I can't believe no one's posted about these before. There's three Japanese Family Stadium ROMs that have similar gameplay as RBI.
Family Stadium (http://nightwulf.rbicentral.com/fs.zip)
Family Stadium '87 (http://nightwulf.rbicentral.com/fs87.zip)
Family Stadium '88 (http://nightwulf.rbicentral.com/fs88.zip)
Family Stadium '87 is what I've been looking at before as the "Japanese RBI," but actually Family Stadium is a closer match. There are only ten teams, and no password system. I believe that's the game that our RBI Baseball is based from.
Family Stadium '88 is a major overhaul. There are 14 playable teams with 6 pitchers instead of 4. You can change the order of the lineup, and there's even a "Team Edit" feature, although I'm not sure how that relates to the 14 base teams. There are also 4 selectable stadiums to play in. The gameplay is slightly different too. This is definitely not "RBI 2," but there's minor changes to the engine. The computer-controlled fielders move much faster, and the ball doesn't roll forever like it does in our RBI. It's definitely worth checking out.
Nightwulf
You're on fire today nightwulf...
I've never been able to find the original Family Stadium ROM when I look, though admittedly it's been awhile. I'll give her a whirl and try it out...
Some serious updating to the site will have to come out of all this Japanese research...
It only took two innings for me to realize Family Stadium was the original codebase for RBI Baseball. Though it did have a password feature (make sure you are only doing one-player mode nightwulf) they hit like regular RBI'ers and the computer throws more like the computer RBI...
More power and less curve with the pitchers...
Can you do the stat breakdown for Family Stadium into a text file nightwulf? Wonder if they still use 4-byte names and the other conventions of Family Stadium 87...
Jesus, just when you think you know everything there is to know about this game...
Quote from: Gantry on 05/24/04, 06:30:25 PM
Though it did have a password feature (make sure you are only doing one-player mode nightwulf)
My fault; didn't spend much time with it. I probably was in 2p the whole time.
Quote from: Gantry on 05/24/04, 06:30:25 PM
Can you do the stat breakdown for Family Stadium into a text file nightwulf? Wonder if they still use 4-byte names and the other conventions of Family Stadium 87...
Yep. I did take a quick glance in a hex editor and it looks even more identical to RBI than Family Stadium '87. The four-byte names are still used though.
FS88 is quite different, and at a glance I didn't see anything recognizable. I'll play with it more later.
Nightwulf
Just played two innings of Family Stadium 88, looks like the best featured version of authentic RBI out there. I didn't look at the mode to edit teams or whatever, but from a gameplay standpoint it is pretty much an evolutionary release. A few noticeable differences.
1) Some goofy cheering graphic at the beginning of each inning
2) The batter wiggles his bat before the swing
3) Much faster fielders when running to a base
4) The fielders have a slight hitch when they thow, making the throws slower. Possibly to eliminate the ground out to RF?
5) Distance reading with dingers, in meters of course
6) Diving and jumping in the field! Wow... Though the "diving" is pretty weak, the dude just lies down, no real sliding effect. See attached pics...
7) The ball doesn't roll forever...
Even though I only played two innings, you want to know what is the same?
1) Wallzies are alive and well...
Some FCE snapshots...
Snap two, too lazy to upload...
Snap three
Quote from: Gantry on 05/24/04, 06:30:25 PM
Can you do the stat breakdown for Family Stadium into a text file nightwulf?
http://nightwulf.rbicentral.com/Family_Stadium.txt
No, "RariiX" (8th player, team N) isn't a typo. I'm guessing that "N" is another "Namco Stars" team, and they're referring to "Rally X."
Nightwulf
Looks like the creators of Baseball Simulator 1.000 played a lot of Family Stadium '88. The crappy diving (I wasn't able to get a FS guy to jump) is pretty much the same in Baseball Simulator. Same for the choice of stadiums (Baseball Simulator's appear to have more variety, though, and there are 6 instead of 4), pitcher sweating then panting when he gets tired, and even the hitch in the throws.
Jumping is a bit tricky, I pretty much had to hit "A" after being completely behind a ground ball..
Nightwulf:
Pardon my ignorance, but is it possible to take some of the cool features of Family Stadium 88 (bat wiggle, stadium selection, pitcher huffing, etc.) to the American version of RBI?
For example, it'd be like playing the original NES version, but with the above features...
Ok, spent some time with Family Stadium '88. There are 15 total teams, but only 14 show on the team select screen. The last team (N) is replaced with the user-edited team (Y) if you've made any changes to the default edited team.
Stat breakdown: http://nightwulf.rbicentral.com/Family_Stadium_88.txt
There were several changes made to the player data format used in FS, FS87, and our RBI. The player data now starts at offset 65552 (10010 hex) if you'd like to play with it.
- Player names: 5 characters are now used
- Batting averages: the value stored in the ROM is doubled, and then 150 is added, giving a range of .150 (0 in ROM) to .660 (255 in ROM).
- ERAs: the value stored in the ROM is multiplied by 5, giving a range of 0.00 (0 in ROM) to 9.95 (199 in ROM).
- Power: batter "power" is now a one-byte field (0-255).
- Pitcher unknowns: GONE! *cheer*
The "Team Edit" feature is interesting.
(http://nightwulf.rbicentral.com/fs88_edit.jpg)
I'm not yet sure exactly what the hell "RUN" is. I'm also curious if changing player batting averages and/or ERAs makes changes to the stats. More playing needs to be done.
Edit: I take that back. ("RUN" times 2) + 112 = player speed as stored in the ROM.
