The great Super Game Module mystery

JimmyFromTheBay

Some of the most elusive games to run in Retropie are the Colecovision games that use the Super Game Module. Most of the available Coleco emulators don't support it, although weirdly some that don't will still run SOME games requiring an SGM.

For example, lr-mess-adam-cart (my Coleco emulator of choice) WILL run these SGM games despite lacking SGM support:

Booming Boy (missing music)
Buck Rogers Super Game (perfect as far as I can see)
Caverns Of Titan (ditto)
Cold Blood (ditto)
Deep Dungeon Adventure (no sound)

but it will NOT even attempt to run these:

Caos Begins
Children Of The Night
Danger Tower
Dragon's Lair
Ghostbusters

Neither lr-bluemsx (even though the Windows version supports SGM) nor lr-gearcoleco will even attempt to run any, and CoolCV (which supported SGM) doesn't work on a Pi4 and seems to have been abandoned.

The only current Coleco emu with proper SGM support is @barbudreadmon's lr-fbneocv, but that only supports a fixed ROMset which doesn't include dozens of modern CV SGM releases. (I tried eg just renaming Jumpland to jumpland.zip out of sheer optimism, but obv no dice.)

Is there any prospect of a MESS fork supporting the SGM any time soon, @Folly? Are there any commandline options I haven't discovered yet that will make SGM games work? Any experimental emus knocking on the RetroPie-Extra door, @ExarKunIv?

(I've been through the MESS menus but the SGM doesn't seem to be one of the expansion slot options.)

barbudreadmon

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

which doesn't include dozens of modern CV SGM releases

you can request them on our forum

JimmyFromTheBay

@barbudreadmon said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

you can request them on our forum

Which forum?

mitu

@JimmyFromTheBay The Final Burn forum at https://neo-source.com/. Super Game Module games are supported by openmsx also.

Folly

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

Is there any prospect of a MESS fork supporting the SGM any time soon, @Folly? Are there any commandline options I haven't discovered yet that will make SGM games work?

I don't think so.
For these question you can have a look here : https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=1

If you join that forum you will be able to search and add threads.

Be aware that most of these devs dislike RetroPie and you will get very ugly messages if you talk about that.
So remember, don't talk about RetroPie over there.

JimmyFromTheBay

@mitu said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

@JimmyFromTheBay The Final Burn forum at https://neo-source.com/. Super Game Module games are supported by openmsx also.

I'm not at all sure they are on RetroPie. Installing the emulator from source fails, and installing it from binary only gives these machine options:

openmsx-msx2 = "/opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/bin/openmsx -machine 'Boosted_MSX2_EN' %ROM%"
openmsx-msx2-plus = "/opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/bin/openmsx -machine 'Boosted_MSX2+_JP' %ROM%"
openmsx-msx-turbor = "/opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/bin/openmsx -machine 'Panasonic_FS-A1GT' %ROM%"
openmsx = "/opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/bin/openmsx %ROM%"

The machine_list command fails, but from flailing around in the Windows version it looks like I'd probably be looking for this:

openmsx-coleco = "/opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/bin/openmsx -machine 'ColecoVision with SGM' %ROM%"

(deduced from these pics)

but that just crashes.

Fatal error: Error in "ColecoVision with SGM" machine: machines/ColecoVision with SGM.xml not found in this context

I tried to copy COLECO.ROM into /opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/share/systemroms but that was blocked with a permissions error.

The documentation is of course impenetrable so I'm pretty much out of ideas at this point.

JimmyFromTheBay

@Folly said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

Is there any prospect of a MESS fork supporting the SGM any time soon, @Folly? Are there any commandline options I haven't discovered yet that will make SGM games work?

I don't think so.
For these question you can have a look here : https://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=1

If you join that forum you will be able to search and add threads.

Be aware that most of these devs dislike RetroPie and you will get very ugly messages if you talk about that.
So remember, don't talk about RetroPie over there.

