Messages

1

Mapping Tips/Guides / How to map Miracle Piano

« on: Yesterday at 06:37:29 pm »

As you may have noticed, maps of Miracle Piano on the NES are now available.

The Miracle Piano Teaching System is an educational game that was sold with it's own hardware. Menu navigation is possible with normal controllers but the actual gameplay requires an electronic keyboard that is not supported by any emulators that I am aware of. As a result, it is not possible to play this game normally except with original hardware.

It took me a few attempts to figure this out. After some confusion and some poking around I finally realized that you need to use controller 2 to navigate the menu on the NES and SNES versions. It makes sense. Other games that use special hardware, such the Nintendo light zapper, expect you to put the light zapper in port 1 and the d-pad controller in port 2.

The gameplay for this depends entirely on playing the piano, but you can overcome your lack of original hardware on emulators with cheat codes that seem to be exactly the same for every system Miracle Piano was released on.

There is a side scrolling minigame called Robo-Man. This is the only part of the game worth mapping and the codes that i'm sharing were made for this specific task. There are 48 different songs. Every song has it's own notes at the bottom.

I currently have no plans to map the SNES and Genesis versions myself. I'll be quite busy mapping NES games for at least the next year. I'm leaving these instructions for anybody who might wish to rip all the graphics for these games themselves.




NES

Use controller port 2. Press A to get to the child/adult mode settings, then press start to get to the welcome screen. Press select to get to the options screen. Pick practice room. Pick a song. Pick Robo-Man. Use the following codes to make the game run by itself without any further input from the player. Turn the sprite layer off and start taking screenshots.

7E3F:04 Invincible (System Bus Memory Domain)
7ED8:28 Infinite Fuel (System Bus Memory Domain)
7F0A:16 Set Robot To Build Mode (System Bus Memory Domain)




SNES

Use controller port 2. Go to the welcome screen. Press select on controller 2 to go to the options screen. Pick practice room. Pick a song. Pick Robo-Man. Use the following codes to make the game run by itself without any further input from the player. Rip the background layers separately and put them together when you're done.

7E3F:04 Invincible (WRAM Memory Domain)
7ED8:28 Infinite Fuel (WRAM Memory Domain)
7F0A:16 Set Robot To Build Mode (WRAM Memory Domain)




Genesis

Use controller port 1 for the Genesis version. Press start to get to the main menu. Pick arcade. Pick a song. Pick Roboman. Use the following codes to make the game run by itself without any further input from the player. Rip the background layers separately and put them together when you're done.

7E3F:04 Invincible (68K RAM Memory Domain)
7ED8:28 Infinite Fuel (68K RAM Memory Domain)
7F0A:16 Set Robot To Build Mode (68K RAM Memory Domain)

2

Map Gab / Re: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

« on: January 29, 2026, 01:47:09 pm »

I just checked, and even if you delete Ratix from your party and only have one other character, the map character will still be Ratix. It might not even be possible to change map characters in this game, unfortunately.

It would be nice if there were better programs for displaying everything in a ROM visually. Zophar's Domain has tile viewers, but this stuff hasn't been worked on in decades and most SNES roms look like a total mess.

You're Barack Obama on TSR? It looks like you've done quite a lot of work over there.

3

Map Gab / Re: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

« on: January 28, 2026, 06:16:16 pm »

Has Star Ocean a code that will let you turn into npc characters too? So far, I've only seen something like that for Secret of Mana.
If you've seen my npc sheets on tsr, there are multiple npcs which don't move. There might be walk frames for them, but I'm not quite sure and would like to check it out.

Not that I know of. Probably the most you could do is change the character ID for the person in front, but you would always be limited to playable characters.

4

Map Gab / Re: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

« on: January 28, 2026, 10:55:24 am »

On this subject, I have a Secret of Mana video where I show off three different methods of getting into places i'm not supposed to. There's the map ID code, some x/y coordinate codes, and also a code that determines whether or not the player is holding the controller. If you turn this on during a cutscene, the cutscene is paused and you can walk around and do whatever you want. I always put my PAR codes in the video description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SD_siXnI0M

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Map Gab / Re: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

« on: January 27, 2026, 05:54:16 pm »

After taking a closer look I think the room modifier should be a two part code. Anyway, here's the codes that take you to the docked Calnus.

7E0461B7 Room modifier set to docked Calnus
7E046201 (Part 2 of code. 00 is the first set of 256 rooms and 01 is the next set of 256 rooms.)


I'll fix the Time Gate code to have both values...

7E04610E Room modifier set to Time Gate
7E046200


Here's a few others I noticed.


7E0461B9 Room modifier set to restaurant cutscene
7E046201

7E0461E1 Room modifier set to meeting room cutscene
7E046200

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Map Gab / Re: How did Tropicon rip this cutscene map? (Star Ocean) [SNES]

« on: January 25, 2026, 12:27:33 pm »

Hello. In the event you are unable to get in contact with Tropicon I have my own solution for this problem.

I was just now able to achieve freedom of movement at the Time Gate by using a room modifier code. This code will work upon exiting a room, so go into an item shop or something and take a savestate next to the door. Turn the code on and leave and you should be at the Time Gate. You won't be in a cutscene so you can walk around freely.

This was done in BizHawk but you should be able to adapt it to other emulators too.

Go to hex editor, make sure the memory domain says WRAM, freeze 000461 and poke the value to 0E.

If you find yourself stuck in a wall just use some position modifier codes to get out of there.

