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About bytes $7FF8-$7FF9,
The official SMS documentation says:
$7FF0:
The string, "TMR SEGA " [54,4D,52,20,53,45,47,41,20,20]
The SDSC documentation about it http://www.smspower.org/dev/sdsc/SDSCROMTag101.txt) may be updated to refer to that official directive of adding 2 spaces, although it was certainly not respected (as mentionned in the doc, and also read below).

I've been redumping/checking card games, and noticed:

F-16 Fighting Falcon (JP) and Spy vs Spy (JP)
$7FF8 to $7FFB says "NAKA".
I guess that the games were programmed by Yuji Naka (how many games did he program?). Hence that is why their Japanese checksum is incorrect (it is "KA").

Side note:
I actually redumped the Japanese card and didn't even found the "TMR SEGA" here, but:
00 FE DC 00 FF 45 52 49
Which is not ASCII (except maybe 45 52 49 which is "ERI" but it might just be a coincidence).
"TMR SEGA" is only found in the Japanese dump floating on the net, which was dumped by MrLee from Taiwan and released by Dump Masters. It is probable that MrLee card dumps (all released by Dump Masters) were extracted from pirate compilation GG cartridges. I'll be redumping all card games soon and will note which are correct.

Now back to unknown bytes content,
In F-16 Fighter (Export), $7FF8 and $7FF9 are "YN" (for 'Yuji Naka'). So those bytes were considered (at least by Yuji Naka) as unused bytes, and he put his signature here. $7FFA and $7FFB are used to store the correct checksum.

Then I looked at MarkIII/SMS games, and found more stuff:

Action Fighter (JP & export)
$7FF8-$7FF9 "KW"

Alex Kidd - The Lost Star
$7FF8-$7FF9 "YM"

Astro Flash (JP), incorrect checksum
$7FF8-$7FFB "NTBB"

Astro Warrior / Pitpot
$7FF8-$7FF9 "TA"

Columns
$7FF8-$7FF9 "TY"
(GG Columns sources says "# MAKEFILE for "Y.T program" MAIN 03-16-1989")

Fantasy Zone
$7FF8-$7FF9 "TA"

Fantasy Zone II
$7FF8-$7FF9 19 87 (in 2 bytes)

Opa Opa (JR)
$7FF8-$7FF9 87 19 (in 2 bytes)

Fantasy Zone - The Maze
$7FF8-$7FF9 "YM"

Gangster Town
$7FF8-$7FF9 19 87 (in 2 bytes)

Galactic Protector
$7FF8-$7FF9 "MW"

Ghost Busters
$7FF8-$7FF9 "KS"

Ghost House (JP)
$7FF8-$7FFB "ITOU"

Ghost Busters
$7FF8-$7FF9 "YT"

Great Golf / Masters Golf
$7FF8-$7FF9 "YM"

Great Golf (JP)
$7FF8-$7FF9 "WK"

Great Baseball card (JP)
$7FF8-$7FFB "HNYN"

Great Soccer (JP)
$7FF0-$7FFB "85SEP.12HMNG"

Hang On
$7FF8-$7FF9 19 86 (in 2 bytes)

Hang On (JP)
$7FEB-$7FFB "H.O SEP. 11 1985 "

Impossible Mission
$7FF8-$7FF9 19 90 (in 2 bytes)

Jurassic Park
$7FF8-$7FFB "YTS "

Kujakuou and SpellCaster
$7FF8-$7FFB "YT"

Kung Fu Kid / Makai Retsuden
$7FF8-$7FF9 "KT"

Comical Machine Gun Joe
$7FF8-$7FFB "T//K"

Megumi Rescue
$7FF8-$7FF9 "YM"

Missile Defense 3-D
$7FF8-$7FF9 "AL"

Nekyuu Kousien (JP)
$7FF8-$7FF9 "YM"

Out Run 3-D
$7FF8-$7FF9 19 89 (in 2 bytes)

Pit Pit (JP)
$7FF8-$7FFB "TATH"

TransBot
$7FF8-$7FF9 "OO"

Satellite 7
$7FF8-$7FFB "K//T"

Sonic The Hedgehog
$7FF8-$7FF9 "YY"
And "Developed By (C) 1991 Ancient - S¥Hayashi" at the beginning

