Secret of Evermore love and hate

[TragicManner]

First paragraph will be my long explanation, 2nd will get down to an issue I'm having, followed by more ranting:

So, recently I decided to repair my old SNES and play a few classic games. On playing Secret of Evermore, I relived all of my sadness due to the fact that the Dog cannot be played by a second player. Then I remembered reading about a hack some time back that enabled 2 players. So, I downloaded it, applied it, and started enjoying some beautiful Secret of Evermore 2-player goodness...

That is, until the game froze. And then froze again. And then froze yet again. I've tried acquiring several different ROMs from several different sources and re-applying the patch after re-downloading the latest version (1.03, from what I can tell) and I still always seem to have the game lock up whenever I reach the sand place in the beginning of the game. I even tried using several different emulators, machines, and even my Wii (Homebrew Channel ^_^)

Now, I googled and even searched these forums to see if this problem is common to the 2 player patch, but I have found nothing. Anyone else have this problem? Or did I do something wrong?

[franpa]

Did you try BSNES with a ROM known to be verified as a good dump via NSRT?

Scan it with NSRT before applying the patch/mod obviously.

[Nightcrawler]

I was able to play through the game to completion with this patch on the real SNES. The only issues I encountered were those listed in the readme file. That pyramid with the switches was probably the most difficult part to get past due to glitches. Typically switching back and forth and moving a bit around seems to alleviate most glitching.

[SquareHead]

Secret of Evermore was a buggy game anyways.

I remember having one really glitched game, where I made it to Ebon keep from the bridge (No reason why it should have been down). Where there was no one in the castle, the stairway down to the ravine never opened, and when I went into the room where the verminator was the game would lock up.

Somehow I ended up making it to the space station without getting all the parts, I somehow made it with just the diamond eye and the gauge. But since I did not kill the verminator I did not have the bazooka, and could not make it more than a few room in in the space station. Most doors were frozen and wouldn't open.

No cheat device was used, and after several hours of frustration, a friend had a look at my game, told me nothing was right about it, and I had to start over.

[grinvader]

I did not have the bazooka, and could not make it more than a few room in in the space station. Most doors were frozen and wouldn't open.

... what does the bazooka have to do with opening doors in there ?

Send the mech barking turboengine toaster of doom with a plasma cannon on the hood up to the surface and destroy the locks to open them.

Of course, if the locks don't spawn for some horribly stupid reason, that's more of an issue.
Still unrelated to the bazooka.

[SquareHead]

... what does the bazooka have to do with opening doors in there ?

Absolutely nothing.

Holy hell. Looking at my previous post, I made little sense.

The doors were glitched and wouldn't open. Probably was the little globes not spawning or something like that, because flying toaster dog was how I seen I had a long way to go, and no way to get there. The hatches in the floors wouldst work either.

As for the bazooka, without it, I was getting my ass handed to me by the local life in the station.

[TragicManner]

Alright, here's what I've got so far.

The MD5 of the ROM I'm using seems to be correct. NSRT output here:

Code: Select all

---------------------Internal ROM Info----------------------
       File: Secret of Evermore.smc
       Name: SECRET OF EVERMORE       Company: Square
     Header: SWC                         Bank: HiROM
Interleaved: None                        SRAM: 64 Kb
       Type: Normal + Batt                ROM: 24 Mb
    Country: USA                        Video: NTSC
  ROM Speed: 120ns (FastROM)         Revision: 1.0
   Checksum: Good 0x33C2            Game Code: AEOE
---------------------------Hashes---------------------------
      CRC32: A5C0045E
        MD5: 6E9C94511D04FAC6E0A1E582C170BE3A
--------------------------Database--------------------------
       Name: Secret of Evermore
    Country: USA                     Revision: 1.0
     Port 1: Gamepad                   Port 2: Gamepad
    Genre 1: RPG                      Genre 2: Action

As far as I can tell, that's pretty much spot on. Please let me know if I'm wrong here.

I'll try running it with BSNES and see how that goes. Thanks for the suggestions, and thanks squarehead and grinvader for a bit of comedy ^_^

UPDATE: Alright, I tried out BSNES, and wow, what a difference. Had to mess with the brightness settings a bit (likely due to my crappy TV), but wow, what a difference. Could be completely due to chance, as I've done a ton of debugging and software testing in my time and know how some bugs can become suddenly elusive, but so far so good. Thanks again!