MiSTer FPGA Forum

So, was curious if there is a easy way to tell if a rom uses a specific region US/UE or Japan. And also whether or not it is a NTSC or PAL. I know that in the US and Japan, NTSC is used and Europe uses PAL. However, my question is related to roms specifically. Trying to understand how to figure out if a rom is playing to slow or to fast, etc.

Because some roms labeled U sound too fast for ntsc and UE or E sound too slow for PAL.

For games of this era, it was standard practice to simply let games run slower on 50 Hz systems rather than try to alter the behavior. A game running slower on a 50 Hz system may be "correct" behavior in that sense. Ideally, anything with a J or U in the region code should run correctly on a 60 Hz system and anything with an E in the region code should run correctly on a 50 Hz system, but that's an ideal and not a guarantee.

Aside from that, the thing with Sega's region coding in particular is that the game can detect the console region and do anything it likes with that information. For example, Sega often used this to ship the same ROM to multiple regions and display a different title screen for each. It's ultimately a matter of how each game is programmed. A game could have region-specific optimizations or region-specific bugs despite being the same build of the game.

ExCyber wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 2:19 pm For games of this era, it was standard practice to simply let games run slower on 50 Hz systems rather than try to alter the behavior. A game running slower on a 50 Hz system may be "correct" behavior in that sense. Ideally, anything with a J or U in the region code should run correctly on a 60 Hz system and anything with an E in the region code should run correctly on a 50 Hz system, but that's an ideal and not a guarantee.

Aside from that, the thing with Sega's region coding in particular is that the game can detect the console region and do anything it likes with that information. For example, Sega often used this to ship the same ROM to multiple regions and display a different title screen for each. It's ultimately a matter of how each game is programmed. A game could have region-specific optimizations or region-specific bugs despite being the same build of the game.

Is it possible that the rom labels could be incorrect on the ones that seem too fast or too slow? Is there a good database to check the timing 50 hz or 60 hz or title screen differences to make U, UE/E, or J different? The biggest time consuming part of this project for consumers is maintenance/organization of roms. Does anyone know of a good way? I know each user has their own method. I personally use folders to organize.
For example:
main folder - games/sms/sms
Subfolders - Licensed/NA-NTSC, Licensed/EU-PAL, Licensed/JA-NTSC
Just trying to separate roms of different settings together so, that I am not consistently changing the settings to play them on MiSTer.

I'm not sure if you're aware of Smokemonster's ROM packs for organization:

https://github.com/frederic-mahe/Hardwa ... e-Database

I've personally never used it, but it's pretty popular among the community.

I think broadly you could divide the games into those released in Japan/North America and those which were PAL only (about half the library), and run the former at 60Hz (NTSC) and the latter at 50Hz. I think mostly game released in NTSC regions would have been made with 60Hz in mind, except for maybe games which were made in Europe.

Of the PAL only games, a lot of them were still made in Japan, so I don’t know that there’s any clear way to know if they were intended for 50Hz, but if you’re looking to replicate the experience of the time then they would have been played at 50Hz whether they were made for it or not.

Setting the console to Japanese region can be interesting. The Mark III doesn’t have a BIOS, so games will have their own sega logo screen which can change between games like on mega drive. There can also be changes in the game itself - wonder boy in monster land’s bosses have doubled HP compared to running the system in US/EU mode for example. Plus some games require JP region for FM sound to work. There are even some games which didn’t release in Japan that have FM sound. Presumably when they were made a Japanese release was expected, so those games were probably intended to run at NTSC frequency.

Yim wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:46 pm Setting the console to Japanese region can be interesting. The Mark III doesn’t have a BIOS, so games will have their own sega logo screen which can change between games like on mega drive. There can also be changes in the game itself - wonder boy in monster land’s bosses have doubled HP compared to running the system in US/EU mode for example. Plus some games require JP region for FM sound to work. There are even some games which didn’t release in Japan that have FM sound. Presumably when they were made a Japanese release was expected, so those games were probably intended to run at NTSC frequency.

