ToToTEK.COM

[Mystic_Merlin]

Here's another interesting thread about copier archeology: pirate floppy disks.
Most people in the West were getting their roms from swapping, BBS or dumping cartridge roms. In South East Asia, stores were actually selling floppy disks along with copiers and I believe the majority was coming from HK.

I have acquired a few of those out of curiosity. Only a few survived the test of time as they're usually of cheap quality. Some are bi-colors, some have MGH or Game Partners logos, some have cheap "kodak" labels, some have professional ones, some have a plastic SFC case...

I am mostly interested in dumping these floppies for the file format and hacks, in order to corroborate my findings with all the mods and bios evolution in different copiers.
The vast majority of the ones that are still functioning are Lorom games. I guess the vendors wanted to save themselves the trouble of customers coming back and complaining about games not working on their copier.

Early games usually are in SMC format, some later ones in FIG format but all of them follow a SFMMXXX naming convention where M is the file size in Mb and XXX a random number. This way the games will usually work on SMC, FIG, MGH and GDSF regardless of the header, as long as they're Lorom games...

Then I found something interesting when I dumped the Seiken Densetsu 2 floppy. This game was released '93 and considered one of the early Hirom games, it appears to be in IC2 format, confirming there were indeed a couple of games distributed in this format.
http://www.tototek.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7111

I also found a copy of Aladdin with a long list of protection hacks titled "FIX BY JAMES TSANG". Capcom implemented multiple checks (around 25 if I recall correctly!) in this game with nefarious consequences if you just missed one.

I'll keep digging and report here if I find anything else interesting but I'm welcoming any information related to these floppy disks, especially if you know James Tsang

[mrforever]

nice thread!! thank you mate!

[NorQue]

Interesting, I recently got a box full of these myself together with a Special Partner (I think it's a Supercom Partner clone). You think dumping them has merit?

[Mystic_Merlin]

[MottZilla]

Very cool historical stuff. Back in the early 2000s I thought about printing nice color labels for my disks for my Game Doctor SF3.

[CZroe]

I’ve wanted one of these clamshell disks since getting my GDSF7… just something to demonstrate how these things were often used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Of course, I’d want it to be an iconic title everyone familiar with the SNES recognizes… like Super Mario World.

Obviously I’m not going to find these on eBay. Anyone willing to part with one? Hit me up! Thanks. Heck, even just a clamshell would be awesome since I could make my own disk/label but I’d rather have an authentic bootleg from the period, as contradictory as that sounds.

[Mystic_Merlin]

[CZroe]

[Sebbeug]

Personally, I'd be interested in a dump of Aladdin, impossible to run properly on my Super Wild Card.
After 1 or 2 minutes of play, it slows down considerably and becomes unplayable.
I've put on all the protections offered by ucon64 (2.2.2), same thing!

[Tomy]

Other games are ok ? Only this game have problem ?

[Mystic_Merlin]

[Sebbeug]

I'm not a specialist in copiers. Back in the day, I used to use my SWC by dumping the cartridges myself, and as far as I remember (on first-generation SNES games), everything worked more or less unchanged.

Thank you very much for these files!
I love these cracks of the time !!!

Concerning my SuperWildCard, it's an original 32M version with the original 2.8CC ROM too, I didn't upgrade it. So it's rather a “recent” version isn't it?

I've tried all the patches you gave me, none of them work... (By the way, I've just seen that my SWC also reads .SFC, so I was trying to change them all to .SWC with ucon64... (I even have one that only works in the .SFC version, Legend's BETA).

I'm ready to share my label disks and dsk images with old geeks (=> discord)

[mrforever]

a question... do you have try super street fighter 2 ? works fine or not?

[Mystic_Merlin]

You got me curious so I took a look and found out that first, the patch has to be applied on the US version. In this rare occurrence, this version was released before the Japanese version.

Second thing is the Legend IPS does not include the intro jump.
Here are both of them re-done, let's see if they work, at least they do in No$sns.

They have to be applied on a headerless US rom. Then you need to add the header with the following command:

ucon64 --smc nameofyourrom.smc

[Sebbeug]

Hey ?! Thank you !

Your Aladdin (U) Elitendo.ips is working fine !!!

But is there anywhere I can find these IPS ???
Because I've got 2 or 3 games I'd like to modify too and I don't want to bother you with all that!


Thank you very much one again