Neo Geo CD Conversion Project.

[doaal]

Metal Slug X could be hacked into MS2 CD. Swapping the necessary background sprites, hacking different enemy and item placement. It would have the slowdown, but if there hasn't been a turbo patch for MS2 CD already then that could be valuable just for an improved combat school.

Beyond that the CD versions are curios. I like seeing what SNK added: often the games get practice modes, different menus, art galleries and extra endings. It's what the AES versions might have been if the teams got an extra couple months.

The Slug combat schools would be too big a project to port to MVS/AES, but I'd love if someone attempted to port the Scotland course from Neo Turf Masters to cartridge. It's the only thing I wade through the load times for.

 

[NeoSeeD]

You could start by linking them

Be happy to if I could find them. They've proven extremely elusive, at least to me.

 

[NeoSeeD]

Update: neogeocdworld.info is back up. Unfortunately, the version of Gururin that they have does not boot on actual hardware. It freezes on the loading screen for me. I could be doing something wrong, so here is the cue file if anyone is interested.

 

[NeoSeeD]

It looks like Pixelheart is making some of these conversions legit. Hopefully, they eventually add Ganryu and Nightmare in the Dark. In the meanwhile, it will be nice to have a Neo Mr. Do that doesn't have that ear piercing screech when a sound effect can't be loaded due to memory issues.

Pixelheart - Neo Geo CD Page

 

[Neo Alec]

It looks like Pixelheart is making some of these conversions legit. Hopefully, they eventually add Ganryu and Nightmare in the Dark. In the meanwhile, it will be nice to have a Neo Mr. Do that doesn't have that ear piercing screech when a sound effect can't be loaded due to memory issues.

Pixelheart - Neo Geo CD Page

I have Andro Dunos. And I have Flip Shot ordered. May have to add Punky Circus too. All this after market stuff is sitting off to the side of my main NGCD releases on the shelf.

 

[NeoSeeD]

I have Andro Dunos. And I have Flip Shot ordered. May have to add Punky Circus too. All this after market stuff is sitting off to the side of my main NGCD releases on the shelf.

I just ordered both. I'm hoping that there are enough sales to spur further development for the CD in the future.

 

[HeavyMachineGoob]

I'm still not entirely sure what the purpose of "Punky Circus" is. So, JoshProd got the license to the game of Neo Mr Do, but couldn't get the license for the characters in it? What? To me that sounds like getting the rights to Super Mario Bros 3 but not the characters in it.

Is there a Mr Do comic or TV show or toy line or SOMETHING that I don't know about???

 

[Neo Alec]

It's probably the only way Neo Mr. Do! will get a CD release at this point. The Mr. Do! rights aren't owned by Visco.

 

[iq_132]

Hello,

I have re-converted Gururin. Here's a tool to build it from the MAME rom set.
It is verified to work on real hardware (SD Loader + Top Loader).
It has had junk data trimmed to optimize loading speeds.

You can see a short, terrible, video of it in action here:

 

[city41]

Thanks for including the source. Nice to see the program is very short.

@iq_132 do you have a git repo for this program? If not, mind if I create one for it? It's good to archive and catalog all of this stuff. Having these tools spread all over forums is difficult to deal with in the future.

 

[iq_132]

Hello,

I have re-converted Zupapa!
I sampled and rebuilt the audio for this one. The package includes CDDA audio tracks for it (recordings of the game's music) and tools to build the ISO from the MAME zupapa set.
It is verified to work on real hardware (SD Loader + Top Loader).

You can see a short, terrible, video of it in action here:

use city41's link

 

[iq_132]

Thanks for including the source. Nice to see the program is very short.

@iq_132 do you have a git repo for this program? If not, mind if I create one for it? It's good to archive and catalog all of this stuff. Having these tools spread all over forums is difficult to deal with in the future.

That would be fine

 

[city41]

Awesome, I have uploaded them here: https://github.com/city41/NeoCDBuilders

Both builders contain copyrighted info so it's possible github will make me take them down. But I think that is unlikely as this stuff is pretty obscure.

 

[NeoSeeD]

Hello,

I have re-converted Gururin. Here's a tool to build it from the MAME rom set.
It is verified to work on real hardware (SD Loader + Top Loader).
It has had junk data trimmed to optimize loading speeds.

