NES ROM- rbi_arcade

[nightwulf]

Finally put the finishing touches on ...

rbi_arcade.zip

This is an NES ROM, which works fine in every emulator I use. No idea if it would work in an actual NES. The ten teams are taken directly from the arcade version of RBI Baseball. Names, stats, etc are identical. They were copied in from a ROM dump, so any stat errors are the fault of the original programmers hehe.

I tried to make this "look and feel" like the arcade version as much as possible, without actually learning the anatomy of an NES ROM ... I'm much too lazy for that.  The team "icons" (like when you pick your team) are changed to match the arcade sprites, and I've done some playing with the colors as well. The NES only has a total color palette of 64 colors, so I couldn't get anywhere near identical to arcade colors, but this is pretty close. The field, sky, and all team uniforms have been changed.

The biggest issue I can still see remaining is that when you end a game, the team listed in the headline of "Tengen Sports News" is incorrect ... it still shows the NES team. This obviously doesn't affect playability, and it looks like it'll be a pain in the ass to fix, so it's probably staying that way.  

Anyway, there it is at the above link. Download and tell me what ya think.

Nightwulf

[Gantry]

Won't have a chance to play it for awhile, but how simliar are the NES and Arcade ROMs?  Given that you were able to do a full conversion, are the data for the players in the exact same format?  

This is all very good stuff indeed.   You have rekindled my quest to make a more advanced version of RBI Manager...

[nightwulf]

Heh funny you should ask. I spent much more time than I'd like to admit finding palettes in the ROM, comparing and changing colors, changing sprites, etc.

Substituting arcade player data into the NES ROM? About 15 seconds. The ROM structure itself is entirely different, but the area where player data is stored is 100% identical. Load arcade ROM, dump player data, load NES ROM, insert player data at correct address ... super easy.

Nightwulf

[Gantry]

It looks very nice, like the darker field!  

Interesting how the actual player data comes out.  Kingman, Adcock, Maris, Hack Wilson, McGwire and Davey Johnson all have the highest power rating with a 207 (at least in the old 1-byte RBIBM value).  That's 18 points higher than the NES leader Andre Dawson...

Arcade rosters with the NES playability...

[Ozzy364]

Thanx for the rbi arcade file, nightwulf,   YOU TOTALLY RULE.

[nightwulf]

Thanx for the rbi arcade file, nightwulf,   YOU TOTALLY RULE.

Nah, I just have too much time on my hands. But thanks!

Now that I've had a few days to play with this ROM, I'm noticing that a lot~ more runs are scored per-game. The computer has gotten over 15 runs a couple times, and I've had over 20. None of the game code was changed; just the player data and some cosmetic changes. So, after going back to the hex dump and looking, it seems that overall everyone has a higher power rating. Kudos to the original authors of the game (I'm sure they hang out in this forum; lol) for desiging the engine such that the gameplay feel can be changed just by modifying static player data.

Nightwulf