002013 = Horizontal Position
002016 = Vertical Position


They would look like this as PAR codes.

7E04610E Room modifier code (Set to Time Gate)
7E2013?? Horizontal Axis
7E2016?? Vertical Axis

7

Maps Of The Month / Re: 2026/01: Nightshade - Part 1: The Claws Of Sutekh (NES) - zagato blackfist

« on: January 02, 2026, 10:37:02 am »

Thanks as always. I remember the biggest challenge with this one was compiling all the rooms in a way that actually makes sense. I was originally going to treat this like The Legend of Zelda with the city as the overworld and the houses/sewers as the underworld, but when I found out this wouldn't work I had to make a new plan.

I changed my mind several times in fact. In the end I only decided what the layout for these maps would be after I beat the game and collected screenshots of every last room.

8

VGMaps Social Board / Re: External site using VGMaps content?

« on: December 20, 2025, 11:38:30 am »

Jon also pointed this out to me a few years ago and asked me if I knew anything about it. I told him I had no idea they were hosting my maps until he brought it up.

"Better VGMaps" has never contacted me by any means to ask permission to host my maps.

I would not have given them my permission to host my maps on their clone site if they had asked me.

Better VGMaps is hosting my maps without my consent.

It is unfortunate, but as FlyingArmor says, there is very little we can do about it. We can play a game of Whack-A-Mole with that site, and just watch it pop back up on different hosts each time it gets knocked down, but that seems like a waste of effort. I'm just going to do my part to tell people about the real VGMaps, and if they ask me about the plagiarized site i'll just tell them the truth about it...

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: November 22, 2025, 10:24:47 am »

Crossfire, Brush Roller, and Higemaru Makaijima: Nanatsu no Shima Daibouken were mapped by Ricardo Sallin and removed from the international list.


Kero was mapped by skater43 and removed from the international list.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: August 24, 2025, 10:38:00 am »

To be clear, I am not going to complain if somebody sends in a map set that I was planning to do myself. I would like it if more NES maps started coming in from other people.

That said, there are a few games i've checked out and decided to set aside for now...

American Gladiators is difficult to control on the NES.

3D World Runner will require drawn maps, but I have almost no experience playing this game.

Ultimate Air Combat has a lot of big maps with monotonous scenery. I think this would be better suited for mappers who have experience using scripts, or maybe an auto stitcher. If anyone wants this i've already made some codes for mapping purposes and will post them below.

Zanac has LONG maps, and will need to be broken up in pieces. Also tons of repeating, monotonous scenery. Maybe another auto stitcher project.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure I only mapped one road from the first medieval stage before putting it down. I estimate these maps will be 12,000x6,000 pixels in size, but more importantly I need to find better codes for boundary breaking before I continue.

Miracle Piano By looking at BizHawk's hex editor, I can see where the game handles inputs from the midi keyboard, but my efforts to play this game by manually controlling the inputs from the hex editor were unsuccessful. I heard this game has a side scrolling platform type of minigame. To the best of my knowledge there are no emulators that support the keyboard this game came with.


Ultimate Air Combat [NES] (Always use "system bus" memory domain)

020A:09 Infinite Bombs
0216:FF Skip Air Stages
0242:CB Infinite Fuel
0341:00 Invincible
05B3:00 No Targets Left


Also, Dash Galaxy In The Alien Asylum and Niji no Silkroad were mapped by Ricardo Sallin and removed from the list.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: June 14, 2025, 11:18:03 pm »

Bomberman II was mapped by Alisa and removed from the list!

I'm currently working on the rest of the Tengen games.

https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/Tengen

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Maps In Progress / Re: New maps from a new member

« on: May 31, 2025, 09:47:33 am »

Hi Ricardo. It's great to see more people getting involved in this. I've been grinding away at the NES index for the last few years but most of the games you listed are fine if you want them.

The only one of these games i've been working on is Klash Ball. Actually, i've already ripped all the backgrounds, so i'll send it in today.


I have codes for Zippy race that might be helpful to you. They make you invulnerable to crashing so you'll be able to focus on getting screenshots.

Zippy Race [NES]
0021:1C Infinite Gas
0093:40 Invincible
0095:20 Invincible

13

Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: May 21, 2025, 01:27:23 pm »

Monster Truck Rally was mapped by Ricardo Sallin. I have not played this game before so I don't know if there's supposed to be any more maps. At any rate i'll take it off the list.

I'll get to Base Wars soon. I didn't realize it was another baseball game.

On that topic, everything in the international list with the word "yakyuu" in the title is a baseball game.

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: May 09, 2025, 10:23:25 am »

Removed Battle City from international list because it was mapped by Ricardo Sallin. Thanks!

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Map Requests / Re: List of unmapped NES games

« on: March 30, 2025, 09:58:45 am »

Getting all of the games mapped in a few months is still a stretch, though, there are still a few RPGs and adventures (the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games, Tombs & Treasure, Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny) and a few that would be technically challenging to do justice: various flight simulators (including stuff like Star Voyager), games with unique "3D" effects (Castelian), games with peripherals that may not be easily emulated (Miracle Piano Teaching System).

As for Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny, i'm going to leave that alone for now just in case FlyingArmor wants it.

Looking at Miracle Piano Teaching System for the first time, I can see why this might be a problem. I thought VirtuaNES had pretty good peripheral support but even that doesn't have a midi keyboard. The only thing I might be able to do about this is go into BizHawk's hex editor and see if I can operate the game from there somehow.