03-04-2018, 01:29 PM
Understand completely what you had to go through. Ripping those games can be a nightmare, it was lucky that a few on the X1 can be ripped on the disk via YY-CHR. Had to use a different emulator to X1 millennium because that had forced scanlines that couldn't switch off on the version that I had, just to get a screen capture for palette verification and an icon for the site. Also it was painful to play these games with the number keys without a num pad that many devices these days drop. It also doesn't help that the Japanese gaming scene likes to keep themselves to themselves, even releasing emulators that require Japanese Windows to run at all because they don't want other people to play on them. So any improvements that these need is going to take a miracle to include (layer removal, sprite viewer, even a palette editor and a pause mode). At least Common Source Project x1turbo has a debugger even though it isn't much use for sprite ripping and a Screen Capture button.
It seems once you go past Nintendo and Sega emulators (past 2008 for the Genesis and even then...), it gets harder and harder to rip games from. Some like the Commodore stuff can be manageable with some work (or a lot more work for their lesser known systems). Others are lucky to get an emulator at all even if its just MAME and a few like the Nokia N-Gage has no emulator at all. Atari games past the 2600 are problematic. 7800 is nasty because that online tile viewer only supports one video mode and crops the last column and emulation on that isn't really that good with the best you can get is a pause. Even the screen is stretched to 4: 3 on the emulators instead of offering an aspect ratio option so capturing wouldn't look right either. There are no cheats either so you have to be good at these games. Oh and you can't ROM rip them either with something else.
Like the Amstrad CPC could do with a palette editor just so these games that use black but have a black background can be ripped. So many that would have loved to rip but had to abandon e.g. Elevator Action, Chase HQ, Psycho Soldier, Whopper Chase etc.
It seems once you go past Nintendo and Sega emulators (past 2008 for the Genesis and even then...), it gets harder and harder to rip games from. Some like the Commodore stuff can be manageable with some work (or a lot more work for their lesser known systems). Others are lucky to get an emulator at all even if its just MAME and a few like the Nokia N-Gage has no emulator at all. Atari games past the 2600 are problematic. 7800 is nasty because that online tile viewer only supports one video mode and crops the last column and emulation on that isn't really that good with the best you can get is a pause. Even the screen is stretched to 4: 3 on the emulators instead of offering an aspect ratio option so capturing wouldn't look right either. There are no cheats either so you have to be good at these games. Oh and you can't ROM rip them either with something else.
Like the Amstrad CPC could do with a palette editor just so these games that use black but have a black background can be ripped. So many that would have loved to rip but had to abandon e.g. Elevator Action, Chase HQ, Psycho Soldier, Whopper Chase etc.
