[ COURY ] Flash carts are designed to let
you play ROMs on original hardware rather
than through emulation - made for those who
feel that the real consoles are an important
part of the gaming experience.
In a previous episode, I covered the EverDrive
line of flash carts, and highlighted how there’s
a lot of cool stuff that you can do with this
technology beyond simply playing games that…
well, you may or may not own.
Stuff like fan translations, fan games, and
other feats that can push the hardware beyond
what you might have thought possible.
We originally intended for the EverDrives
episode to be about flashcarts in general,
but ultimately decided that it was just too
much, and that some of the alternatives needed
their own episodes.
This time, Try is going to take a look at
the Super UFO Pro 8… an extremely affordable
flashcart for the Super Nintendo that gets
a lot of hate around the Internet, but once
you know how to use it right, it may just
offer you more than you might expect.
[Intro]
[ TRY ] A more recent evolution of an older
and much larger device that dumps SNES ROMs
to floppy disks, the SD-card capable Super
UFO Pro 8 is readily available from places
like Amazon for around $60 - making it even
more affordable than the Super EverDrive,
and vastly below the premium SD2SNES.
Unfortunately, the Super UFO is very poorly
documented, and forum threads have conflicting
claims about what it can even do, and overall
assessments tend range from, “It’s pretty
good” to, “It’s totally worthless trash.”
It’s a device with plenty of quirks and
shortcomings, but to the right person, this
could be the perfect SNES flashcart.
Like me.
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s the *perfect*
SNES flashcart for me, but it’s as good
of one as currently exists for how I’m interested
in using flashcarts.
For me, owning and using my real game cartridges
is really important.
But I can’t easily play a lot of my Japanese
imports without fan-made translation patches,
so I have to use a device that gives me access
to the ROM data in such a way that I can patch
it.
And I’m no programmer, so the process needs
to be pretty easy.
In the past, I’ve dabbled in patches with
the RetroN 5, but I’d so much prefer to
do it on real SNES hardware if I could.
So… dumping your own ROMs?
Patching your own ROM dumps?
Transferring saves from and back to real cartridges?
Does that sound cool to you?
Because that sounds pretty cool to me.
If it doesn’t sound cool to you, then there’s
not much reason to get a Super UFO over a
Super EverDrive or SD2SNES other than cost.
You’ll be perfectly happy as long as you
understand the limitations of each.
And hey, I get it - the ROM on my cart is
just the same as most of the dumps that are
already floating around the Internet, though
there are bad dumps out there.
The act of dumping the ROM inside my own cartridge
for my own use may seem needless to a lot
of people, but I just think it’s cool.
The process is a little fiddly, but once you
understand what’s going on, it’s easy.
But before we get too deep into that, the
Super UFO can of course still be used like
a standard flashcart - download ROMs, put
them on an SD card, and go for it.
While ROM loading may not be as speedy as
other flashcarts, it plays most games just
as well.
The Super UFO even works with PAL consoles,
though it won’t boot up with an NTSC cartridge
on top.
You can run NTSC ROMs, however… at least
the ones I tested.
Music and sound effects seem to play at the
correct speed, but the game simulation is
otherwise slowed down.
But as you might guess, if you’re familiar
with the Super EverDrive situation, some of
the SNES’s best games include additional
processing power inside the cartridges themselves,
and those just aren’t gonna work without
a more extravagant device, like the SD2SNES…
and even that can’t yet simulate Super FX
games - like Star Fox or Yoshi’s Island
- or SA-1 games, like Super Mario RPG and
Kirby Super Star.
One of the most interesting things about the
Super UFO, then, is that it actually can interface
with hardware contained within the locked-on
cartridge on top to play these games.
Well, some of them, anyway.
There is a lot of conflicting information
out there as to whether the UFO can actually
do this.
Well, it can.
Expect limited results, but here are a few
examples of what you can do with this feature.
For one, you could play the Japanese ROM of
Super Mario Kart, while utilizing the DSP-1
chip inside your North American copy… and
enjoy the original Japanese victory animations.
I even had success in playing fan-made Mario
Kart track hacks.
Pilotwings is also DSP-1 and and the same
region switcheroo works here too… but could
you use the DSP-1 chip in Mario Kart to play
Pilotwings?
Sadly, not really.
As much as I tried to find some cool example
of a game that would work with another cartridge’s
hardware from the same special chip family,
it just doesn’t seem to work out.
Games designed for Capcom’s Cx4 chip, utilized
by both Mega Man X2 and X3, cannot run on
a Super EverDrive, but the Cx4 hardware in
these cartridges do work through the Super
UFO.
If you have no cartridge on top, then character
sprites won’t even appear in the game.
Kinda interesting to see how it works, right?
