Dumbfounded and Annoyed!

[MoonDreamofA]

I'm not I.T by any means, but this is really starting to hurt my head!

There area a few not to well known Sailor Moon games I want to play and take screen shots of to archive. And possible translate.

I'm talking about "Sailor Moon Tokimeki Party"


for the SegaPico. Problem is, there isn't much out there that is SIMPLE enough for me to understand how to use a Pico emulator and use it.

I've tried Kega Fusion, PicoDrive, MAME and I think one other but I can't quite remember. I try looking up "How To" videos but there is pretty much nothing. I want to use it on my computer which is just a 32bit Windows 8 computer. 99% of the "How To" videos are for "How to play SegaPico on your PSP" or some other platform that doesn't apply to me.

I BARELY got it to work on the Kega Fusion, but all the controls were inverted. I kept trying to map it in different ways but there was always something amiss. I've seen one or two Japanese Let's Players on YouTube have played it, and even a German Youtuber; so I know it can be played.

I just need help with running the game and mapping the buttons. From what I understand it uses a stylus as well. I want to be able to map the buttons to my keyboard and if possible, the style to my mouse. I've read up on forums on people "solving" the issue but it's all coding and tech.-talk that I can't follow!! I need lameman's terms! ......... I need an adult *Cries because is an adult*

[puggsoy]

I gave it a shot with PicoDrive and it seems to work fine for me. I opened up the program, loaded the ROM (selecting the ZIP containing it), and the game would run. You can turn pages by using the Pico menu and picking the page. The only issue is that the stylus functionality didn't seem to respond, but this game doesn't seem to require it anyway.

If that doesn't help, can you describe the exact issue you've had with PicoDrive?

[MoonDreamofA]

I gave it a shot with PicoDrive and it seems to work fine for me. I opened up the program, loaded the ROM (selecting the ZIP containing it), and the game would run. You can turn pages by using the Pico menu and picking the page. The only issue is that the stylus functionality didn't seem to respond, but this game doesn't seem to require it anyway.

If that doesn't help, can you describe the exact issue you've had with PicoDrive?

I was able to get it to sort of work on the Kega Fusion. Although there is one mini-game I can't get to work because I think it uses the stylus.

Something I didn't know is that the ROM had to be in a .zip. The Kega works without it and can read the .md. but the PicoDrive needs it in the .zip. The sound emulation on the PicoDrive is not nearly as good as the Kega Fusion. I was able to somewhat fix the control mapping on Kega by using the 'mouse' setting and mapping everything that way. still can't use the stylus function though.

I feel quite dumb not knowing the the game was to be left in the .zip. Thank you for your help. Even if it was on obvious newbie error of mine 

EDIT: I managed to get the stylus to work on the PicoDrive but the sound is still weird. sound clips are sped up and very fuzzy.

[puggsoy]

Don't feel dumb, it's not obvious at all. The only reason I tried it is because I know most emulators support loading from zip, this is the first I've seen that requires it though. Anybody could have made the same mistake

I did notice that the sound was pretty atrocious, but I thought that might just be the quality of the system (I'm unfamiliar with it myself). Hopefully this should help with ripping the sprites though?

[Yawackhary]

It's okay though, it's not your fault and don't cry. Sometimes it where people think they know how but forget to explain it. After all the Pico is a niche system and not many people have played it.

To get it working on PicoDrive without the zip, you would have to rename the .md to .bin for it to work. .md is a newer filename for them because lots of stuff used the old name and to make it less confusing. Oh and for the stylus, you would have to press a button to change it from buttons to stylus in Kega Fusion but it was so long ago that I forgot the button. There should be a readme file telling you the button on the keyboard to change between buttons and stylus so you can play that minigame.

As for the sound in PicoDrive, there's nothing that you can do really.

I did notice that the sound was pretty atrocious, but I thought that might just be the quality of the system (I'm unfamiliar with it myself). Hopefully this should help with ripping the sprites though?

Well the Pico is basically technically a Mega Drive but gets rid of the sound chip but keeps the Master System one and adds a voice sound chip instead. It removes the existing controls and replaces them with new buttons/page flipping + stylus. It's probably bad emulation of the voice sound chip or the timing might be off. Then again the emulator is pretty old, it was one of the first attempts and back then the only games that were dumped were Sonic's Gameworld and Mickey's Blast to the Past. Shortly after Tails and the Music Maker. Then came the prototypes then most of the Pico library.

To rip the sprites though is a different question. (Thinks back to when I ripped Sonic's Gameworld) They would have to check the ROM with a tile ripper but most of the time, its not really possible because of the compression. Someone would have to make a save state with Kega Fusion then load the save state via GensKmod or GSavestate then either rip from the tile viewer or capture. Even then have to make save states with Kega because chances are that Gens would either crash or couldn't control the game.

[MoonDreamofA]

Thank you both of you for the help and pats on the back.

I've narrowed down my "options" to:

Good sound and graphics - use Kega
Use the stylus - PicoDrive

That's how I go about playing the game. My initial intentions of getting the game to work was just to be able to play it and then possibly try to fan-translate it (and later make it easily accessible for others to play) I thought about ripping sprites but because it's in .md/.bin I had no idea how. I already don't know how to rip sprites as is unless there is a literal folder I can open that says "sprites" and they're sitting there as .png or something (I'm very basic). But I am going to take the Sailor Moon Pico games as a learning opportunity for both translating and sprite ripping.

I get boggled easily when it comes to tech.-talk. I appreciate any and all help in this scenario. I am thinking about making a thread later for input on the Sailor Moon Tokimeki game translation process, as I would like community feedback.

Thank you again puggsoy and Yawackhary!

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Don't feel dumb, it's not obvious at all. The only reason I tried it is because I know most emulators support loading from zip, this is the first I've seen that requires it though. Anybody could have made the same mistake

I did notice that the sound was pretty atrocious, but I thought that might just be the quality of the system (I'm unfamiliar with it myself). Hopefully this should help with ripping the sprites though?

I noticed that in Kega, the sampling can be changed between 22050Hz and 44100Hz. It was automatically set to 44100Hz and it sounds great. I doubt the PicoDrive is sampled at that. If there were a way to make property changes or configurations that'd be the end of the problem. I might also attempt to rip the music.

Thank you very much for the assurance!