Question about XBLA Arcade Emulation

[beamish]

Hi all,

 

If this is in anyway infringing on the board rules, then close it. (As far as I can see it isn't )

I have purchased the Simpsons Arcade game from Xbox Arcade, and was tinkering with the files to locate

the ROM to play on MAME. (I am doing this for curiosity sake, something I was interested in seeing if this was possible.)

After backing up the purchase to a flash drive and using various xbox specific tools,

I was able to get a simpsons.sr file. I then extracted the simpsons.sr file, and it exported 6 .dat files.
When opening simpsons_fw.sr in PSPad text editor , it shows a listing for 6 files, which i'm assuming are the actual ROM files themselves.

 

When compressed in a .zip and loaded into MAME it reads the files as "Simpsons Arcade (4 Players, Set 1)",

however I cannot get it to load. My guess is that it would require drivers to be written?

 

Any ideas or thoughts?

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

 

[Robert]

I'll have a look at that when i get back from work. It may be marked non working or needs more files.

[Superman]

I'm suprised it detected it at all as the official mame roms filenames are totally different :

 

Edited April 16, 2013 by Alpha
Your BBcode is ancient, Superman! :P

[beamish]

Right! I was just as baffled. When I get home from work, ill show screens from MAME itself.

Edited April 16, 2013 by beamish

[Alpha]

Hello Beamish!

 

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-------------------------------------------------

 

Now that I've got that out of the way, I think you've discovered something pretty amazing, Beamish! Honestly, I wouldn't be all that surprised if there are roms inside these XBLA files. One of our staff members (iq_132) several years ago found that this was also the case for Wii Virtual Console titles. You can see the thread here: http://www.1emulation.com/forums/topic/26916-nintendo-wii-virtual-console-games-just-roms-and-html-files/ ... believe it or not, the thread gained worldwide notoriety and shock at 133,761 views, as it was featured on the front page of Digg.com.

 

IMO, if we can prove that this is the case also for XBLA files, this could gain a lot of surprise (well, not with the coders ) among the community. I will be very interested to see if the files you found are indeed roms and if they are an exact checksum/MD5 match with the roms already in distribution. Essentially, I want to know if Microsoft dumped these arcade roms themselves or just rebranded what was already available on the Internet for years.

[beamish]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

 

I have tinkered with my purchases in Virtual Console as well, that's what gave me the idea!

I cant imagine them reworking the entire game, if they wanted to retain its originality.

 

I have posted this on other sites and havent heard anything, so either there isn't much interest on the Xbox scene, or I just havent seen any substantial articles on this yet.

 

Out of curiosity, I looked into the PS3 version of the game as well, and found the structure, and the file naming, and size to be identical.
Basically, they are the same files, just packaged to work with the PSN.

 

From what I see, I can guess is that this Simpsons.sr file contains the US as well as the Japan ROM.

Edited April 16, 2013 by beamish

[Alpha]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

 

I have tinkered with my purchases in Virtual Console as well, that's what gave me the idea!

I cant imagine them reworking the entire game, if they wanted to retain its originality.

 

I have posted this on other sites and havent heard anything, so either there isn't much interest on the Xbox scene, or I just havent seen any substantial articles on this yet.

 

Out of curiosity, I looked into the PS3 version of the game as well, and found the structure, and the file naming, and size to be identical.

Basically, they are the same files, just packaged to work with the PSN.

 

From what I see, I can guess is that this Simpsons.sr file contains the US as well as the Japan ROM.

Beamish, you've come to the right place! I hope the staff and community here will be able to fully assist you.

 

Is it possible you can post the screenshots of the PS3 version having the exact same structure and file naming? This seems worthy of a news post on the front page of 1Emulation.

[beamish]

Sorry for the delay. Without further ado...

 

Here is the structure of the XBOX Version:

 

Here is the structure of the PS3 Version:

 

I am more than happy to explain more if needed.


Also, what is more perplexing is that MAME reads it! I just cant get it to run.

Edited April 16, 2013 by beamish

[Alpha]

Wow! This is great.

 

Are the rom files you extracted from the XBL and PSN the exact checksum/MD5 as the roms that are already on the Internet?

If so, can you show this in a screencap as well? I'll make sure to include it in my upcoming news post.

[beamish]

See that where im stuck. I am having trouble extracting the data from the simpsons.sr file. I'm not familiar with the .sr format.

i used a program called offzip.exe to attempt to extract them, but all I got were some files with a .dat file extension.