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 also have:
"MS SONIC¥THE¥HEDGEHOG.2 Ver1.00 1992/09/05 SEGA /Aspect Co.,Ltd "
"MS SONIC¥THE¥HEDGEHOG.2 Ver2.20 1992/12/09 SEGA /Aspect Co.,Ltd "

Sonic Chaos
"MS SONIC¥CHAOS < Ver1.20 > 1993/08/03 @SEGA/Aspect Co.,Ltd "

Sonic Blast (ported from GG)
"GG SONIC 96 Ver E3 ROM1996/05/01 @SEGA/Aspect Co.,Ltd "

Teddy Boy Blues
$7FF8-$7FFB "TATA"

Thunder Blade
$7FF8-$7FF9 19 88 (in 2 bytes)

Zaxxon 3-D
$7FF8-$7FF9 19 87 (in 2 bytes)

This is not a coincidence. When those bytes are not mentionned in this post, they were either 00 00, 20 20 or FF FF. I think that the ASCII character may be invaluable to help tracking down original developper/programmers.

Unknown data:
Paper Boy (EU&US)
$7FF8-$7FF9 13 58

Sagaia
$7FF8-$7FF9 31 32

Interesting data at other location:

At the beginning of Krusty Fun House ROM, you can read
"Wow! your clever fax 44 21 523 3942"

Shadow Dancer:
"By.Waka"
"Wakayama"

Tensai Bakabon:
"BAKABON by TAK HAM"

Xenon 2 has bit of source code (I already mentionned this one some tmie ago)
"PORTC #BF,#89"
";VRAM WRITE = $40"
"OUT (C),D"
"DEC C"
"OUTI"
"JR NZ,$L"
"DEC A"
...
between 40h and 100h mainly.
Problem with the assembler leaving data in RAM?

Quote

> At the beginning of Krusty Fun House ROM, you can read
> "Wow! your clever fax 44 21 523 3942"

Doing some conversion - 44 = UK, prepend 01 to make it a current valid number - and then Google for it, and I get this. Hmm.

I actually remember a magazine interview with the creators of that game in Sega Force magazine (although it was focussed on the MD version). I don't remember much, except that they specifically mentioned being very anti-piracy and that Matt Groening drew the flying pigs.

Maxim

Quote

> Interesting data at other location:

Many games using battery-backed RAM use similatr strings for checking if RAM is initialised. Here are some naming the coder:

GG Crystal Warriors: "'91,2 TOYOSHIMA"
SMS Golfamania: "OKABE"
GG Kinetic Connection: "majima"
GG Magical Puzzle Popils: "Programmed by Jun Amanai"
SMS Phantasy Star: "PHANTASY STAR BACKUP RAMPROGRAMMED BY NAKA YUJI" (formatted to be viewed in 16 character columns)
GG Shining Force 1, 2, 3: "Kodera MR2"

There may be more, it depends on making the cart initialise the RAM; but all should be replicated in the ROM anyway. Note that some saves have some text in Japanese (seems like Shift-JIS encoding).

Maxim

On my quest to redump all card games, I redumped Pit Pot (JP), and found out a comment in the ROM saying "by Toshinori Nasai" (who is mentionned in MobyGames). This is spaced out in the currently available ROM (from Mr.Lee), and the original ROM doesn't contains a valid TMRSEGA+header.

I'm now pretty sure that all Mr.Lee card dumps comes from pirate cartridges (GG compilations) and have been altered (names removed, header 'added/fixed'.

Other finds:

Paperboy:
---------
Paperboy written by G.Vine for Tiertex limited.

F16 fighting Falcon:
--------------------
RPR Y.N HARRIER

(RPR should mean "reprogrammed")

Yamato (SG-1000):
-----------------
BY ELS SHINKAWA-BL.,204,TAKAIDO,TOKYO,TEL 03-331-7608
1983.07.07 E.L.S ;HEAD OFFICE : SHINKAWA BLDG.,2F,204,1-29,TAKAIDO,NISHI,1-CHOME,SUGINAMI-KU,TOKYO,166,JAPAN ; PHONE : 03 - 331 - 7608

Wonderboy (SG-1000):
--------------------
TANAKA
KAMEI
MARUYAMA
NAKAYAMA

Tensai Bakabon:
---------------
BAKABON by TAK HAM.

