NES Roms 99% sure to work!

[Lucifer]

how far has anyone ever gotten on super mario frustration custom rom? that was the most bizarre mod I've seen in my life (for NES games)

[zachnehrenberg]

I beat it

[Jurai]

anyone gotten sharpnes to output anything, I'm hitting an exception in the DrawGame() function

[Lucifer]

you'll have to make sure all XNA 2.0 commands are updated to 3.0 in sharpnes' source code.

[amoo3]

Im still wondering how you would play a NES game with one hand. How can you move and attack at the same time without holding your Zune awkwardly? Also, do you think that 400mhz is enough to speedily emulate the NES? i think might be, but just throwing it out there.

[Gman561]

i think it could be posible.. just look at this video..

YouTube - MORE XNA ZUNE GOODNESS

his playing 3d games.. thats all i have to say.

[sowhatu]

so, is this a yes or no?
something has got to keep me from buying an "archos 605 80GIG player".

[Lucifer]

ｉｔ　ＷＩＬＬ probably be done, just give it time.

[zachnehrenberg]

Anything can be done given time.

[mikenike]

man gotta have my mario!
i wish i knew how to program and stuff cause i wanta help, but the online turotials are a bit confusing

[SpiderJames]

any news on this project yet? I would bow down to anyone who does this

[axlgreasetires]

well i assume some1 is working on it. i hate c#. i never thought i would ever need to know it

i would much rather prefer c++...

[willisoccer]

if some one could get this to woek it would answer my prayers

[soccerfreak24]

Originally Posted by willisoccer

if some one could get this to woek it would answer my prayers

as would it answer mine.

[cable729]

hope it works, any idea when we'll be getting these games IF it works?

[SimReality]

When someone finishes it. Porting and optimizing an emulator like that is going to take a considerable effort. I would imagine the Zune can emulate an NES without much issue if programmed properly. But that will take time. A straight port of SharpNES is likely to run like absolute garbage on the Zune because it was made with desktop PC power in mind. You have to really get into things and micro-optimize to get little boosts where you can.

Also, in my opinion, it might almost be easier to write some program to take the data out of the ROM and pre-process it into something that is more modern (takes advantage of SpriteBatch and whatnot). Considering an emulator already knows how to get that data out and use it, I can't imagine it being a stretch to do. Would be an interesting project to play with, but I'm inundated with projects at this point. :p

[yeloshu]

I'm with SimReality, although even with my limited knowledge on the inner workings of emulators, I would think that you would still have to write an interpreter to emulate many of the opcodes(right term?) that the NES uses. The only things that I could see you actually modernizing are the drawing and audio engines. And there are many tools out there to extract images(compressed or not) and audio(also compressed or not) from games. Even with modern drawing and audio systems though, you would still have to write a lot of code to automatically adjust the ROM and emulator's code to actually utilize the new systems. In fact, I'd say that the easiest way to actually make a specific game work with your emulator would be to make a custom plugin for said game that is written to emulate much of the game's code without actually even using the ROM and just extracting the resources from the ROM itself. This means that there are probably three methods that you might go about making an emulator work:

1.) Emulate the console exactly and interpret all of the ROM in the same way that the original console would(including drawing and audio). Likely the slowest of the options.

2.) Emulate only what you might call the game's source code while replacing the console's native drawing and audio methods with more modern equivalents similar to what emulators do for more modern(read: less ancient) consoles such as the N64(Project64, Blade64, Corn) and the PSX(ePSXe) with the various Graphics and Audio plugins they support. Probably would only show a small improvement over Option 1 due to the slightly easier task of drawing textures as opposed to calculating what is drawn to each pixel the old fashioned way. I think however that this could make a Graphics plugin similar to the sort of thing shown here: http://homepage.mac.com/qubedstudios/metroidcubed.htm possible. Although the lack of 3D capabilities may make that impossible.

3.) Actually work on remaking most games in as quick and accurate a manner as you can, possibly actually attempting to extract the assembly from the game and recompile it into scripts that the emulator then runs. May be slow to load initially but after extracting the code and resources from the ROM then recompiling the code, it would probably run infinitely faster as all you have to do is run the new script as opposed to having to interpret the ROM at runtime.

Option 3 is by far the most intriguing method as it would put the ROM into a format that would be easily hacked, having access to the game's hardcoded things, as well as taking away the issue you normally have with ROM hacking where you can't change the size of the ROM any, or add additional data without going through the entire ROM and adjusting each and every pointer to appropriate for your changes. However, this method would be extremely hard, as is evident in the lack of any such program even though ROM's have been available, as well as in-depth technical documents detailing the software mechanics of the NES, for around two decades.

Regardless of the method that you choose to make an emulator for the Zune, it will take, unless you already have an incredible understanding of NES emulation, easily several months to actually get accurate NES emulation as well as having optimized your code to the point where the game will run quick enough to actually enjoy it.

Phew, that took a while to spit out. I hope that kinda helps put the scale of such an undertaking into perspective for anyone wishing to attempt it. Also, I hope I didn't scare anyone away from actually trying it. I'm just trying to enumerate on the difficulty of said project and how much work you would really need to put into it.

[ZacMagnum]

not sure why but this won't work for me. I go to open it in XNA and it says I have to convert it.....so I do, but after that it says it couldn't convert. Not sure whats going on.

[Tlo1048]

THis would be so awesome!
I could play Zelda, Mario, Contra, etc.

[Superaison]

N64 Emulator ftw.


I'm looking forward to playing Mario Cart 64, not only on a xbox n psp, but a Zune.


Is there Doom on a Zune yet?