 

 

However the puzzling thing was, it extracts 6 files, and when I zip up the .dat files, MAME shows them as a working rom.

Edited April 17, 2013 by beamish

[Alpha]

See that where im stuck. I am having trouble extracting the data from the simpsons.sr file. I'm not familiar with the .sr format.

i used a program called offzip.exe to attempt to extract them, but all I got were some files with a .dat file extension.

 

 

However the puzzling thing was, it extracts 6 files, and when I zip up the .dat files, MAME shows them as a working rom.

 

Sounds like Robert will probably have to help you out on this one. He should be online soon.

[beamish]

Progress! (somewhat)

 

So after extensive research, I was able to track down a BMS script capable to extracting the simpsons.sr file

leaving again 6 files, this time with .KON / .ROM file extensions.

 

Again, these files showed up in MAME, but after trying to load the game, i'm met with this message:

 

 

 

Here are the files with MD5/Checksum:

 

Simpsons_4J.KON - aea60dcc4c372310a33be37474ea80a5

Simpsons_4WA.KON - 9184fa8dc11dcacfbbd0ff043bc2388f

Simpsons_SAMPLES.ROM - f035fa135c057375931c5d05fed11a04

Simpsons_SOUND.ROM - 8f668a0ad3943644efd66addd9dbda50

Simpsons_SPRITES.ROM - 32de9f1d89cd53410d4bae775ffe8369

Simpsons_TILES.ROM - 9b9c7e7c97143d300c3a6a981e6a7e89

One step closer, I can feel it!

Edited April 17, 2013 by beamish

[Robert]

Hi there, took a bit longer than expected..

 

If you type at the command line:

 

mame simpsons -lr

 

you get:

 

ROMs required for driver "simpsons".

Name Size Checksum

072-g02.16c 131072 CRC(580ce1d6) SHA1(5b07fb8e8041e1663980aa35d853fdc13b22dac5)

072-g01.17c 131072 CRC(9f843def) SHA1(858432b59101b0577c5cec6ac0c7c20ab0780c9a)

072-j13.13c 131072 CRC(aade2abd) SHA1(10f178d5ed399b4866266e075d91ca3db26798f8)

072-j12.15c 131072 CRC(479e12f2) SHA1(15a6cb12e68b4773a29ab463640a43f8e814de59)

072-e03.6g 131072 CRC(866b7a35) SHA1(98905764eb4c7d968ccc17618a1f24ee12e33c0e)

072-b07.18h 524288 CRC(ba1ec910) SHA1(0805ccb641271dea43185dc0365732260db1763d)

072-b06.16h 524288 CRC(cf2bbcab) SHA1(47afea47f9bc8cb5eb1c7b7fbafe954b3e749aeb)

072-b08.3n 1048576 CRC(7de500ad) SHA1(61b76b8f402e3bde1509679aaaa28ef08cafb0ab)

072-b09.8n 1048576 CRC(aa085093) SHA1(925239d79bf607021d371263352618876f59c1f8)

072-b10.12n 1048576 CRC(577dbd53) SHA1(e603e03e3dcba766074561faa92afafa5761953d)

072-b11.16l 1048576 CRC(55fab05d) SHA1(54db8559d71ed257de9a29c8808654eaea0df9e2)

072-d05.1f 1048576 CRC(1397a73b) SHA1(369422c84cca5472967af54b8351e29fcd69f621)

072-d04.1d 262144 CRC(78778013) SHA1(edbd6d83b0d1a20df39bb160b92395586fa3c32d)

simpsons.nv 128 CRC(ec3f0449) SHA1(da35b98cd10bfabe9df3ede05462fabeb0e01ca9)

 

 

The default menu simply checks if the zip file simpsons.zip exists but it doesn't see what's inside. When you attempt to start the game, then it does the in-depth check, and fails. Mame doesn't actually care about the filenames of each rom, it only requires that the CRC matches. However you are missing a number of files, so it doesn't run.

 

Typically, all the graphics roms used in mame will be merged to one for the ports on other platforms, same with the program roms, etc. That's why you only get 6 from your roms.

 

Hope this helps! If you want it to work on mame just find and download the romset, there's heaps of places. Just google simpsons.zip rom and you get a whole page of sites.

[beamish]

No problem, thanks for the detailed answer!

 

Thats what I was afraid of. I was hoping to go the legit route and play a dump of what I purchased.

 

So these files could technically contain a playable game, however they have been packaged for specific ports, therefore making them unreadable?

 

Many thanks again!