Teddyboy blues (SC-3000):
-------------------------
TATA
TMR SEGATATA

Satellite 7 (SC-3000):
--------------------
TMR SEGAK//T

Satellite 7:
------------
0007ff0: ffff ffff ffff ffff 4b2f 2f54 0405 003c ........K//T...<

Pachinko 2 (SG-1000):
---------------------
PROGRAM BY < K.O >

Outrun 3D:
----------
OUTRUN by TH

Ms. Pacman:
-----------
Tel da' DJ ta put da BRASS DISC ON!!!

Micro machines:
---------------
JON THE PROGRAMMERS' - SQUINKY

Missile defense 3D:
-------------------
TMR SEGAAL

Monaco GP (SG-1000):
--------------------
Program: Y.KAWAMURA, M.KIDOOKA
MONACO GP9/15 -1983 VERSION 1.0 24K

Monopoly:
---------
FROM KEVIN TO MELANIE I LOVE YOU
BILL CHAU --------- BORN-AGAIN EX-HACKER SPECIALIZING IN MICROS AND HARDWARE. COMPETITIVE RATES FOR FREE ESTIMATE- CALL 415-911-CKID TELEX 13288-HI-MOM -THIS AD SPACE FOR RENT -
FOR JENNY AND ELISA
KEVIN STEVE JINDA DAN ANTON SCOTT BILL TIM BRYANT MELANI

Hang-on:
--------
NAOMI!
H.O SEP. 11 1985

Great golf:
-----------
TMR SEGAWK
TMR SEGAYM

GP rider:
---------
Into TrancentralNRG!6

Great baseball (SC-3000):
-------------------------
TMR SEGAHNYN

Ghostbusters:
-------------
TMR SEGAKS

Ghost house (SC-3000):
----------------------
TMR SEGAITOU

Gangster town:
--------------
NAOMI

New Zealand story:
------------------
NewZealand Storyby Simon Freeman<10.0>

Speedball:
----------
Tim Watson was here

Strider:
--------
CODING BY PAUL MARSHALL

Soukoban (SC-3000):
-------------------
0000370: 0909 0909 11e2 3a01 0500 c39b 004b 594f ......:......KYO
0000380: 4b4f 2045 4d49 2020 4e41 4f20 2041 5941 KO EMI NAO AYA
0000390: 2041 5341 4d49 0100 0011 0a00 9338 030c ASAMI.......8..

