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Gradius III SNES patch released to eliminate slowdown (emulators and SA-1 Carts)

chairhome

chairhome

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,658
Orlando
https://github.com/VitorVilela7/SA1-Root

Author Vitor Vilela
Looks like you can patch a ROM to run on most Emulators, but you can also run on real hardware if burned to a Cart with the SA-1 chip.

This looks like it makes the game harder, but looks amazing!

[/QUOTE]
side by side comparison.
Now that it does not show the more severe areas of slowdown
 
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demi

demi

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Oct 27, 2017
14,917
If you have a SNES Classic hacked, Nintendo's internal emulator (Canoe) is reported to play this just fine.
 
JuicyPlayer

JuicyPlayer

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Feb 8, 2018
7,382
I wish they would make a patch that makes SNES Mortal Kombat 1 uncensored and also restore the missing content in Final Fight for SNES.
 
JJAwiiu

JJAwiiu

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Oct 27, 2017
331
Oh wow, so they didn't just fix it, but fixed it by using a chip that was available in the SNES era? That's awesome.
 

Deleted member 3010

User requested account closure
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Oct 25, 2017
10,974
It does feel weird seeing Gradius III playing so perfectly well, I'm so used to the SNES version!
 
Cow Mengde

Cow Mengde

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Oct 26, 2017
12,787
I like Axley more. They need to hack it so the game doesn't slow down in the final stage with the big ships.
 
VariantX

VariantX

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Oct 25, 2017
16,934
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Lmao, I thought Gradius III was hard before, I won't be able to get halfway through the first level now. The slowdowns were the only thing giving me time to react lol
 
Setsune

Setsune

One Winged Slayer
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Oct 27, 2017
1,649
JuicyPlayer said:
I wish they would make a patch that makes SNES Mortal Kombat 1 uncensored and also restore the missing content in Final Fight for SNES.
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Final Fight (SNES) "Arcade Remix" :
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3582/

As for Mortal Kombat, besides changing the sweat color to red ( https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2885/ ), uncensoring the SNES version is a huge ask. Especially when there's multiple ways of playing the arcade original or a port to another platform. Honestly, I was surprised to find a Final Fight restoration patch as extensive as that was.
 
PepsimanVsJoe

PepsimanVsJoe

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Oct 26, 2017
6,187
This is really impressive.

Gradius III has always been something of an unfortunate case. The arcade version is soul-crushingly hard, and the console version has waaaaay too much slowdown.

It's been quite awhile since I played the Parodius games on the Super Famicom, but I think they had a lot less slowdown. Clearly Konami just needed more time with the hardware.
 

KayonXaikyre

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,984
TheMadTitan said:
The game is already hard! lol

I for one will welcome my full speed bubble overlords. That was always my favorite level.
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You're not wrong LOL. I actually play this game a lot with my friend. What we would do is take turns seeing who would get the farthest and we basically just do it on 1 life without dying since it's really rough trying to recover when you die. He actually managed to get to the end like that once but lost unfortunately.
 
SOLDIER

SOLDIER

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Banned
Oct 26, 2017
11,339
So, how do you apply this patch to a Gradius III ROM?

I can never for the life of me figure out how to navigate GitHub links. There's a readme but it doesn't say how to actually apply the patch.
 
OP
OP
chairhome

chairhome

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,658
Orlando
SOLDIER said:
So, how do you apply this patch to a Gradius III ROM?

I can never for the life of me figure out how to navigate GitHub links. There's a readme but it doesn't say how to actually apply the patch.
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There's a tab that says "release", click on that to download the patch. then download an appropriate patcher.
 
PepsimanVsJoe

PepsimanVsJoe

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,187
KayonXaikyre said:
You're not wrong LOL. I actually play this game a lot with my friend. What we would do is take turns seeing who would get the farthest and we basically just do it on 1 life without dying since it's really rough trying to recover when you die. He actually managed to get to the end like that once but lost unfortunately.
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Yeah Gradius is evil like that.

If you ever play Gradius 2 arcade, there are several points where you simply aren't allowed to die.
For example, there's a section in the last stage where pieces of the floor and ceiling break off and smash into you. If you die at or around that section, then it doesn't matter if you have 3 or 30 lives remaining, you'll never make it past.

R-Type 1 had something similar on stage 7. If you die late in the stage or at the boss, you might as well just give up and walk away.

Checkpoint shooters of the 80s and 90s were Hell.
 

KayonXaikyre

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,984
PepsimanVsJoe said:
Yeah Gradius is evil like that.

If you ever play Gradius 2 arcade, there are several points where you simply aren't allowed to die.
For example, there's a section in the last stage where pieces of the floor and ceiling break off and smash into you. If you die at or around that section, then it doesn't matter if you have 3 or 30 lives remaining, you'll never make it past.

R-Type 1 had something similar on stage 7. If you die late in the stage or at the boss, you might as well just give up and walk away.

Checkpoint shooters of the 80s and 90s were Hell.
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Yeah theres a part in gradius 3 that felt like that for me too when you're there with the little things coming out from the bottom of the screen and circling you at the end of stage 3? I think it is. I feel like if you just have regular blaster with no missiles its either extremely hard or near impossible to dps through it.

I love the game though. I think the challenge makes it more exciting and exhilarating when you do amazing dodges and stuff or play really well.

I haven't ever played 2 though I gotta give it a try. I also wanted to play R-Type any recommendations on the best ones to play?
 
JCG

JCG

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,548
It would have been great to have this back in the day.

That said, I vaguely remember the slowdown being helpful in certain stages.
 
Inugami

Inugami

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Oct 25, 2017
14,995
lordmrw said:
You'd be surprised how many early SNES games suffer from heavy slowdown due to unoptimized code or sloppy programming.
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Neither is necessarily true... The bigger issue is that a lot of these early games were designed with fastrom in mind, but fastrom turned out to be pretty expensive, especially in the early SNES days, so many devs/pubs decided to switch to the cheaper slowrom. Besides the rom itself being slower (200ns access time versus 120ns), the SNES CPU runs slower when it uses it. That's 2.68mhz with slowrom, versus the SNES max speed of 3.58mhz, or roughly 33% slower.

So, that's slower loading, slower accessing of things like sprites, and a significantly slower (already really slow for the time) CPU clock all to save a few bucks. I'm guessing Gradius 3 either already used fastrom, or it simply wasn't enough and that's where the desire to push it through an SA-1 comes from. The SA-1 is basically a triple clocked SNES with additional ram and interrupts so it makes a good choice.

That said, converting it to SA-1 from pre-compiled ASM code could not have been easy, major props to the author.
 
Treasure Silvergun

Treasure Silvergun

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Impressive, but... serious question: is it actually possible to beat certain stages in Gradius games if you lose a life and all your power-ups midstage?
 
PepsimanVsJoe

PepsimanVsJoe

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,187
Treasure Silvergun said:
Impressive, but... serious question: is it actually possible to beat certain stages in Gradius games if you lose a life and all your power-ups midstage?
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It seriously depends on where you die.
As I mentioned earlier, Gradius II has a few points that are impossible to recover from.
Same with Gradius I / Nemesis. You can hit a wall as early as stage 2.
Even Gradius III SNES with its ridiculous slowdown has a couple checkpoints from hell.
I'm not 100% sure on Gradius IV, but I think it might be a bit more lenient than the other games.

With Gradius Gaiden, you can recover from practically anywhere. Unsurprisingly, it's also the best game in the series next to Gradius V.
 
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