Fortunately that link seems to be dead anyway :D

mitu

I'm not at all sure they are on RetroPie. Installing the emulator from source fails, and installing it from binary only gives these machine options:
[..]

They are supported by the emulator, but there's no emulator configured for the SGM machine.

The machine_list command fails, but from flailing around in the Windows version it looks like I'd probably be looking for this:
[...]

That's correct, with the correct ROMs the system should boot:

I tried to copy COLECO.ROM into /opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/share/systemroms but that was blocked with a permissions error.

As stated in the docs, copy the BIOS roms to /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/openmsx.

Folly

@JimmyFromTheBay

We did some work earlier on , have a look here :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/30375/colecovision-start-up-error-turn-game-off-before-inserting-cartridge-or-expansion-module/23
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/30375/colecovision-start-up-error-turn-game-off-before-inserting-cartridge-or-expansion-module/25

JimmyFromTheBay

@Folly Argh, what the bums is BIOS_XP.ROM? I can't find a reference to it anywhere.

[EDIT: whatever it is doesn't seem to be necessary - Jumpland just ran in OpenMSX without it.]

Folly

@JimmyFromTheBay

Nice to hear you got that one running.

It has been a while.
I have to test again regarding BIOS_XP.ROM.

You should be able to find it in an openmsx bios rompack.
If I remember correctly openmsx will log the shasums and the biosnames when it needs it.

JimmyFromTheBay

@Folly said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

You should be able to find it in an openmsx bios rompack.

Oh, it's an MSX BIOS not a Coleco one? I downloaded a 25MB pack of system ROMs from the MSX archive but it wasn't in there.

Folly

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

Oh, it's an MSX BIOS not a Coleco one?

No, it's a Coleco one, of-course used in openMSX which can emulate Coleco too ;-)
Do you get it ?

Though, it looks like the naming of the BIOS_XP.ROM has changed in just COLECO.ROM.
Just tested sgm game mecha-8-2013 and runs.

When there is no BIOS file in /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/openmsx/machines/ColecoVision_SGM/ //i used this command to test :

/opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/bin/openmsx -machine 'ColecoVision_SGM'

And it will give :

Fatal error: Error in "ColecoVision_SGM" machine: Couldn't find ROM file for "Super Game Module" COLECO.ROM (sha1: 45bedc4cbdeac66c7df59e9e599195c778d86a92).

Now adding the BIOS in :
/home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/openmsx/machines/ColecoVision_SGM/COLECO.ROM

And using the loader command :

/opt/retropie/emulators/openmsx/bin/openmsx -machine 'ColecoVision_SGM' /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/coleco/SGM/mecha-8-2013.rom

Then it will not report that BIOS_XP.ROM is missing and just run the game without any issues, just like you already tested.

JimmyFromTheBay

@barbudreadmon said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

which doesn't include dozens of modern CV SGM releases

you can request them on our forum

I joined up and posted a request for a single game to be added (in FBN Discussion, the forum for "Having problems getting something to work?", which seemed the closest option) and it just got deleted, with no message about what I'd apparently done wrong :(

barbudreadmon

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

with no message about what I'd apparently done wrong

Maybe some basic politeness ? You should start a topic by saying hello or something, at the very least you shouldn't open a topic containing one single word (jumpland).

JimmyFromTheBay

@barbudreadmon said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

with no message about what I'd apparently done wrong

Maybe some basic politeness ? You should start a topic by saying hello or something, at the very least you shouldn't open a topic containing one single word (jumpland).

I thought coders appreciated brevity, and that the word [Request] in the title already implied politeness (as did going to the trouble of signing up for an account and completing the required exam, rather than just asking on here), but duly noted.

barbudreadmon

@JimmyFromTheBay said in The great Super Game Module mystery:

I thought coders appreciated brevity

Thanks for your concern, my bad for thinking you simply didn't want to bother.
There is no need for such concern, we actually love seeing new users including greetings in their first post.

Jumpland has been added to our coleco game roster.