Guide to making reproduction cartridge games

[boxhead]

I've bought stuff from these guys before but never tried their repro snes stuff so would be interested to see of anyone else here has bought anything from them

https://www.videogamesplus.ca/snes-reproduction-games-c-54_46_771.html?osCsid=bb5ec04c4a83c0bf7d8805e126a90c55

[Yakumo]

Do you have any idea how much these PCBs would cost? I'd be pretty interested in star fox 2 and a couple of other snes games that contained custom chips. I hav an SD2snes but I'm pretty sure they are never going to get round to sorting out fx and sa-1 chips.

edit: ha, you answered it before I posted!

Actually, that's my Mega Drive guy who's store I've posted a link to in the past. He still can't do the SFC stuff A shame too because I'd bet he'd be cheaper.

I've been working on the Sunset Riders box today. Since there's no official japanese console artwork for this game I went with my own ideas rather than trying to replicate the original.

[speedlolita]

I know Martin wants me to do some carts for him, but now I've settled on the Super Famicom as my main "retro" machine I'm probably going to get around to swapping the ROMs in my Chrono Trigger and FFVI from here on... Can't say any of the above games really interest me that much, but hey.

[Yakumo]

You can get any game made as a repro apart from special chip games. I've chosen the ones I have because they are all really expensive starting at 50 pounds upwards. I'd love originals but at those prices I'd be spending at least 700 pounds for all the games.

[nakamura]

Can you swap roms in already made special chip games? For example, I have Star Ocean so it already has the special chips in the cart.

[Colin]

Would you guys not be as well just to use an everdrive rather than buying multiple pcb's?

[nakamura]

Would you guys not be as well just to use an everdrive rather than buying multiple pcb's?

For sure. But for me if feels nicer having a self booting game. All of my repros are translated games that are complete in original japanese packaging.

[noobish hat]

Surely the next question would have to be "why don't you just use an emulator?"

[Colin]

Not at all, I'm 100% for real hardware over emulation. I would imagine these pcb's simply have a flashed rom on them though, so don't see the reasoning behind the expense instead of a rom on an everdrive, if you see what I mean?

[noobish hat]

No. Reproductions are more expensive than Everdrives; Everdrives are more expensive than emulators and roms. The experience is basically the same if you use a USB convertor for the original controller.

[Yakumo]

For sure. But for me if feels nicer having a self booting game. All of my repros are translated games that are complete in original japanese packaging.

Yep, this is the reason why I make repros. had an ever drive but it just felt odd using it.

[Yakumo]

Can you swap roms in already made special chip games? For example, I have Star Ocean so it already has the special chips in the cart.

Yes, you can but I don't know the details.

[Colin]

Noobish, you don't understand what I'm saying, but you've just agreed with it from an expense point of view? Seems you're being needlessly difficult there. The experience isn't the same using a USB converter on a PC compared to the original system, as you've taken anything that's 'real' out of the equation. The repro isn't genuine but is being used through genuine hardware, so at that point in the chain I was asking where you see the difference between the two, when one is costing more to do the same job. It's a perfectly civil question.

[speedlolita]

Um, the ROM isn't the only piece of hardware on a game board though. To swap out the ROM and insert a different one would still make it genuine if you ask me. Thing is though, I'd only want to do it with legit Japanese carts - like RPGs - and put the US ROM on the cartridge and go no further.

Also consider that an EverDrive or sd2snes won't support all the expansion chips used by games like Star Ocean.

If you know what you're doing, a "repro" can cost as little as the ROM chip you add. The extra cost is superficial stuff like the label, manual, box and whatever other crap you need to assure yourself that you're buying something "legitimate" when you're clearly not.

[nakamura]

Not at all, I'm 100% for real hardware over emulation. I would imagine these pcb's simply have a flashed rom on them though, so don't see the reasoning behind the expense instead of a rom on an everdrive, if you see what I mean?

A repro is identical to the real thing just not 'flashed' officially. Games like Mario Kart still need a DSP to run, and games like Star Ocean won't run on an Everdrive because it doesn't have all the needed custom chips.

That aside, the gameplay differences are zero. Ever drives work just the same as real games.