You can see a short, terrible, video of it in action here:

Thanks for this. I tested Gururin and have it working on the following:

• Neo Geo CD with SD Loader (CUE/ISO)
• Mister FPGA - Neo Geo CD Core (CHD)
• Retroarch - NeoCD Core (CHD)

Of note, if I try to run the Retroarch core from the CUE sheet, I get this error "Invalid CUE SHEET: Index directive must come before postgap.". If I load the exact same cue/iso as a CHD, then it loads up fine. I did not test the CUE/ISO on the Mister FPGA.

Edit: Zupapa works great on the SD Loader, Mister, & Retroarch. I like the loading screen animation and the game sounds great. Thank you.

 

[Neo Alec]

Hello,

I have re-converted Zupapa!
I sampled and rebuilt the audio for this one. The package includes CDDA audio tracks for it (recordings of the game's music) and tools to build the ISO from the MAME zupapa set.
It is verified to work on real hardware (SD Loader + Top Loader).

You can see a short, terrible, video of it in action here:

use city41's link

That means all the sound effects are redone as ADPCM with Neo Sound Builder?

 

[iq_132]

That means all the sound effects are redone as ADPCM with Neo Sound Builder?

Yes. Exactly. Pretty decent results IMO. I'm looking at doing some of the other games with bad sound as well.

 

[Neo Alec]

Yes. Exactly. Pretty decent results IMO. I'm looking at doing some of the other games with bad sound as well.

Okay, thanks for your answer and your effort on this. It's by far the best I've seen. I'm still not a huge fan of this approach because you're replacing the clear FM and SSG-generated sounds with lower quality samples, sometimes not in stereo as originally intended,, but I think most people won't be paying enough attention to mind.

If only there was an easier way to hack the games without having to redo all sound, but it's pretty difficult to create tools when there are so many completely different sound drivers out there.

 

[Tarma]

Awesome - Zupapa! - without doubt one of the games that should have made it to Neo Geo CD (given its MEG size).

For the less technically inclined, i.e. me, how does one go about burning this to CD so I can play it on real hardware? Please and thank you.

 

[Neo Alec]

Yes. Exactly. Pretty decent results IMO. I'm looking at doing some of the other games with bad sound as well.

I wonder if the new CD conversion of Bang Bead (and the upcoming Neo Mr. Do) from Pixel Heart were done similarly. I should get my CD back out and investigate it a little more thoroughly.

 

[NeoSeeD]

Awesome - Zupapa! - without doubt one of the games that should have made it to Neo Geo CD (given its MEG size).

For the less technically inclined, i.e. me, how does one go about burning this to CD so I can play it on real hardware? Please and thank you.

If you're on Windows, good ol' imgburn should still do the trick. Just have the cue & iso in the same folder, have imgburn open the cue and it will take care of the rest. I usually burn at about 8x to be safe.

 

[Neo Alec]

Set Imgburn to 1X write speed and it will automatically default to the drive's lowest possible speed. This ensures that the drive won't change write speed mid-burn, which is the key.

I also use Taiyo Yuden lacquer CDR's to try and make things easier on the drive laser, but maybe that's beyond the scope here.

 

[Takumaji]

I usually burn at about 8x to be safe.

Yes, that's important if you're burning CDs meant for old consoles with single or double speed drives. The slower, the better, and make sure to set the speed to a fixed value (no varispeed burning). 8x is the lowest most common dvd/br burners can go down to but I found it to be working in most cases.

 

[NeoSeeD]

Set Imgburn to 1X write speed and it will automatically default to the drive's lowest possible speed. This ensures that the drive won't change write speed mid-burn, which is the key.

I also use Taiyo Yuden lacquer CDR's to try and make things easier on the drive laser, but maybe that's beyond the scope here.

Yes, that's important if you're burning CDs meant for old consoles with single or double speed drives. The slower, the better, and make sure to set the speed to a fixed value (no varispeed burning). 8x is the lowest most common dvd/br burners can go down to but I found it to be working in most cases.

I've seen cases made for minimum or max speed burning. I'm my case, I did try experimenting with max speed a long time ago and the burns worked unreliably.

Choosing the lowest (1x) speed defaults to 8x on my burner which is still plenty fast, especially since these are relatively small file sizes.

 

[Hattori Hanzo]

I always burn at max speed on good blank CDs.

 

[Moob Butter]

I always burn at max speed on good blank CDs.

Load times are longer when you do that, well that was the case 15 years ago when I actually burned CDRs