Similar to Pilotwings and Mario Kart though,
anticipate glitchy results if you only owned
one of the games and had hoped to play X3
with X2’s cartridge hardware, or vice-versa.
But the region swap does work - if you were
so inclined, you could use the much less expensive
Japanese cartridges to play the North American
ROMs in English… the fact that it works
is just fascinating to me.
Here’s an even wilder one - if you run a
Super Game Boy ROM - meaning a dump of the
software that runs the Super Game Boy - while
using a Super Game Boy 2 on top of the UFO…
then you get access to the original Super
Game Boy borders on the Super Game Boy 2 hardware…
and it works the other way around too.
I mean, there’s really no point to this,
but I think it’s a super fascinating demonstration
of how the special hardware is being utilized.
Unfortunately, I did not have the same success
with different releases of Super FX games
- I could not play the Japanese version of
Star Fox or Stunt Race FX with my North American
carts.
However, the Super FX chip inside both games
does correctly pass its processing functions
through the UFO if you’re playing the ROM
of that game… although there’s not much
reason to do this aside from the novelty of
proving it works, when you could just play
the same cartridge without the UFO.
You’re sadly unlikely to get Yoshi’s Island
running properly, which uses the second revision
of Super FX… and I could not find a way
to run a ROM for the infamously unreleased
Star Fox 2.
Whether it might be possible to get these
to run properly with more intensive ROM editing,
I couldn’t say.
SA-1 chip games, which include a few of the
best late-SNES titles, are thus far no-go
on all SNES flashcarts as far as we know,
including the UFO.
Despite this incompatibility with a handful
of heavy-hitters, you’re likely to find
that the UFO will play most games without
issue.
Everything from The Legend of Zelda: A Link
to the Past to the Donkey Kong Country trilogy
and almost all of the popular RPGs… none
of these games use special hardware.
Check Wikipedia for a list of Super Nintendo
and Super Famicom cartridges that contain
enhancement chips.
For my purposes, this has caused very few
issues in how I want to use the Super UFO
- because it’s mainly for dumping ROMs of
my Super Famicom games and playing them with
translation patches.
Once I understood what I was doing, it was
easy to dump and patch my own copies of Dragon
Quest V…
Final Fantasy V… and even much larger 32
megabit ROMs like Seiken Densetsu 3…
Treasure Hunter G…
Wonder Project J… and a bunch of others.
One game that I’d like to play the patch
for, Marvelous, uses the SA-1 chip, so unfortunately
that ain’t happening without an emulator.
Fans of Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia
are also out of luck - those are the biggest
Super Famicom ROMs, bigger than the UFO’s
32 megabit DRAM size - basically the size
of game that can be loaded into it to actually
play.
Some patches can unfortunately pad out a game’s
ROM size, which is causing me problems with
the Dragon Quest III remake - the patch bumps
the ROM up from 32 megabits to 48 megabits,
making the translation unplayable on the Super
UFO.
So anyway, dumps and patches.
As I said before, the UFO is kinda quirky
and poorly documented.
None of its functions are as straightforward
as I wish they could be, but I have to give
big thanks to Ste Kulov of HD Retrovision,
Artemio Urbina, the creator of the 240p Test
Suite, and our go-to mod guy Voultar, because
without their expertise in how ROMs and game
hardware actually work, this episode simply
would not be possible - and the same goes
for everyone who has helped us understand
so much for all of our hardware-focused episodes.
These guys are the true experts, and they
gave a lot of their time to help me crack
what makes the Super UFO tick.
First, be sure your SD card is formatted in
FAT32, and insert it into the Super UFO.
Always be sure the console is off when you
lock-on or remove a game cartridge from the
UFO.
From the main menu, the first thing you’ll
want to do when dumping your own ROM is go
to the lower-middle icon to bring up the “Check”
menu, and then choose “Cart Check.”
Here you’ll see some information on the
cartridge hardware, but there are only two
things you really need to look at.
First, next to PROM Size, ensure that the
left number matches the number in brackets.
Hit the B button to cycle through the sizes.
The brackets number should be the actual ROM
size, while the number on the left is the
size that the ROM will dump to.
I can’t explain why they aren’t automatically
equal, but whatever, you just gotta do it.
Then, run a checksum.
Each ROM has a small line of code that is
generated by the sum of its code, which is
checked against what the UFO reads from the
cart, thus confirming if they match for a
good dump.
This will not check out if the dump size is
incorrect, or any pins are too dirty to make
a strong connection.
This will take a several seconds depending
on the ROM size, but it’s really important
to verify before dumping the ROM.
Once you confirm a good checksum, return to
the main menu and go to the upper-right icon,
the “Backup” menu.
