Bound High!

New debug restoration and save patches for Bound High! Some of these debug features were previously known but the title screen/Score Attack!!/Pocket and Cushion button combos are newly discovered.

Save patch works the same as usual and is compatible with the debug patch, but you can easily overwrite your saved scores and progress using the debug cheats, so take that into consideration when deciding whether you want both applied to the same ROM.

Note that these patches are for Bound High (World) (Proto 2).vb, the apparently-final build of the unreleased Bound High!. They are explicitly not compatible with Bound High (World) (Proto 1) [b], formerly known as Bound High (Japan) (En) (Proto).vb.

Hyper Fighting fix / Nester's Funky Bowling v1.0

Bit of a different one today. The unlicensed game Hyper Fighting already has native save support, but there's a minor bug around the Brightness setting, which will be reset if you ever set it to the maximum value, due to an off-by-one error aimed at preventing the brightness from exceeding the maximum. This was a single-byte fix.

Nester's Funky Bowling is a regular save hack, works like all the others.

Mario Clash v1.3 / Space Squash v1.2

Starting with this update, SRAM initialization has support for an optional delay before SRAM access is attempted. This is needed for (some? all?) flash carts on real hardware, where SRAM is not accessible immediately upon boot.

Specifically, the new SRAM delay benefits flash cart owners playing Space Squash. On startup, Space Squash loads several variables like the brightness setting into RAM. This was fine when it was reading those values from ROM, but we're loading them from SRAM instead. Without the delay, SRAM was not ready yet by the time the game started trying to read those values. The Space Squash update is only necessary for real hardware users; in emulation, SRAM is always available immediately. That said, it's also fine to use this version in emulation.

The Mario Clash v1.3 update fixes a bug with erasing SRAM on real hardware and a bug specific to the button swap variant. Gameplay is unchanged. The update correctly handles the attract mode gameplay demos that play when you leave the game running on the title screen. DogP's original button remapping hack, which I've (optionally) incorporated into the save patch, did not correct for the original demo inputs, so when the CPU attempted to demonstrate gameplay, it did so by "pressing" the wrong buttons. v1.3 adjusts this so that the demos play out as intended.

Changelog

Mario Clash

v1.3

• fix SRAM erasing (L + R + Left D-Pad Down + Right D-Pad Down at the title screen) on real hardware
• fix attract mode demos in button swap variant

Space Squash

v1.2

• delay first SRAM access; improves hardware compatibility

Space Squash v1.1

Whoops, v1.0 was bugged.

Changelog

Space Squash

v1.1

• fix saving Area/Stage where high score was achieved

Red Alarm v1.3 / V-Tetris v1.0

Themed release around games that are in space, maybe?

Brand-new patches for Space Squash (saves high scores, game progress and config) and V-Tetris (saves high scores), plus an update for Red Alarm.

Space Squash should work with or without the English translation patch by Benjamin Stevens, thunderstruck, Greg Stevens and Feel. It has mostly been tested with the English translation patch applied.

EDIT: See v1.1 release for Space Squash.

The Red Alarm update is aimed at improving compatibility with HorvatM's Single Press Debug Menu patch. My patch includes a feature that disables high-score saving while debug mode is active, so that you can fool around in debug mode without replacing your legitimate high score, but HorvatM's patch changes the way the debug menu is activated, so my patch didn't detect that debug mode was running when used in conjunction with HorvatM's.

That said, I have had a report that the debug menu doesn't function at all when HorvatM's and my patch are used in conjunction, but works fine with either patch individually. I can't replicate this on my end (via emulation), so I'm pushing this release for now but will continue to investigate what causes the incompatibility on real hardware. If you're not using HorvatM's patch, this update won't make any difference to you.

Changelog

Red Alarm

v1.3

• change high score protection to check debug mode in a HorvatM-agnostic way

Jack Bros. v1.4

Changelog

Jack Bros.

v1.4

• now saves the "super players" difficulty setting
• adds four new save slots for super players mode

Jack Bros. v1.3 / Vertical Force v1.0 / Waterworld v1.0

New patches for Vertical Force (both regions) and Waterworld, plus another update for Jack Bros. If you're playing via emulation, you most likely won't notice any difference with this Jack Bros. update, but on real hardware the toggle to switch the game to debug mode wasn't registering in the previous version. It's now confirmed working on real hardware.

Changelog

Jack Bros.

v1.3

• fixed debug toggle on real hardware (hold Select on boot)

Mario Clash v1.2

In the process of fixing for 8-bit SRAM for the v1.1 release, I completely broke high score saving in Mario Clash. Whoops. Here's v1.2 to make up for it. Once again, there's versions with and without DogP's button swap pre-loaded. I strongly recommend the version with the button swap, which makes the game play more like every other Mario game in existence.

Changelog

Mario Clash

v1.2

• un-broke high score saving ... I mean fixed, that's called fixing

Jack Bros. v1.2 / Red Alarm v1.2

It turns out retail games and older flash kits used an 8-bit bus to address SRAM, meaning only every other byte can be read/written. Newer flash kits (and emulators) use a 16-bit bus and can access all of SRAM, but starting with this version all patches are updated to only write the high bytes, so they should work on any generation of flash kit. Golf does not need an update: T&E Soft's dummied save support was already respecting this requirement.

Changelog

Jack Bros.

v1.2

• removed the "saved password loading" setup from older builds, just uses the Start/Select Player screen now
• added individual character save slots (delete saves with D-Pad Down × 4)
• added secret character to player select (hold L + R while navigating)
• added debug toggle (hold Select while booting) and title screen message
• read/write only high bytes from SRAM

Mario Clash

v1.1

• added a second patch file which includes the essential button swap by DogP
• read/write only high bytes from SRAM

Red Alarm

v1.2

• read/write only high bytes from SRAM

Jack Bros. v1.1

I found a language swap feature hidden in the original game. In my previous version, I had implemented my own (hold Start on boot), but I'm now leveraging the official button code (hold L, R, Left D-Pad Left and press Start on the title screen).

In the Japanese version, this toggled the game to English. In the base USA game, it ... toggles the game to English. The button code works in the US version, it just has no appreciable result. The game just checks "Is this the USA version and/or has the player entered the secret English code?" This patch now makes the toggle go both ways.

Patch is otherwise unchanged.

Changelog

Jack Bros.

v1.1

• switch to using secret built-in language swap combo