Hi, all!

I know there are some version of these games that can run from disk... Years ago i remember i've played one of.

Do you know if there is a way or a version of those games that could run via tape on a plain msx1 with 64k?

As far as I know, all of them are megaROM's, meaning they're 128kB in size. That would mean that the only way to be able to play them on a 64kB MSX, is to adapt the games in a way that new game data is loaded from tape (which you shouldn't want, but hey). I have never heard of tape versions of these games. I just found out that there seems to be a tape version of Metal Gear for MSX2 (of which I find the status pretty doubtful), as you can read in this forum topic.

For 128kbyte memory mapper i have nemesis on disk..Most of the 128 kbyte games when transfered to disk,it is not possible to load them on a machine with only 128kbytes,let alone a machine that only has 64.Only if you could make a version that would break the game in segments and would promt you to load the next stage.However most hacked disk versions of megarom have glitches.

The disk version of metal gear 1 (by sma international) crashes randomly on elevators and other places (i tried to dissasemble it and there seems to be a problem in a specific address that randomly resets all z80 registers and then game crashes with a symbol on screen).Nemesis crashes too after you finish level 4 or 5.Vampire killer does not have music at all on 128kbyte disk-hack version.

Only parodius works from disk correctly (but has ugly psg sounds compared to the scc version on cartridge),and salamander seems to work (never finished it though!).About parodius the version i have ,i think it is a disk version by martos.

As far as i know,those megaroms worked by memory mappers.Since a z80 can access only 64kbytes of ram,if you had the game on cartridge it might have worked on a machine with only 64 kbytes.However if you try to load it from disk or tape 64k is not enough,you need at least x2 the amount of memory of the cartridge you want to load and play from disk.So on tape it would work if you had 256 kbytes of ram.

Hope that helps

There is a Nemesis 1, disk version for MSX1 with 64kb... but unfortunaly I cant post the link to the website here

slotman: thx send me and an email to spambin at tiscalinet dot it
it's possible to make a tape version starting from disk?

I have seen 16kb ROMs from Konami (and even of 32kb like Soccer) on tape but never a MegaRom.
A 1Mbit MegaRom would require at least two loads in an MSX with 64kB of RAM (most MSX1 computers have 64kb).

Well, in this auction you can see Metal Gear on tape (comes with a RAM cartridge). Rare Korean stuff. I remember that someone posted here a thread with pictures from Konami MegaRoms on tape from Korea (they were original but probably sold without the consent of Konami).

Quote:

slotman: thx send me and an email to spambin at tiscalinet dot it it's possible to make a tape version starting from disk?

Not this version. This MSX1, disk version loads the game content from disk on the fly as you play, so it wouldnt be playable on tape...

Slotman can you send me the link too?
Thank you

For most megarom cartridges, even 2-megabit ones, you can find a (hacked) disk version which is fully playable on MSX2 machines with 128K ram + 128K vram. Of course, if the original cartridge had the SCC sound chip, you need to have one connected (not necessarily of the same game) to hear the sound correctly in the disk version. Among these, a few will feature no sound at all unless you have ram > 128k.

Many disk versions have simply a Basic loader and several blocks which are BLOADed by order just once, so they can be put on tape and loaded from it without changing anything. Quite some owners of diskless Sony F9Ses had to make it this way in the old days...

But adapting a megarom to load on a typical MSX1 (64K ram + 16K vram) with acceptable gameplay, even from disk, use to be plainly impossible. The brazilian disk version of Nemesis for MSX1 is a true achievement and probably has only been possible because the game is smaller than a usual megarom (~95K, the rest of the rom is empty) and strongly stage-oriented. I wonder if King's Valley II or Cross Blaim, which have similar features, might also be adapted

Hey Martos, thanks for your explanation. MMmmm... King's Valley 2 on tape... that would be very nice!

I've created just one MegaROM conversion, but the making of it gave me some experience in the field, so I can put here my 2 cents.

Knowing that 16K are used by the game itself and 32K of the game code should be always present in the memory (in it's natural form - not packed or something), and the game uses all VRAM available, we are left with just 16K for storing other game code and page switching. It really depends on the game whether the whole game stage can fit this memory, usually it's hardly possible, it at all.

And I even didn't tell you that game pages switching should be done in chunks of 8K (with Konami ROMs), and should be done fast in some cases, otherwise the game will be painfully slow.
This task is not trivial even on MSX2 where we have memory mapper that can switch 16K chunks very fast, but still cannot do 8K switching.

And even if this is possible and the game is well serialized, imagine constant reloading when you lose your last life and have to return to title screen or 1st stage...
This reloading is annoying, but still bearable on a machines equipped with disk drives, but rewinding tens of times to the right part of the tape will surely kill the fun.

Ivan, loading KV2 via tape port (on 128RAM/128VRAM MSX2) is not a problem. Using MicroWAVer we created together with WYZ, or some other tools, and PC (or even MP3 DVD player) you can load it in just 3-6 min.
That's what my MSX page is about.

Thank you martos for the explanation!.One question though,we all know that msx2 roms of games such as Metal Gear 2 could be played from the cartridge if the machine had a memory mapper of 128kbytes.I cannot understand why the cracked disk version of metal gear 2 has no sound when a machine has 256kbyte memory mapper.Could you possible explain this?Z80 could address no more than 64kbytes at a time,so disk loading would occur at some time,so what is the reason for this?(forgive me if this is a silly question)

Best

Maybe it's because the game is 512kB in size and there are thus many more combinations of 8k blocks possible/used?

Quote:

Ivan, loading KV2 via tape port (on 128RAM/128VRAM MSX2) is not a problem. Using MicroWAVer we created together with WYZ, or some other tools, and PC (or even MP3 DVD player) you can load it in just 3-6 min. That's what my MSX page is about.

Yes, but as Martos said the challenge is to make tape versions for MSX1 with 64kB of RAM! And this has only been achieved with Nemesis 1.