Byuu explained how to do it right, i.e. in a way that the original machine would still be able to run it, assuming the Taiwanese POS you bought to run ROMs on your SNES can handle it. I think we really already had this discussion with regards to that ultimate mortal kombat genesis hack that needed a custom hacked emulator to run.

I dunno, I've been in this discussion a lot of times, and I'm still kind of torn on it. One big side of it is that you are supposed to be designing a game/translation/improvement for the system you're working with, and there is a ton of merit in that. The other side of it is you might just want to make some vision you have come to life, real hardware or not, and that's your intention from the start. I think there's a ton of merit in that too. Honestly I still say playing on real hardware = having to worry if your rom hack gets dusty though. It's not really as awesome as you'd think. I sit around all the time worrying about if my copy of Chorus of Mysteries is okay.

My point with DQ3r was that the expansion would be legal.

What ROM hackers call "ExHiROM" is actually an SHVC-LJ3M-01 PCB board layout. In other words, if you were to overwrite the ROMs on Tales of Phantasia with DQ3r, it'd work on real hardware. Don't even need any metaphorical "super" mapping chip: all the hardware already exists.

The problem is that Tales and Daikai came out really late in the system's life, and only four games ever exceeded 32mbits. To cut costs and such, the majority of copier devices aren't able to run >32mbit games. So if DMM expands the game, it won't run on those devices. Such as my Super UFO 8.3j. But it will run on my 64mbit GDSF7, or on anyone's Tototek flash cart.

So he has to balance what he values more.

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That said, good a time as any for this. For FEoEZ, I have a few tricks that will enable absolutely massive speedups to the translation. I'll go into more detail on that later when I have a proof of concept. The downside is that it requires a good 8mbits or more of ROM space to pull off. I will have to expand FEoEZ from 40mbits to 48mbits, which the original PCB board did not support (not enough address line pins.)

Then again, there's not a single copier in the entire world that supports the SPC7110 anyway. It's not even like the S-DD1 where you can hack it out ala neviksti's 96mbit Star Ocean.

So keeping it 40mbits would only benefit people who put it on real carts, and half of them just turn around and sell them on eBay anyway. But by expanding it, I can guarantee a much smoother experience for everyone playing the patch on emulators (99.8% of people.)

So ... it's a tough call, whether to keep it at 40mbits or expand it.


I started my emulator for that very reason: stuff I was writing for my copier wasn't running in any emulators. And even mine still definitely has very serious problems emulating code that runs on the real thing. Even more frequently a problem in the reverse: just ask MathOnNapkins or Chester :/

Gets really bad when you know all the tricks and push the hardware to its limits: ran into a bug very recently where using $43x8 as a scratch register when that channel never used HDMA was breaking one emulator. Works fine on hardware.