Paraemon's Comprehensive Ripping Project Thread [Expansion Station]

[NES Boy]

Hey! I don't usually post here in the VG Resource, but I must say it's an interesting project you have going here. I have some tips:

• Fred Bronze, a contributor to Sonic 3 Complete, has a blog that's been running for months now, called Sonic 3 Unlocked (the first post can be found here). With 85 posts so far, it looks into the programming of the game, and occasionally glimpses into oversights. For example, in the beginning of Carnival Night Zone Act 2 in the standard version of Sonic 3, a combination of Tails' airlift and Sonic's electric barrier double jump will show that the top of the shaft you fought the Act 1 Boss in ends with this cut-off:
  
  This isn't noticeable since you need a second player to pull this off. However, with the addition of Knuckles and his much more convenient wall-climbing ability in the locked-on version, the programmers had to reprogram this part of the game to maintain the illusion:
  
  Two particular posts that might interest you are "Boss flash bloopers" and "The naked boss flash", which note that some of the boss flash palettes look "wrong" due to what turns out to be bad programming.
  
• Try viewing the ROM through Tile Layer Pro or similar tile viewers. It can help you locate and rip graphical effects that rely on Direct Memory Access (such as animated tiles and background scrolling depth tricks). It's how I ripped the Super Sonic slot machine graphic you see on TCRF (complete with accurate, raw palette — the rip I replaced, and seen on Sonic Retro's wiki, had a very inaccurate palette that took liberties with how the graphic was actually stored in the ROM).
  

Keep up the good work!