You can move game ROMs and saves to a variety
of locations here, but for now let’s just
backup the game cart to the SD card.
When you’re in the directory you want to
dump to, hit the Start button to name your
file - X deletes, B confirms, and Y cancels
out.
The UFO can only display up to 8 characters
for a file name, so make sure the truncations
are something you can recognize.
Now this is important!
NEVER use lowercase letters.
For some reason, Windows refuses to copy UFO
dumps if they contain any lowercase letters.
You can edit the file extension, but for now,
I recommend sticking with the default dot-U-F-O.
Hit Start to begin the dumping process, which
takes about 10 seconds for a 4 megabit game,
and about 70 seconds for a 32 megabit game.
Oh, and if you’re having fantasies about
dumping Game Boy ROMs and saves though the
Super Game Boy, forget it… the UFO software
can dump the Super Game Boy software ROM,
but it has no access to the Game Boy cartridge
slot.
While I have no experience with other ROM
dumpers, you might want to look into devices
like the Retrode if you’re interested in
creating dumps for other systems.
But here’s a funny story, while I was working
on this episode, Artemio Urbina was helping
dump some very rare SNES prototype ROMs, some
of which were undumped, and he was easily
able to dump them with the Super UFO, while
the Retrode required configuration before
he could achieve the same results.
Anyway, back at the main menu, you can go
to the upper-left icon to play any game on
your SD card.
32 megabit games take about 30 seconds to
load into the DRAM.
But since a lot of these are in Japanese,
let’s take the ROMs back to the computer
for patching.
First of all, the UFO dumps add a 512 byte
header to the beginning of the ROM dump, which
you can see in a hex editor.
This is a harmless and mostly irrelevant string
of code that should have no impact on how
the game plays, and in the early emulation
days, it was pretty standard for a ROM to
have an added header.
However, there’s really no reason for them
nowadays, and getting rid of it first makes
a lot easier to apply patches.
Artemio Urbina whipped up a simple little
program just for UFO files that lets you remove
the header and re-save the file with the more
standard dot-S-F-C extension.
If you were to compare this scrubbed file
to a verified unmodified headerless ROM downloaded
from the Internet - and you gotta be careful,
because not all of them are perfect - but
in theory, they should check out as completely
identical.
I mean, I think that’s kinda neat, right?
That’s your very own ROM dump, you made
that!
Instead of Lunar IPS, which I’d used for
patching before, Voultar recommended to me
a nifty little program called SFC SNES ROM
UTILITY by Wasabi.
You can download this and other utilities,
as well as patches for a ton of different
games from ROMhacking.net - the only in-depth
repository for fan patches that we’re aware
of, though you might find others not on this
site if you search around.
A lot of these patches are very old and unmaintained,
and the rules for applying them in a way that
works can vary a bit… especially when it
comes to using them on original hardware,
as opposed to an emulator environment.
The Wasabi tool made it much easier for me
to apply patches in a way that successfully
ran on the Super UFO.
Simply load your ROM with the header already
removed, click IPS Patch, and then OK.
Choose your patch file, and then it will ask
whether it requires a “headered ROM.”
The reason it has to know is because where
the patch is applied in the code would be
incorrectly offset if, for example, the ROM
has no header, but the patch is designed for
a ROM with a header.
Most patches include a Readme file that specifies
whether the patch should be applied to a headered
or unheadered ROM.
For my games, when I didn’t know what the
patch required, I found more success when
saying “yes,” header required.
This makes it so that the Wasabi program applies
a header-required patch correctly even to
an unheadered ROM.
You still need to use Artemio’s tool to
remove the header and change the extension
before the Wasabi utility will even open a
UFO ROM dump.
After the new file is created, simply rename
it to something that’s 8 characters or less
for easy use in the UFO.
It might sound like a lot of steps, but it
actually goes quite quickly.
With this method, I got every single one of
my Super Famicom carts with available translation
patches working on the Super UFO - with the
exception of the aforementioned Dragon Quest
III remake patch, due to its file size bloat.
I used a newer Rockman 7 patch - which translates
some dialogue not in the American version
- by using a program by Byuu called Beat.
This is for a newer patch format called BPS.
Some problematic patches might also work with
some careful manual tweaking, if you’re
a programming sort.
You can of course also load up pre-patched
ROMs that you’ve downloaded - most should
already follow the UFO’s rules.
But patching your own ROM dump is all part
of the fun and satisfaction, right?
Right?
I mean, I think so.
And it’s cool that it gives you the chance
to confirm which cartridge revision you might
own.
Well, even if you think I’m crazy for doing
all this extra work just to use my own ROM
dumps, the UFO’s ability to backup saves
from real cartridges, and restore those saves
back to the cartridges, is likely the more
stand-out feature for a lot of people.
