Topic: List of unmapped NES games

[JonLeung]

Lately i've been doing a bunch of games that can be mapped in a day, if not two in a day. This will cause the list to shrink rapidly,

As for "1.36 NES games per day", this not unreal because some games consist of one-screen "maps" or have non-platforming structure.

Yes, that's true, a quick scan of the list reveals a bunch of sports games that usually don't have too many fields/courts/diamonds/etc. I looked on a list and counted just now, there's 21 baseball games for the NES (including the unlicensed games Quattro Sports and R.B.I. Baseball 2 & 3) and seven of those that are still unmapped begin with "B", so maybe that's why that's an easy thing to spot.

Definitely a few other simple games that could be knocked out really quickly.

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).

Maybe it would be good to highlight the ones that might be a challenge so that those who like to figure out a way around such hurdles can already start investigating how they could be mapped, rather than leaving them right at the end.  If the gears are in motion then the "simpler" games could be mapped out while a solution for the harder ones could be worked out.

[dark_lord_zagato]

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.

[dark_lord_zagato]

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

[FlyingArmor]

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

*Just seeing this now* I have been mapping it on and off for the past year or so, so it is in the works!

[JonLeung]

That was quite the load of baseball games we got a few days ago.

Surprised that Base Wars wasn't in that batch... or as it is sometimes known as, "Cyber Stadium Series: Base Wars".  Wonder if, had it been more successful, they would have expanded the series with more futuristic games featuring robots playing other sports.  "Cyber Stadium Series: Hoop Wars" for basketball, perhaps?  (I guess there already is a robot football game, Cyberball...)

Funny how in Base Wars, the robots are mostly humanoid, and look similar to each other, except for their lower halves.  Some have humanoid legs, but others might have a single wheel, or tank treads, or a flying saucer-like bottom that enables them to hover.

Anyway, that's what I remember Base Wars for - for standing out a bit, with its unique setting and players, in a sea of baseball games.  Funny how the NES had so many.  I'm sure this one will be mapped eventually.  Looking forward to that.

Doing a search for "ball" on the list shows that there are not many of these "ball" games left!  Keep up the good work!

[dark_lord_zagato]

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.

[dark_lord_zagato]

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

[JonLeung]

zagato, you've been doing a great job so far, and keep it up if you can, but are there any particular NES games that you foresee that you might have difficulties mapping, or any games or genres you'd rather not tackle?

I'd really like to see all the NES games mapped eventually, obviously sooner rather than later, but there are still many to go, and, while your prolificness is commendable, I wonder if it might make other people hesitate to map NES games too... maybe?

If there are some you'd rather have someone else do, or are questioning how you might do them, maybe some discussion of it here will give you ideas, or let other people take on certain ones if they would like.

That's not at all a negative comment on your skill, of course not, as you do exceptional work, but as we all know, there are still hundreds of games, and I'm sure you could use a hand based on quantity alone, if we're to get a full NES atlas anytime soon.

You already have suggested that FlyingArmor take on Ultima: Warriors Of Destiny, are there any others you wouldn't mind others tackling?

Maybe someone has an idea how to map Miracle Piano Teaching System (due to having to emulate its controls and what would be worth mapping), Star Voyager (3D space, if you want to map more than just HUDs and other scenes) and Elite (European exclusive, similar to Star Voyager).

In any case, I'm always happy to have more discussion about how this is progressing.

I'm sure it's not possible to have every NES game mapped by the 40th anniversary of the NES (in under two months!), but would the 45th anniversary of the NES be possible?

[dark_lord_zagato]

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.

[G.E.R.]

I think it's possible to speed up the our NES-mapping process by using Cheat Engine codes, this is my method which I use rip 2D-maps (usually).
First need to find values for X/Y player position and set hotkeys somethink like this:

Code: [Select]

[i]Presskey "DEL" decreased X_pos value by 160 pixels
Presskey "PG DOWN" increased X_pos value by 160 pixels
Presskey "HOME" decreased Y_pos value by 100 pixels
Presskey "END" increased Y_pos value by 100 pixels
Presskey "INS" freeze X_pos and Y_pos
Presskey "PG UP" unfreeze X_pos and Y_pos[/i]Then find values for player health/weapon ect and freeze them. This will give free movement on levels without player hit.
Maybe it can be usefull for some difficulties/problem games?

[Cyartog959]

I think it's possible to speed up the our NES-mapping process by using Cheat Engine codes, this is my method which I use rip 2D-maps (usually).
First need to find values for X/Y player position and set hotkeys somethink like this:

Code: [Select]

[i]Presskey "DEL" decreased X_pos value by 160 pixels
Presskey "PG DOWN" increased X_pos value by 160 pixels
Presskey "HOME" decreased Y_pos value by 100 pixels
Presskey "END" increased Y_pos value by 100 pixels
Presskey "INS" freeze X_pos and Y_pos
Presskey "PG UP" unfreeze X_pos and Y_pos[/i]Then find values for player health/weapon ect and freeze them. This will give free movement on levels without player hit.
Maybe it can be usefull for some difficulties/problem games?

A good solution for those shedding time on doing NES maps. Wonder if other platforms besides NES use same or different methods for free movement on stages without damages/map changing/event triggers in their games' coding by reaching certain one/two-way entry/exit points in them to guarantee more familiarly efficient mapping via Cheat Engine. Is it the same as what you explained, or quite different on others?