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Author Topic: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)  (Read 8408 times)

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opt2not

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Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« on: May 09, 2019, 12:39:49 am »
This came up on my Twitter feed. Turns out this conversion makes Gradius III on the snes slowdown free!
It’s especially great on the bubble level.

https://twitter.com/hackervilela/status/1126003826614513665?s=21

If you told me in the 90’s I could play this game on my SNES without slowdown in 2019, I would have scoffed.  But it has happened and it looks glorious!
Gonna try this out soon.

KenToad

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2019, 01:55:09 am »
Really impressive! It looks super difficult. Thanks for sharing.

Howard_Casto

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2019, 01:55:18 am »
Damn that's cool!  One of the first games I got for the snes back in the day...  I wonder if anyone is going to sell the modded carts. 

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2019, 03:37:51 am »
After playing this for a little bit, I would totally buy a conversion cart of this. It feels like arcade Gradius quality now!

I haven’t seen any slowdown, but also the game is a lot harder at full speed. Especially in the 2nd (bubble) level. It took me a while to adjust to the frame-rate particularly at parts I remember had bad slowdown. Before you used to be able to use the slowdown as an exploit on plotting yourself out of a sticky situation. But with this version you have to react quickly, like a normal shmup!!

This feels like what the developers intended; it’s one of the nicest looking Gradius’s, and now it plays smooth at full fps.

This is fantastic.  :applaud:

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2019, 10:20:18 am »
What a cool mod. I see it also has a Super Mario World version as well. Seems like that would lend itself well to the rom hacking community that creates the super difficult levels since it allows more on-screen entities at a time.

KenToad

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #5 on: May 09, 2019, 03:44:55 pm »
I thought that I would be terrible at it and hate it, but it's super fun when you don't have to guess just how slow things are going to be. It's amazing. Gradius III is one of the best SNES games ever now, IMO.

JimmyU

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #6 on: May 09, 2019, 04:04:45 pm »
Damn that's cool!  One of the first games I got for the snes back in the day...  I wonder if anyone is going to sell the modded carts.
I wonder how rare carts with the SA-1 chip are. In the US, it looks like only five or so games were released with it. The most popular game was Super Mario RPG.

Howard_Casto

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #7 on: May 09, 2019, 04:16:36 pm »
Well there's whatever the suped up super everdrive is called, but my regular super everdrive plays 99% of the games I want to play just fine and I'm not paying $300 for gradius 3. 

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #8 on: May 09, 2019, 05:43:47 pm »
Damn that's cool!  One of the first games I got for the snes back in the day...  I wonder if anyone is going to sell the modded carts.
I wonder how rare carts with the SA-1 chip are. In the US, it looks like only five or so games were released with it. The most popular game was Super Mario RPG.

You can nab a PGA Tour 96 cart for <$10 on ebay right now. Same with PGA European Tour.

SA-1 chip carts seem to be pretty easy to obtain, and if it's just a matter of burning a rom then you can get this onto a real cart for pretty cheap. In fact, I'm going to look into doing this now.

Howard_Casto

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #9 on: May 09, 2019, 09:48:35 pm »
Hmm... I wonder if yots could recommend a good rom burner. 

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2019, 02:36:01 pm »
Damn, this game is kicking ---my bottom---!  I am having a hard time getting passed the Moai statues level.
But I'm still enjoying the speed. It's still pretty amazing to see some of the areas you were used to slowdown be run at silky smooth full-frames.  :applaud:

Howard_Casto

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #11 on: May 22, 2019, 01:44:58 am »
Tutorial on how to mod the cart for the new chip:


opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #12 on: May 22, 2019, 04:33:57 am »
Nice. I watched the tutorial video from the creator of that eprom adapter, but this one is more instructional.

Picked up some cheap donors recently and got them prepped for conversion. I’m just waiting for the adapters to arrive to install the eproms.



Removing surface chips is strangely satisfying. :) 



So far so good. I got them off pretty cleanly, hopefully I will be able to install the adapters just as clean. The next part is the toughest, soldering back onto those pads. I guess I have 3 chances to make 1 good cart, that’s good odds imo.

Malenko

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #13 on: May 22, 2019, 07:44:56 am »
If you make a second good cart, sell it to me
If you're replying to a troll you are part of the problem.
I also need to follow this advice. Ignore or report, don't reply.

adamcian

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #14 on: May 22, 2019, 02:31:29 pm »
Then count me in to buy the third cart if successful. Easily one of my top 5 games from childhood. Can prob still play the levels with my eyes closed from pattern memory.


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opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #15 on: May 22, 2019, 05:55:38 pm »
Voultar tweeted today that if you're using a PGA Tour 96 cart as a donor, you gotta also upgrade the SRAM to get Gradius III SA-1 to work correctly.  Turns out the 64k of SRAM on those boards is not enough. This is what he recommends: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/IS62C1024AL-35QLI-TR/706-1308-1-ND/4733138/?itemSeq=293511355

I'm going to put in my order. Yay, more surface mount soldering practice.  ::)  fml

Howard_Casto

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #16 on: May 22, 2019, 11:40:32 pm »
Also somebody alerted ebay that demand might be going up because the price of the carts is now well above what they normally are.  Any SA-1s that already have 64k?  Perhaps some Japanese carts that nobody has heard of?!?

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #17 on: May 23, 2019, 12:12:12 am »
PGA European Tour is still around $10 on eBay. It’s also SA-1.

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #18 on: May 26, 2019, 03:31:10 pm »
Voultar tweeted today that if you're using a PGA Tour 96 cart as a donor, you gotta also upgrade the SRAM to get Gradius III SA-1 to work correctly.  Turns out the 64k of SRAM on those boards is not enough. This is what he recommends: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/IS62C1024AL-35QLI-TR/706-1308-1-ND/4733138/?itemSeq=293511355

I'm going to put in my order. Yay, more surface mount soldering practice.  ::)  fml

So in hindsight, the PGA boards are a lot more work than using a cart with > 64kb of SRAM. The SRAM Voultar suggested has 32 pins, while the original is 28. With this swap you gotta manually wire 2 of the pins  to the SA-1 chip, and 1 to a 5v source (the 4th is NC).

Attached is a picture of what needs to be wired to what.

I’m still waiting on the EPROM adapter boards to arrive, but sometime this weekend I’ll try the SRAM adaptation and post my results.

Overall this is a lot more trouble than it’s worth, but I’m “pot committed” right now so I might as well follow through to the end.

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #19 on: October 09, 2019, 09:26:40 pm »
Vitor Vilela has done it again, now with Contra III!



https://twitter.com/HackerVilela/status/1180558277735792640

KenToad

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #20 on: October 10, 2019, 10:22:50 am »
That looks great, can't wait to try this.

Thanks for sharing.

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #21 on: October 10, 2019, 06:10:31 pm »
I'm hoping he takes on Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts next.  That game could really use the bump in fps.

KenToad

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #22 on: February 14, 2020, 10:31:38 am »
I finally patched Contra III and it plays amazingly well. He apparently had some issues getting the hack to work with 2 players, but it should be good now.

How did your cart converting turn out?

opt2not

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Re: Gradius III converted to SA-1 ( no slowdown!)
« Reply #23 on: February 14, 2020, 02:18:35 pm »
Unfortunately I didn't get to finish it due to work/life schedule getting in the way of hobby projects.