It's come to my attention after a lot of time using my Turbo Everdrive that there are probably a lot of PCE and TG-16 Hucard games that have never been properly dumped.
I'm seeing a number of games glitching, freezing, or not even starting. While it's possible that I've got a hardware problem, I don't think that's it. Too many other games are running correctly when I leave them for overnight tests, including large ones with attract-modes that use data from all over the game. I know that that's not conclusive, but at least it suggests that there are no access problems, which is the only other possible cause of these malfunctions.
Even if the problem is on my end, though, it looks like there has never been much in the way of a unified effort to dump hucards accurately. I'm guessing one issue is that there doesn't seem to be any standard checksum data included within each game like there is for so many other systems' games. That's why the GoodTools people couldn't really give [!] tags to any hucard roms.
Instead, there are only untagged ROMs that are supposed to be good (which really means they just couldn't see anything wrong with the data), along with lots of [b1], [b2] tagged ROMs (b=bad dump) and the dubious [h1], [h2] tagged ROMs (h = hacked). [a1] etc also basically means it was hacked.
The untagged R-Type (U), for example, doesn't work. I have to use the [h1] ROM, and that probably means that the untagged ROM is actually bad and someone hacked it into working. That may work well enough to play, but it's no way to preserve a hucard game. Preservation is my primary concern.
I used to own an SNES copier and spent a lot of hours messing around with dumping and loading games. I was surprised at how even my late-generation copier didn't always dump games like it was supposed to, and was inconsistent. The SNES ROM community back then (remember cherryroms?) put a lot of effort into making sure that each and every game got a proper, accurate dump. I believe their work really paid off, and that gamers everywhere are all the richer for it.
I hope another community can eventually do the same for the PCE.
With no checksum in the games, it seems to me like the only way to establish an accurate dump would be to dump a game repeatedly with multiple dumpers and cross-check them very carefully. Even then, if each dumper is improperly dumping things the same way, we may still not get what we want. It would take real know-how and diligence to do this right.
I can't offer too much other than to raise awareness and hopefully start a conversation. If someone else with an everdrive wants to try some games and see how they work, then by all means, please do so. Making a list of games that look like they weren't dumped right is a good first step.
For everyone, what do you make of this situation?
Topic: Someone really ought to dump Hucard ROMS properly (Read 519 times)
