Well, I find this quite lovely, since Triple Trouble is one of my favorite Sonic games. And this version actually plays on my PSP! I love it, love it, LOVE IT. I was so overjoyed when I saw the old version and was utterly shattered when I couldn't play it... but the new version is perfect. I prefer the darker tones for the first stage. It still looks pretty faithful to the original game. Could this be done to other GameGear only games, like Mega Man? That game also serious resolution problems.
I'm most likely sure any other GG game could be ported to the SMS, as it's virtually the same console only with a lower palette and higher resolution. However, you'd have to disassemble the GG game and know exactly what you're doing.
That's not something I can do so I'm better off with enjoying the work of others, ha. But really, playing Triple Trouble on a higher resolution sure is a blast...
There are two palette issues that still really stand out as obviously wrong -- the first is that when the very final boss (with the lasers and Robotnik doing that tube thing) launches his big electrical attack it causes the red in Robotnik's body and Sonic's shoes to go completely black. The second one is basically with the ending credits. There was one section in particular that didn't match up well at all (and also struck me as probably the hardest to correct). I made a cheap little mockup using ms paint and the 64-color demo from SMS Power; I have no idea where the palette in question is in the rom nor what hex values correspond to each color so I can't edit it manually. As you can see it's pretty loose with the original, but it was the only gradient I could come up with that had a similar feel and made any sense at all.
So my SMS carts arrived today. I absolutely love them! The person who made them for me did an incredible job - he even went out of his way to make fliers, manuals, and posters to go along with the boxes and carts. I can remember pining over STT and Sonic Drift 2 in magazines, only to be a bit let down by the game gear resolution, and longing for over a decade to play it properly on my TV. The thrill of finally accomplishing this is incredible. Yes, yes, I know about emulation and flash carts and all that jazz, but this is the real deal, on a real SMS, with a real SMS cart... it's all fantastic. I can't thank both meu2 and Glitch enough for being directly responsible for the cart I'm holding in my hand right now. I wish there was a place I could donate to as a way to say thanks, because I can't express in words how much I appreciate this. EDIT: That said, if you ever took a crack at, say, Tail's Adventure, I would send you a blow job via the internet. Just sayin'... EDIT AGAIN: I see there are questions about using this on real hardware. My model 1 US SMS, revision 1.00 (no built in games besides snail-maze, instructions when you power on without a game) runs both the latest posted STT conversion and the Sonic Drift 2 conversion flawlessly.
I went through the game and beat it in a variety of ways last night - as Sonic without the chaos emeralds, as Sonic with them, as Tails without, as Tails with... a few of the bugs people were reporting never showed up - like how Sonic's shoes and eggman's red shirt were supposed to turn black when hit. I dunno if those problems manifest on a genesis with a everdrive, but they don't manifest at all on an SMS with a burned eeprom. I'm guessing it's been long known that the demos don't play if you wait at the title screen? The only big problems I found were that a few of the chaos emeralds have their white "sheen" show up as black or transparent in a few places, and the palette for Robotnik Winter is a bit poor. The floor is supposed to be a thin checkerboard, but, like Great Turquoise Zone, the checkerboard pattern is made up of more than two colors originally, but the palette selected has combined some colors. The end result is that the checkerboard pattern is lost, again similar to Great Turquoise Zone, but it still doesn't look bad. I love playing this game on a TV. It's so much better than the game gear version.
I have it working on my Everdrive MD now. The only main graphical bug I found was in the first special stage. After Nack runs away and you get to grab the Chaos Emerald, everything turns dark blue. It may help to mention I played with the barrier limitations by trying to go to the left where there is an invisible wall before actually going to the right to get the emerald. I don't know if that was the cause of the bug or if it always does that. I still prefer the old version better than this one because of the ring loss behavior. It doesn't matter if the screen is bigger, the same old annoyances are still going to make you lose your rings and only being able to get five of them back sucks. Sonic Chaos doesn't have as many issues with this because it doesn't have as many cheaply placed spikes, explosions or badniks.
Want to deflect attention from the fact that you made an error? Dazzle onlookers with your command of Semantics™
You can, yes. But Tails doesn't. At least, I can't think of any other known nicknames for the character right off, but if he DOES have other nicknames, Tail isn't one of them. It wouldn't even make sense, as it would imply that he only has one tail, when the whole point of his nickname is that he has two tails.
So, uh, are there any plans to edit the gradients in the credits? Because last I checked they were still pretty bugged. I can't remember if I showed the picture I made of the "SMS-safe" gradient or not, though the yellow one after is borked too and I haven't tried to match the original with that.
Maybe the gradiant could be changed to this instead? It would look more accurate in regards to the "setting sun" background especially in regards to the SMS's pallette limitation.
Is editing the tiles for the ending sequence to add dithering to the background an option? Tec Toy used to do this when the color banding was way too noticeable when porting Game Gear games to Master System in Brazil. And, by the way, Espilonarge's palette seems optimal in my opinion. Cooljerk made a (very small, unimportant and irrelevant) typo. Goddammit, you people.
[OT pile-on] Yeah, but the thing is that, rather than admitting it, he tried to detract from it with the unrelated and ineffective observation that the universe doesn't prevent someone having more than one nickname. Having said that, various sources would insist that the game itself made a mistake and that the title should be Tails's Adventure. [ducks]
Tile dithering is entirely possible. I just need to find the art & ending sequence code. FYI, I haven't looked at this project for a month or two. I picked up a Raspberry Pi, so that's the new "shiny thing" for the time being.
Dude, how did I not notice this thread until now? This project is awesome, and I love you all. So, who here can flash ROMs to a cartridge, or point me in the direction to a method of playing this on hardware? I'd pay real actual money dollars to have a physical copy to play on my SMS, I've got two different revisions of the NTSC-U Master System, if that helps.
Just get an Everdrive SMS or MD from www.stoneagegamer.com and you can play any rom on your Genesis or Master System depending on which one you buy. The Genesis one is better because it gives you access to both Genesis and SMS games on your Genesis. If you have a 32X, you can play 32X roms too, but you have to remove your 32X to play SMS roms.