Everdrives (& other flashcarts too!)

I may take Donkey Kong Country and replace the msu tracks with audio from Returns and Tropical Freeze. I think that would work considering most of the tracks were rejigged for those games anyway. And it’d be consistent too.

1 Like

I really want someone to take @lazygecko 's MMX 2612 remix and put it into MMX. I think it surpasses the original

Most of the msu 1 stuff is terrible. The Chrono Trigger project is promising though.

Being that the SNES OST is amazing and some arrangements better than their arcade counterparts, I actually thought the TMNT MSU1 adaptation was one of the worst offenders! :open_mouth:

I think in a later version they at least fixed the music drowning out the sound effects.

Got my SD2SNES today. It’s awesome! Far better than the Super Everdrive so far in almost every way

Tried some MSU hacks. Yeah, most of them suck - apart from two standouts. Zelda lttp DX with the Link Between Worlds soundtrack and Chrono Trigger with the Symphonic soundtrack (found a download in FLAC and converted it - it’s great!)

1 Like

I think if not for everdrives I wouldn’t be into retro in the same way. I probably would have used the Wii or got a Raspberry pi for all of it. I know I am not going to want to buy everything. I know for sure I wanted to replace my childhood collection that I traded or got stolen.

The SD2SNES plays SNES games so well, I don’t even bother pulling out my main carts anymore. For me more than the fact that you can play every game is that you don’t have to swap carts you just turn on the system and everything is there. But at the same time, playing games on everdrives helps me decide if i want to add a new game to my collection. I never had Zombies ate my neighbors (or even heard of it back in the day) and after hearing people talk about it I gave it a go and now I own the actual cart.

Now that I am pairing down mode, I know I just want to keep my absolute favorite games and the everdrives help with that feeling that happens when you want to play something you had but sold off because you didn’t enjoy it. Turns on SD2SNES > plays Ultraman > remembers it wasn’t that good > resets SD2SNES > plays Megaman X 3 > profits.

The instant loading and in-game-reset really makes a massive difference. Being able to swap games in mere seconds is fantastic

The FMV added into Chrono Trigger seems neat at least.

I’ll agree it is nice to explore games a bit more. If I have a real cart unless I have a good reason, like wanting to backup/modify a save file, I’ll use that but for seeing if a game is good it’s super handy.

Being a bit nitpicky (and you probably know this), but the SD2SNES can’t play everything. Some of the games it can’t play are SNES staples.

https://sd2snes.de/blog/compatibility

Some noteworthy games it can’t run:

Doom
Star Fox 2
Star Fox
Stunt Race FX / Wild Trax
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension
Kirby’s Dream Land 3
Kirby Super Star
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Star Ocean (unhacked version)
Street Fighter Alpha 2 / Zero 2

1 Like

Yeah I knew it. And honestly the only game on that list I actually care about is Super Mario RPG (which I have CIB) also doesn’t play Yoshi’s island either (which I do care about).

I actually like listening to arrangements online but usually when I play a game I prefer the original audio. I think the only case where I could prefer what the MSU1 can do is in the case of CT (i think the one i have says beta or demo which is a bit annoying) and if there is an arcade OST that sounds better than the SNES mix.

Aha! Got my head around using qwertymodo’s conversion app. Going to give DKC a go later, replacing all the music with tracks from DKC Returns and Tropical Freeze (ripped from the ISOs).

In any case it’s bound to end up better than the current MSU hacks for DKC…

SD2SNES loads Megaman X3 but doesn’t show some assets, like enemy’s… which is important.

I don’t know if I have a problem with it. I have the PS1 and PS2 version of the game. I don’t know if I even bothered trying to load X3 now that I think about it. I think i did X2.

My Black Friday order for the Mega and GBA EDs was finally delivered Thursday but I wasn’t able to pick them up from the PO until today. Ordered on BF weekend, didn’t ship until right after Christmas and finally delivered a month later.

Wow, I got my Black Friday SD2SNES and ED N8 before Christmas (this was back in 2016 tho).

That’s…not good.

I had terrible issues with Retrogate before, so I only ever buy from retrotowers now. Helps that I live not too far from them, but I always receive my orders the very next day.

Ordered a Mega Everdrive X7 last week and I’ve already prepared a music rom with this soundtrack to play it back on real hardware haha. It’s really great.

Agreed on the MSU1 stuff. So far most things are rather tacky and unimpressive. That’s why I haven’t really played around with it much tbh. It has potential though, if someone were to really take advantage of it properly.

looking for a non-tacky MSU-1 hack? behold my masterpiece:

but yeah, most suck - agreed. One real exception is, as I said before, Zelda with the link between worlds soundtrack. It unsurprisingly works really well:

Excuse the shitty audio recording, my phone aint great.

2 Likes

What did you use to compile it? I tried one for vgmplayer ( i think) and it worked but the tracks start to run over each other and play at the same time.

I don’t own any (yet), but there’s just too many games that I realistically will never own due to price, so it’s really a matter of time. I’d love to be able to play Little Samson on a real NES for example. The hacks are also a big attraction to me, stuff like Zelda with different music posted above looks great.

This is what I used:
http://mjsstuf.x10host.com/pages/vgmPlay/vgmPlay.htm

It doesn’t work in Wine unfortunately, so I had to boot up Windows to do it. And trying it out in an emulator it seems to work fine. Actually, I just discovered I may need to split the soundtrack in two because the last half won’t play. But the songs that do work play fine. I made two versions, one with the “safe” setting and one with the “hardware” setting. Both seems to work alright in the Regen emulator on Linux.

E: Alright so apparantly VGM Player doesn’t like the Stage Clear song and just crashed when trying to play it. Removing that one I successfully made a ROM file that has the complete soundtrack. Not sure if the song would work on an actual Mega Drive though, but either way it’s just a small jingle so it’s not the end of the world.