Star Parodier and the the Super System Card/Bootrom

[darksakul]

I am not sure if this is an issue with the game or the FPGA core, But I notice the game Star Parodier will get their System Card error screen telling you need a Super System Card also known as System Card 3.0 if you use the US version of the System Card 3.0
Switching to the Japanese version of the System Card ver 3.0 negates the issue.
So far it's the only Super CD-ROM² game that gets picky on what Super System card is used.

2gt69RC.png (78.8 KiB) Viewed 6213 times

The Said Error screen, if anyone understands Japanese and I got the meaning wrong please let me know.

[ItalianGrandma]

Just beat this game the other day. The first real shmup I’ve beaten and if was great!

[LeftEmpty]

I never got a Turbo CD console, but I heard a couple of reports of CD games glitching with it at the time. It was so rare though. There were also a couple of such issues on the Japanese hardware (the first pressings of Juoki and Tokimeki Memorial had issues on certain hardware combination, if I recall correctly).

[MottZilla]

It's best to use the Japanese 3.0 version of the System Card. It should play all games except for Altered Beast (Juoki?) and the Games Express titles (CD Mahjong Bishoujo Chuushinha, Hi-Leg Fantasy, CD Hanafuda Bishoujo Fan Club, AV Tanjou). The error screen you see probably will show up the exact same if you select System Card 1.0 or 2.0 as well. I would guess that however this particular game detects the Super System Card fails for some reason on the US version or maybe you have a bad rom.

There are a few games that might do something interesting if you don't have the Super CD-ROM like Castlevania Dracula X. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH8VxaEltPo

[LeftEmpty]

Even Juoki/Altered Beast should work with the Japanese 3.0 system card, excepting for its first Japanese batch — but maybe it's the more popular dump circulating everywhere because a lot of people seems to mention this game!

[dshadoff]

I only learned of a repress recently from Japanese friends, after about 25 years. And I searched for it during those years.
Trust me, the 'fix' version is rare. And I am also told that it still contains bugs (although not as serious as the one that got fixed).

[MottZilla]

redump has dumped both versions and noted which version is which.

http://redump.org/disc/34846/
http://redump.org/disc/34847/

The version containing two data tracks apparently works on all System Cards, but the one with only 1 data track "supposedly" requires System Card 1.0.

[LeftEmpty]

Trust me, the 'fix' version is rare.

Damn. I am in the exact opposite position: I only had the working version in my possession, and I learned about the issue only many years later. But because of my personal experience, I assumed until now the fixed version was very common!
Still not regretting departing with it, because I love the PC-Engine, but urrh, revision or not, still a crappy game.

The version containing two data tracks apparently works on all System Cards, but the one with only 1 data track "supposedly" requires System Card 1.0.

That is very interesting: I had noticed a bunch of CD games (can't recall a Super CD one with such a layout) seemed to have redundant data tracks, and I always assumed those were to ease up on the loading and lens travel time.
It could be a coincidence and actually the case of the later revision taking advantage of such hypothetic optimisation, or maybe that redundancy is part of the work-around to get those titles to work with later system cards?
I'm just conjecturing, as I have zero technical knowledge on anything ;D

[dshadoff]

My understanding based on my studies of the CDs, is that the duplicate copy of the data track is for redundancy in case the "Track 2" version is somehow damaged. However, I don't believe that I've ever seen/heard/witnessed such a failover.

[LeftEmpty]

Shows that the proper answer is always much more simple :D

They should have reimplemented that solution in later Arcade card games, because some of those seemed to have real reading errors (I particularly remember all our copies of Art of Fighting/Ryuko no Ken had near systematic reading errors)!

[MottZilla]

If you ran the game in an emulator with a debugger you could try to observe if, when, and how the other data tracks are accessed. Otherwise you could try examining the data in the second data track to try to figure out what is stored there. I've heard the same speculation before that the "duplicate" data track was for faster loading/less seeking. I've also heard some games, I believe Dracula X is one of them, will work just fine with the second data track missing completely.

The fixed version of Altered Beast probably just needed to fix a programming error or an odd behavior that worked on the original BIOS but was not the proper way to do something going forward with the newer BIOS. If someone was really determined to find out they could examine both versions and locate what was changed.

I never played the Art of Fighting Arcade Card titles but I did play Strider Hiryu and Sapphire back when I first owned a DUO system. I never had any reading errors. The only issue I ever had on my old DUO was the laser sled getting stuck when playing CD-Rs. Maybe there was an issue with your Arcade Card or your system. Curious, what exactly was happening when you had these reading errors?

[Sorgelig]

It's already fixed in new release

[LeftEmpty]

Oh we had many consoles, and multiple copies of the game, so it wasn't an odd issue. It was a time way before CD-Rs were a thing too, so read errors were very rare and striking — usually simply fixed by wiping with alcohol a stray digit mark on the glossy media, “whoops”.
Art of Fighting was definitely the worse. Garo Densetsu 2 or Special, I don't remember which one, also had many issues. World Heroes 2 and Sapphire were the nicest, with zero errors as far as l remember it. The Arcade Card error happening was very easy to tell: when it occured, the progress bar would partially or mostly reset, and the console would then have to reload most of the data into its Arcade Card again. Maybe a checksum was failed? Who knows. It could happen multiple times in a row, too.

The Duo-R and RX dealt the best with those read errors, but they still experienced them to some extent. I got a Laser Active only many years later, but since it uses a high speed reading of sort, it can't be used as reference.