Author	Message
Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8731 Location: Paris, France	SMS header unknown bytes content Posted: Tue Apr 20, 2004 11:55 pm
	About bytes $7FF8-$7FF9, The official SMS documentation says: $7FF0: The string, "TMR SEGA " [54,4D,52,20,53,45,47,41,20,20] The SDSC documentation about it http://www.smspower.org/dev/sdsc/SDSCROMTag101.txt) may be updated to refer to that official directive of adding 2 spaces, although it was certainly not respected (as mentionned in the doc, and also read below). I've been redumping/checking card games, and noticed: F-16 Fighting Falcon (JP) and Spy vs Spy (JP) $7FF8 to $7FFB says "NAKA". I guess that the games were programmed by Yuji Naka (how many games did he program?). Hence that is why their Japanese checksum is incorrect (it is "KA"). Side note: I actually redumped the Japanese card and didn't even found the "TMR SEGA" here, but: 00 FE DC 00 FF 45 52 49 Which is not ASCII (except maybe 45 52 49 which is "ERI" but it might just be a coincidence). "TMR SEGA" is only found in the Japanese dump floating on the net, which was dumped by MrLee from Taiwan and released by Dump Masters. It is probable that MrLee card dumps (all released by Dump Masters) were extracted from pirate compilation GG cartridges. I'll be redumping all card games soon and will note which are correct. Now back to unknown bytes content, In F-16 Fighter (Export), $7FF8 and $7FF9 are "YN" (for 'Yuji Naka'). So those bytes were considered (at least by Yuji Naka) as unused bytes, and he put his signature here. $7FFA and $7FFB are used to store the correct checksum. Then I looked at MarkIII/SMS games, and found more stuff: Action Fighter (JP & export) $7FF8-$7FF9 "KW" Alex Kidd - The Lost Star $7FF8-$7FF9 "YM" Astro Flash (JP), incorrect checksum $7FF8-$7FFB "NTBB" Astro Warrior / Pitpot $7FF8-$7FF9 "TA" Columns $7FF8-$7FF9 "TY" (GG Columns sources says "# MAKEFILE for "Y.T program" MAIN 03-16-1989") Fantasy Zone $7FF8-$7FF9 "TA" Fantasy Zone II $7FF8-$7FF9 19 87 (in 2 bytes) Opa Opa (JR) $7FF8-$7FF9 87 19 (in 2 bytes) Fantasy Zone - The Maze $7FF8-$7FF9 "YM" Gangster Town $7FF8-$7FF9 19 87 (in 2 bytes) Galactic Protector $7FF8-$7FF9 "MW" Ghost Busters $7FF8-$7FF9 "KS" Ghost House (JP) $7FF8-$7FFB "ITOU" Ghost Busters $7FF8-$7FF9 "YT" Great Golf / Masters Golf $7FF8-$7FF9 "YM" Great Golf (JP) $7FF8-$7FF9 "WK" Great Baseball card (JP) $7FF8-$7FFB "HNYN" Great Soccer (JP) $7FF0-$7FFB "85SEP.12HMNG" Hang On $7FF8-$7FF9 19 86 (in 2 bytes) Hang On (JP) $7FEB-$7FFB "H.O SEP. 11 1985 " Impossible Mission $7FF8-$7FF9 19 90 (in 2 bytes) Jurassic Park $7FF8-$7FFB "YTS " Kujakuou and SpellCaster $7FF8-$7FFB "YT" Kung Fu Kid / Makai Retsuden $7FF8-$7FF9 "KT" Comical Machine Gun Joe $7FF8-$7FFB "T//K" Megumi Rescue $7FF8-$7FF9 "YM" Missile Defense 3-D $7FF8-$7FF9 "AL" Nekyuu Kousien (JP) $7FF8-$7FF9 "YM" Out Run 3-D $7FF8-$7FF9 19 89 (in 2 bytes) Pit Pit (JP) $7FF8-$7FFB "TATH" TransBot $7FF8-$7FF9 "OO" Satellite 7 $7FF8-$7FFB "K//T" Sonic The Hedgehog $7FF8-$7FF9 "YY" And "Developed By (C) 1991 Ancient - S¥Hayashi" at the beginning Sonic The Hedgehog 2 also have: "MS SONIC¥THE¥HEDGEHOG.2 Ver1.00 1992/09/05 SEGA /Aspect Co.,Ltd " "MS SONIC¥THE¥HEDGEHOG.2 Ver2.20 1992/12/09 SEGA /Aspect Co.,Ltd " Sonic Chaos "MS SONIC¥CHAOS < Ver1.20 > 1993/08/03 @SEGA/Aspect Co.,Ltd " Sonic Blast (ported from GG) "GG SONIC 96 Ver E3 ROM1996/05/01 @SEGA/Aspect Co.,Ltd " Teddy Boy Blues $7FF8-$7FFB "TATA" Thunder Blade $7FF8-$7FF9 19 88 (in 2 bytes) Zaxxon 3-D $7FF8-$7FF9 19 87 (in 2 bytes) This is not a coincidence. When those bytes are not mentionned in this post, they were either 00 00, 20 20 or FF FF. I think that the ASCII character may be invaluable to help tracking down original developper/programmers. Unknown data: Paper Boy (EU&US) $7FF8-$7FF9 13 58 Sagaia $7FF8-$7FF9 31 32 Interesting data at other location: At the beginning of Krusty Fun House ROM, you can read "Wow! your clever fax 44 21 523 3942" Shadow Dancer: "By.Waka" "Wakayama" Tensai Bakabon: "BAKABON by TAK HAM" Xenon 2 has bit of source code (I already mentionned this one some tmie ago) "PORTC #BF,#89" ";VRAM WRITE = $40" "OUT (C),D" "DEC C" "OUTI" "JR NZ,$L" "DEC A" ... between 40h and 100h mainly. Problem with the assembler leaving data in RAM?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 15006 Location: London	Krusty's Beauty Consultants? (OT) Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 8:22 am
	Quote > At the beginning of Krusty Fun House ROM, you can read > "Wow! your clever fax 44 21 523 3942" Doing some conversion - 44 = UK, prepend 01 to make it a current valid number - and then Google for it, and I get this. Hmm. I actually remember a magazine interview with the creators of that game in Sega Force magazine (although it was focussed on the MD version). I don't remember much, except that they specifically mentioned being very anti-piracy and that Matt Groening drew the flying pigs. Maxim