Quote from: JoeDirt on 05/25/04, 09:47:16 PM
Pardon my ignorance, but is it possible to take some of the cool features of Family Stadium 88 (bat wiggle, stadium selection, pitcher huffing, etc.) to the American version of RBI?
Not really, without rewriting the entire RBI game engine. The closest I could come to this would be importing RBI player data into FS88.
Nightwulf
OK FS '88 is what RBI 2 should have been. They still didn't fix the CPU play though (I hit 4 Inside the Park HR in the first inning). Other things are pretty cool. The fielders run to the bases way too fast, though.
I also got an absurd number of inside-the-park homers while only playing a few innings...
anyway to edit the japanese game and put in our mlb teams or anything like that...
so i take it there is no way to edit this game...anyone??? i mean like the rbi editor....how much work would it take to get it done on this game?
My guess is that it would be quite a bit of work to put English letters in the Japanese ROM. I'll let nightwulf handle the answer though, since he's the one-man (or entity, depending on who you ask) RBI Editing crew...
I'm going to mess with it when I get free time and at least swap the characters so there's lower case english. Scoreboard and box score swaps as well.
In my first game my pitcher cranked one out 96 meters, easily over the left-center wall in the little park (4). Lots of teeth shattering bops as well.
But frankly, I have a throbbing hard-on for jumping and levitating in the air to make show-off catches on flys and pop-ups. I will use this method to humiliate my opponents. Even the computer will be hurt by this.
how do you even begin to start to work on the rom....hell yes the jumping and diving as well as the home run distances make this a nice compliment to usa rbi...
That would be great, nice to have someone but poor nightwulf doing all the work. I of course am too lazy, but character swaps to english would be fantastic. Though I suspect it's going to be quite difficult...
As Beanball said, adding English characters to the ROM would be trivial. Just a matter of redrawing the existing Hiragana character tiles.
As far as importing stats from the USA version goes, it also would be fairly simple. Only 5 characters are used for the name, so some would have to be chopped or re-abbreviated, but that's not a huge deal. The only difference in player information is that power is now a one-byte (0-255) field, but I'm sure we could come up with comparable values.
Yes, I'll look into this sometime, but probably not for a while.
Nightwulf
This is a start. Most relevant symbols are english now, the names would be if I'd actually changed them. For now it's jibberish since the extra characters are all "!". Any thing your heart desires could be put in there.
When I have more time I'll change text-strings. Gotta find those and the team color offsets first. I always forget how to search for them.
One last note- see what happens when you hit a grand slam in park 4. I felt so complete when I was surprised by this.
are you refering to the amtrak that flies by on the rail...man that game rules...me and my buddies played it for about 5 hours, last weekend...it might be nes for use on a modded PSX....if only there was another good team to match the M team....then we could have some closer games...by the way hit one 180 meters with the 5th batter from the M team...figures out to be around 590 feet...
Toot toot. The train has to be a horrible sight for the fielding player.
I agree that the distance displays are fun, as it's a way to see what record can be set. And I know that this could solve some arguements on the original RBI. I still can't figure how the programmers decided that the game needed an extra small park considering how undersized it was in the first place. I guess it's arena baseball.
I noticed that they fixed the foul/fair homerun glitch. A ball was hit that did a big hook towards the left field stands and it landed very far into foul territory after crossing the line at the wall. It was a homer witch was shocking after all those robberies during RBI.
It's neat to edit it and such, but a damn shame it can't be loaded into the NES. It just isn't the same.
would there be a way to change the meters to feet, so when you hit one, feet would show up instead of meters...3.28048 feet = 1 meter...
I wish there were, but I think it would require some drastic recoding. Then again that opinion is coming from the same person that still can't find where team colors are stored in the rom.
I think this game requires a desktop calculator onhand at all times.
And a train whistle.
Quote from: Beanball on 06/04/04, 06:50:35 PM
Then again that opinion is coming from the same person that still can't find where team colors are stored in the rom.
Thought I'd take a second and tackle this. Team colors now use two bytes instead of three; the "flesh" color is not specified for each team. I found palette data at offsets 131DC-131F9 and 19465-19482. Data found there matches colors in-game (two bytes per team: first for helmet/bat color, second for uniform color) for each of 15 teams.
Nightwulf
any new happenings on the family stadium 88...
I don't know if I'd call it progress, but I'm dicking around with AL and NL edited roms for 1987. Never seems to be time to work on it though.
But as far as what I can get done- players are in, english is in for most relevant text in the game, team colors are changed. The only hangups I can think of are changing the palattes for the team select screen logos.
Fun stuff though. The deal with the ballpark selection reminds me of Softball Heaven. Too bad RBI doesn't have the same thing it does where the fatter guys can knock over little dudes on the basepaths.
this is the "secret screen" or whatever you want to call it when you push all the buttons at once on the start screen for family stadium 88. i have no idea what it says.
the second pic is from family stadium 87. there was no secret screen for original family stadium that i could find, and the same goes for 94, the latest famicom version that we know of.
here's the link to some site that has the text from the original game, but it's all unverified by me. http://www7.tok2.com/home/bgr/fc/famista/famista.html
this is what it says on the webpage in english (the rest of the page is japanese)
iStaffj
PICCARI PRO PRESENTS
"FAMILY STADIUM"
HEAD .......... HIRO
GAMEDESIGN&PROGRAM ... KISSY
GRAPHIC ........ HIE
ADVISES . F.S.FREAKS
¥
KEEP UP YOUR
FIGHTING SPIRIT!