the snes rom. Both work 100% at the psp. Or you could wait until september for the star ocean 1 remake to come to the US @ psp

ToP ps1 translation patch: http://zettaizero.wordpress.com/
Star Ocean snes translation patch: http://www.dejap.com/

 

[Shyvnal]

manias beat me to it

ToP is an amazing game, i recommend you play the translated psx version
Oh and i hate the gba port so... meh

 

[PKGINGO]

I thought there was a way to use a device that has extra RAM, like the 3 in 1, as sort of a paging type system. Anyone have information on this?

 

[Shyvnal]

Yeah. You can use the 3 in 1 (and other ram expansions afaik) with 0.6. I don't think they work, though. Ill give em a try.
Edit: Neither of 'em work, black screens.

 

[PKGINGO]

Well SO won't work because of the SDD1 chip, but its a shame games greater than 4MB don't work... Gotta find a way to get up to 12 MB

You'll see

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