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 15006 Location: London	Battery-backed RAM markers Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 5:15 pm
	Quote > Interesting data at other location: Many games using battery-backed RAM use similatr strings for checking if RAM is initialised. Here are some naming the coder: GG Crystal Warriors: "'91,2 TOYOSHIMA" SMS Golfamania: "OKABE" GG Kinetic Connection: "majima" GG Magical Puzzle Popils: "Programmed by Jun Amanai" SMS Phantasy Star: "PHANTASY STAR BACKUP RAMPROGRAMMED BY NAKA YUJI" (formatted to be viewed in 16 character columns) GG Shining Force 1, 2, 3: "Kodera MR2" There may be more, it depends on making the cart initialise the RAM; but all should be replicated in the ROM anyway. Note that some saves have some text in Japanese (seems like Shift-JIS encoding). Maxim

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8731 Location: Paris, France	Pit Pot (JP) Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 2:23 pm
	On my quest to redump all card games, I redumped Pit Pot (JP), and found out a comment in the ROM saying "by Toshinori Nasai" (who is mentionned in MobyGames). This is spaced out in the currently available ROM (from Mr.Lee), and the original ROM doesn't contains a valid TMRSEGA+header. I'm now pretty sure that all Mr.Lee card dumps comes from pirate cartridges (GG compilations) and have been altered (names removed, header 'added/fixed'.

idrougge Joined: 01 Jan 2005 Posts: 360 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 1:02 am
	Other finds: Paperboy: --------- Paperboy written by G.Vine for Tiertex limited. F16 fighting Falcon: -------------------- RPR Y.N HARRIER (RPR should mean "reprogrammed") Yamato (SG-1000): ----------------- BY ELS SHINKAWA-BL.,204,TAKAIDO,TOKYO,TEL 03-331-7608 1983.07.07 E.L.S ;HEAD OFFICE : SHINKAWA BLDG.,2F,204,1-29,TAKAIDO,NISHI,1-CHOME,SUGINAMI-KU,TOKYO,166,JAPAN ; PHONE : 03 - 331 - 7608 Wonderboy (SG-1000): -------------------- TANAKA KAMEI MARUYAMA NAKAYAMA Tensai Bakabon: --------------- BAKABON by TAK HAM. Teddyboy blues (SC-3000): ------------------------- TATA TMR SEGATATA Satellite 7 (SC-3000): -------------------- TMR SEGAK//T Satellite 7: ------------ 0007ff0: ffff ffff ffff ffff 4b2f 2f54 0405 003c ........K//T...< Pachinko 2 (SG-1000): --------------------- PROGRAM BY < K.O > Outrun 3D: ---------- OUTRUN by TH Ms. Pacman: ----------- Tel da' DJ ta put da BRASS DISC ON!!! Micro machines: --------------- JON THE PROGRAMMERS' - SQUINKY Missile defense 3D: ------------------- TMR SEGAAL Monaco GP (SG-1000): -------------------- Program: Y.KAWAMURA, M.KIDOOKA MONACO GP9/15 -1983 VERSION 1.0 24K Monopoly: --------- FROM KEVIN TO MELANIE I LOVE YOU BILL CHAU --------- BORN-AGAIN EX-HACKER SPECIALIZING IN MICROS AND HARDWARE. COMPETITIVE RATES FOR FREE ESTIMATE- CALL 415-911-CKID TELEX 13288-HI-MOM -THIS AD SPACE FOR RENT - FOR JENNY AND ELISA KEVIN STEVE JINDA DAN ANTON SCOTT BILL TIM BRYANT MELANI Hang-on: -------- NAOMI! H.O SEP. 11 1985 Great golf: ----------- TMR SEGAWK TMR SEGAYM GP rider: --------- Into TrancentralNRG!6 Great baseball (SC-3000): ------------------------- TMR SEGAHNYN Ghostbusters: ------------- TMR SEGAKS Ghost house (SC-3000): ---------------------- TMR SEGAITOU Gangster town: -------------- NAOMI New Zealand story: ------------------ NewZealand Storyby Simon Freeman<10.0> Speedball: ---------- Tim Watson was here Strider: -------- CODING BY PAUL MARSHALL Soukoban (SC-3000): ------------------- 0000370: 0909 0909 11e2 3a01 0500 c39b 004b 594f ......:......KYO 0000380: 4b4f 2045 4d49 2020 4e41 4f20 2041 5941 KO EMI NAO AYA 0000390: 2041 5341 4d49 0100 0011 0a00 9338 030c ASAMI.......8..

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