23rd March 2012, 10:18 PM
I think the one thing the converter cart has over a Honeybee is that it's an officially made and licensed Nintendo product (used in a somewhat unofficial way), so it's certain to work correctly without issue and last a good long while since it should be made with quality parts. It also uses a proper 10NES chip to deal with the 10NES security in the original NES (since Famicom games don't have that chip). I imagine the Honeybee has a solution for that as well though. It may also have been cheaper, since Hogan's Alley is about $2 (or less if the case is busted). Gyromite is pretty expensive around here compared to the others. It seems that "common knowledge" is that "all Gyromite games have those converters", the suggestion being that others don't. Both of those are untrue (in fact most Gyromite games don't have that converter, though ALL Stack Up games do have it, since that game was produced in such low numbers). It is interesting how the internet can provide such amazing information, but at other times is simply a way for bad intel to propagate like a virus drowning out correct information.
I know they wired up what WOULD have been the sound pins to instead go straight to the expansion port on the bottom of the NES. They must have originally intended for the Famicom Disk System to be brought over and use it's enhanced sound through those pins directly. That never came to pass, obviously. I'm curious if other pins on that expansion port go back to where the sound pins would have gone. If so, it might be a simple matter of making a cheap "bypass" dongle that simply routes the "out" pins back into the system. Of course, this also depends on one other matter. While almost every pin on the Famicom boards are routed to their appropriate NES connector counterpart, they may have just skipped the audio chip pins altogether, meaning even with either my hypothetical workaround or your internal hack, it won't be enough since the sound chip won't have any pathway into the NES to begin with. I'd have to go ask around a few NES modding forums to find out.
As to what games, aside from Famicom Disk System games actually used enhanced sound, the list is somewhat short compared to games that used enhanced graphics chips, but there are a few notable titles. First on that list is probably Castlevania 3 (very well known example that had much better music on the Famicom version), followed by a rather interesting space RPG called Lagrange Point (that one uses a custom sound chip that sound absolutely incredible).
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....You got the disk only version of... a Dreamcast?
I know they wired up what WOULD have been the sound pins to instead go straight to the expansion port on the bottom of the NES. They must have originally intended for the Famicom Disk System to be brought over and use it's enhanced sound through those pins directly. That never came to pass, obviously. I'm curious if other pins on that expansion port go back to where the sound pins would have gone. If so, it might be a simple matter of making a cheap "bypass" dongle that simply routes the "out" pins back into the system. Of course, this also depends on one other matter. While almost every pin on the Famicom boards are routed to their appropriate NES connector counterpart, they may have just skipped the audio chip pins altogether, meaning even with either my hypothetical workaround or your internal hack, it won't be enough since the sound chip won't have any pathway into the NES to begin with. I'd have to go ask around a few NES modding forums to find out.
As to what games, aside from Famicom Disk System games actually used enhanced sound, the list is somewhat short compared to games that used enhanced graphics chips, but there are a few notable titles. First on that list is probably Castlevania 3 (very well known example that had much better music on the Famicom version), followed by a rather interesting space RPG called Lagrange Point (that one uses a custom sound chip that sound absolutely incredible).
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....You got the disk only version of... a Dreamcast?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)