Yim... Is there an excel database or something similar where users keep the settings used for these roms that you mentioned? It would be helpful for all users I think to know what settings work best for roms on these cores and to know which roms work or don't, which contain bugs that could be worked on within the core or which ones need to be repaired to work on the MiSTer.

Personally, I am looking for a more authentic experience with using the MiSTer and the cores. Using the roms and settings that they were made to be used for. If a rom is labeled U for example, then the settings should be Region U with TV Setting NTSC. if it is a PAL then UE - PAL, Japan - NTSC etc. Again I am really looking for a way to identify roms and their settings just incase these that i have are labeled incorrectly and I can fix them.

https://www.smspower.org/Development/RO ... fff05Bytes

You could go to this hex offset in a hex editor for the ROM to find out specifically what the region is. The regions are not typically "U/E/J" for Sega Master System games. There is no real way to tell that "it should run at 50hz" without real hardware from what I can tell. And even then, this would only apply to games that were exclusive to 50Hz regions, as you can't tell totally if the game was intended to be either one most of the time on it's own if they had both a 60Hz and 50Hz region release.

https://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthrea ... stem-games

Here is a thread on Sega16 where people went over some of their experiences with different region consoles. That leads to this list:

https://www.smspower.org/forums/9073-SM ... LGameGuide

aberu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:41 pmThe regions are not typically "U/E/J" for Sega Master System games.

This is correct; I had a brain fart and thought that the split between those schemes was earlier (like post-SG-1000 rather than post-SMS).

aberu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:41 pm You could go to this hex offset in a hex editor for the ROM to find out specifically what the region is. The regions are not typically "U/E/J" for Sega Master System games. There is no real way to tell that "it should run at 50hz" without real hardware from what I can tell. And even then, this would only apply to games that were exclusive to 50Hz regions, as you can't tell totally if the game was intended to be either one most of the time on it's own if they had both a 60Hz and 50Hz region release.

So, aberu is there a hex editor that you recommend? and if they had both 50hz and 60hz release then does the game run the same speed on both NTSC and PAL?

Thanks.

JWDog wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:06 am
So, aberu is there a hex editor that you recommend?

I use HxD --> https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/ - just because it's what I'm used to. I'm sure there are better ones out there that people use. Hex is hex though, not much for a hex editor to do in general .

Looking around, this looks cool, I might try it out --> https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex

JWDog wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:06 am and if they had both 50hz and 60hz release then does the game run the same speed on both NTSC and PAL?

Thanks.

Depends on how they programmed it. Let's say it was a European developer and they only made a PAL specific Sega Master System game, then when the publisher wanted them to release it in the US they just made it so it would run on an SMS and didn't care much. This is unlikely though, they probably would have made it so both the games play at relatively the same speed on both systems. However, it's not like it didn't happen before, that's for sure.

You would have to compare to real hardware to be able to tell, that's the gist of it.

aberu wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 5:24 am

JWDog wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:06 am
So, aberu is there a hex editor that you recommend?

I use HxD --> https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/ - just because it's what I'm used to. I'm sure there are better ones out there that people use. Hex is hex though, not much for a hex editor to do in general .

Looking around, this looks cool, I might try it out --> https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex

JWDog wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:06 am and if they had both 50hz and 60hz release then does the game run the same speed on both NTSC and PAL?

Thanks.

Depends on how they programmed it. Let's say it was a European developer and they only made a PAL specific Sega Master System game, then when the publisher wanted them to release it in the US they just made it so it would run on an SMS and didn't care much. This is unlikely though, they probably would have made it so both the games play at relatively the same speed on both systems. However, it's not like it didn't happen before, that's for sure.

You would have to compare to real hardware to be able to tell, that's the gist of it.

Thank you! I will have to discover how all of this works as I use the comments I have received. Very interesting.

SG-1000 roms don't have a region issue, but do they distinguish between NTSC & PAL. even though most were released in Japan?