In addition to the DRAM, the UFO also has
its own SRAM - static RAM, that’s what’s
used for saves - complete with the standard
CR2032 battery that SNES games use for keeping
the save memory active.
So yeah, nothing fancy going on in there.
If you ever need to replace the battery, this
is simple to do and, unlike game cartridge
batteries, requires no soldering.
This built-in SRAM is how saves are actively
stored on the unit while you’re playing
a ROM loaded into the UFO, but it’s only
good for one game at a time, so be careful
to back it up before loading up another game.
Save backup to the SD card is not an automatic
process like it is with the latest EverDrives.
While I was playing through Seiken Densetsu
3, I made SD card backups of the SRAM, AND
copied it to my real cartridge as well…
just to be extra safe.
What was kinda neat was that despite my playthrough
being of the patched version of the game,
the saves worked just fine on the original
Japanese cart… at least in that case.
I think it’ll be fun to continue doing that
as a habit... if nothing else to make the
real cartridges an ongoing part of my experience
of playing through the translated games.
At any rate, the best use of the SRAM is as
an intermediary for shuffling saves around.
In the Backup menu, the bottom four choices
are for SRAM.
There is no option for moving cartridge SRAM
directly to the SD card, so you must first
move the SRAM from the cart to the UFO, which
takes just a second.
You can then send the UFO SRAM to the SD card
for safekeeping, and of course you can put
it on your computer, store it in the cloud,
and even load it up in an emulator.
If you want to restore the save after replacing
your cartridge battery at some point, or you
just want to load another set of saves into
it, simply send SRAM from the SD card to the
UFO, and then UFO to the cartridge.
This is of course a lot more complicated than
managing saves on an EverDrive, which you
usually don’t really even have to think
about much.
But I think for a lot of people, the ability
to interact with the SRAM on the original
cartridges makes it worth the hassle.
You can also use emulator saves - if they’re
saved as proper uncompressed raw SRAM files
- with a little bit of fiddling.
For the UFO to accept it as SRAM, the file
must be manually padded out with null data
in a hex editor to 512 kilobytes - up to address
1FFFF.
Our friend Artemio has added this as an automated
function in the previously mentioned UFO Manager
tool, but you have to be sure that your emulator
is not cheating with its own unique variety
of SRAM file.
It might even be possible to ferry saves to
and from say, the Wii Virtual Console with
the Homebrew Channel, but that’s whole other
matter and set of potential tools that I’m
just not informed enough about yet to be sure
if it’d work out.
Be warned that it might be risky trying to
backup saves from games that the Super UFO
won’t run… like SA-1 chip games… the
UFO just doesn’t know how to properly access
these games, and it’s possible that messing
with them could ruin your saves.
The UFO also offers some token cheat functionality,
which it calls Hyper Mode.
You can activate Hyper Mode for the game loaded
into DRAM right on the main menu, or by going
to the lower-left “Power Up” icon.
For one, this lets you use a save state while
playing, which you can continue to update
and load, and it can even be retained after
turning the system off, and backed up to the
SD card via the Power Up menu… but it’s
rather fiddly, and doesn’t work well with
every game, so don’t necessarily count on
it.
Two slo-mo speeds can be activated as well.
Hyper Mode offers a Game Genie type function
too.
This is a little confusing because it’s
branded it under two names with different
code input interfaces…
X-Terminator for codes manually activated
by holding R and L plus Start, and “Gold
Finger” for codes that are just always on
in Hyper Mode.
I don’t want to spend too much time on this
feature because well, to be perfectly honest
it doesn’t really interest me enough to
spend figuring out where the codes for these
cheat systems might even exist.
There are a few built-in codes, which are
poorly described, and sometimes when loading
a game it will let you know that X-Terminator
codes are found.
Assuming you do NOT want to activate Hyper
Mode and use these codes, be sure to hit the
Y button to skip this message and just play
the game as normal.
So that’s about it when it comes to the
Super UFO Pro 8.
It’s a flawed yet capable device that has
fallen victim to a great deal of misinformation,
much of which could’ve been avoided with
better documentation and a little more thoughtful
software design.
It certainly wouldn’t seem like a significant
feat to make a more impressive successor…
if the EverDrive or SD2SNES could add the
lock-on cartridge and ROM and save dumping
feature, the UFO would no longer have any
advantage other than cost.
And of course, if you wanted to get really
into ROM dumping for the sake of long-term
game preservation and helping ROM dumps get
properly verified, there are much more serious
tools out there for that purpose - and a special
understanding of the hardware is needed to
dump more complex cartridges.
But for now, for the price, I’m happy enough
having chosen the UFO as my own hobbyist ROM
dumper and ROM hack-playing flashcart for
SNES.
