TurboGrafx-16 - Only a few roms running

Darksavior

@backstander Odds are they never encountered a game that loaded to an error. I encountered two so far. Future Boy Conan and Sylphia. They will load to a picture of japanese writing saying something about error reading the system card.
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backstander

@Darksavior
I have updated the wiki to reflect this!

I tested those 2 games you mentioned and got the same results.

I also noticed that the better version of the syscard3.pce BIOS says "PC Engine" at the "System Card interface" and the other one does not say that. My guess is that the one that doesn't say "PC Engine" is probably the American version.
Examples below:

ff1a674273fe3540ccef576376407d1d

0754f903b52e3b3342202bdafb13efa5

Darksavior

@backstander Nice find. Maybe there's something wrong with the "american" dump since I don't believe there was any region protection on cd games. Only the hucards.

edmaul69

@Darksavior it is true that there isnt protection on the cd's, however if you need a specific japanes system card then you can have an issue. For example the arcade cd's. Also on a turbografx not a turbo duo, if you need a newer card, like the arcade card pro or the super rare 3.0 card that could be an issue. As far as a turbo duo, the arcade cd's are the only ones i know of that needs the arcade card duo (or pro if you have it)

Darksavior

@edmaul69 I know of the arcade card and these two games that wouldn't load on the american bios aren't arcade cd games.

edmaul69

@Darksavior i have a lot of cd games, i just dont have either of those games. I wonder what their difference is. The us bios is either from the turbo duo or the rare system card 3. I would guess the system card 3. Im not sure the difference in the bios' from the japanese one is. Most of my stuff is 3000 miles away in storage, but i am going back there on the 23rd. So if i remember to pull out my turbo duo while i am there i want to test those two games.

edmaul69

@Darksavior well it looks like the 7 cd games from hacker international required their games express card. Not sure if the games express card works on retropie.

edmaul69

I also forgot, altered beast only works on system card v1.0. However it is working on here with the pc engine syscard3.pce. Strange.

edmaul69

@swaggers you say you tried both emulators. One is lr-beetle-pce-fast. What is the other one?

swaggers

@edmaul69
lr-beetle-supergrafx
The other default TG16/PCEngine emulator in RetroPie.
I have managed to get both of the Syscard3.pce bios now but I don't have any of the CD games yet. Just the base ROMs to test.

backstander

From my understanding there wasn't any region protection for the CD based games and I remember trying some Japanese CDs in my TurboGrafx CD and TurboDuo about 10-15 years ago. I was surprised that they worked so well then!

I did some more research (or googling) and found a 3rd System Card v3.0 that is identified as being from Japan with an md5sum of 38179df8f4ac870017db21ebcbf53114. I tried Mirai Shounen Conan and Sylphia and they both worked on this BIOS. I also tried that 4 in 1 Super CD for the US Turbo Duo (this is the same one I had for my Duo which is also in storage lol) and it worked as well. The "System Card interface" looks just like ff1a674273fe3540ccef576376407d1d with "PC Engine" and "1991".

Also I was able to verify that the md5 of 0754f903b52e3b3342202bdafb13efa5 is indeed the USA version.

I updated the wiki with this:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/PC-Engine

I ran out of time searching and didn't get to look up ff1a674273fe3540ccef576376407d1d to see if it was just another Japan or maybe Europe?