Tuesday, February 26, 2013

PowerFest 94 ROMs & $1,000 Reproduction Reward

Last year we purchased PowerFest 94 and said we planned to dump the ROMs and make a reproduction cartridge. Below are the ROM files from PowerFest 94, but we have run into a bit of a snag with the reproduction cartridge and are offering $1,000 for the gaming community's help.

PowerFest 94 ROM Files

These are the four ROM files for PowerFest 94 - three game ROMS and one scoring ROM. This version of PowerFest 94 scores 10,000 points per home run.
Super Mario Lost Levels ROM
Super Mario Kart ROM
Ken Griffey Jr Baseball ROM
Scoring ROM

The SNES emulation community will need to do their magic to get these ROMs working correctly on emulators.

To help speed up the process we are offering $200 to the first person to release an emulator that successfully plays PowerFest 94. Please contact us to claim the bounty and be sure to include links to the emulator so we can verify the claim.

PowerFest 94 Reproduction History

For the last seven months I have been trying unsuccessfully to get a reproduction cartridge made so other gamers can enjoy PowerFest 94 on their Super Nintendo systems.

I spent four months in contact with one reproduction company with experience making SNES games. They even ordered a custom circuit board to meet their design specs, but were unable to get the PCB working.

I've contacted five other reproduction shops and all of them have said they cannot make it work either. Usually the problem relates to Super Mario Kart, which requires a DSP chip to play. They tell me that this chip makes reproduction much harder.

There is one reproduction shop that has successfully reproduced games like Nintendo World Championships and Nintendo Campus Challenge 92, but they are too busy with other projects to make the reproduction at this time.

We even contacted circuit board design companies to see if they could help us on a contract basis. None of them would do it because the circuit board design is officially property of Nintendo. Even though we would be designing a new circuit board, none of them wanted to reverse engineer the reproduction.

$1,000 Reward for PowerFest 94 Reproduction

We are still very interested in making a PowerFest 94 Reproduction so other collectors and gamers can play this fun competition cartridge. We are confident there are some gamers, electronic nuts, or other do-it-yourself tinkerers that can get a reproduction working. So we are offering $1,000 to the first person/company that successfully makes a PowerFest 94 reproduction.

The reproduction much meet a few criteria:
  • It must be the same size as a standard SNES cartridge for NTSC regions
  • The cartridge must play on a standard Super Nintendo console without any modifications required
  • The game play must be like the original with 6 minutes 21 seconds to play all three games with a combined high score. See video below for game play footage
  • It must be reproducible at a cost of less than $50 per circuit board

To sweeten the pot a little bit more, JJGames.com guarantees they will purchase 100 units of the reproduction cartridge at $50 a unit. The winner is not required to sell units to JJGames, but they have that option.

Good luck with the emulation and reproduction. I'm hoping we pay these bounties very quickly.

See PowerFest 94 GamePlay

17 comments :

Unknown said...

Awesome JJ, I love the Bounty Idea... maybe a Reproduction will actually become a Reality!! Thanks to you!

Zwario

Anonymous said...

http://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3741

Done.

Informationator said...

TYPICAL OVERACHIEVER BYUU

JJ Hendricks said...

Congrats byuu. I've contacted you for the payment stuff.

Unknown said...

Just got done playing it, 682,800. I got alot of work to do, lol.

I can't wait for an actual repro to be released!!!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I don't think byuu should count. The bounty implies the need for actual PLAYABLITY and byuu's stuff is more... a tech demo.

Anonymous said...

Have you contacted retrousb or super fighter team. They might be able.

JJ Hendricks said...

@unknown - That is a respectable score. I'm sure with a bit of practice you will be over 1 million for sure.

@anonymous - byuu's implementation might not be ideal, but I didn't really give qualifications for the bounty and technically the game is emulated with his setup. I'm hopeful that he will fully implement the emulation in the near future and others will as well.

@anonymous - I have contacted RetroUSB, they said they do not have time to do it right now. I will contact Super Fighter Team though right now. Thank you

Anonymous said...

byuu's implementation might not be ideal

Byuu's implementation is ideal, because it does exactly what the hardware does. And every PC today can run Bsnes/Higan with more than 200fps.
Zsnes is an old and inaccurate garbage today.
Snes9x is a good emulator, but far from the accuracy of Bsnes/Higan.

Bsnes/Higan is the future of Snes emulation, and you should use it as parameter.

Anonymous said...

Get on nintendoage and post this link and see what you get. They will help you probably get a repro cart. While on there, PM gwyndion. He's knows pretty much the entire repro community and will point you in the right direction.

g_block said...

@JJ Hendricks

Yeah, my third go around I almost cracked 1 million

got 995,250 only thing that kept me from it is I got 3rd on Mario Kart. Got 17 home runs, so 1st in MK and 16 HRs should be the ticket to a million :)

Anonymous said...

You should take a hammer an smash everything that is connected to that game it is junk. I will give an reward to the first person to smash it.

g_block said...

Jealous much "Anonymous"? The game isn't "junk" not by a long shot.

JJ you're right, finally got a million (1,059,750), the magic # is 1st in Mario Kart and 17 home runs in Ken Griffey. It's a pain to do lol

g_block said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHl_7CvtLD4 done

Repro uses the same board as the SNCC92, but with double the ROM and a different CPLD program. All the timer and DIP switch hardware is the same so it has the same time limits.

I found more gold painted SNES carts used for the SNCC92 so those will be first.

from bunnyboy on the NA thread...no ETA, but that's some awesome news!!!

JJ Hendricks said...

@g_block - Thanks for that update. I hadn't seen bunnyboy's post on NintendoAge about the reproduction.

I'm hopeful that he will soon sell these remaining cartridges. I will pay him as soon as I have one to verify the four criteria.

Anonymous said...

any update on this? I know retro USB has made a few, but its impossible to find. I need this in my life and im willing to pay!!!! scottwilson961@gmail.com if you can help me out

Anonymous said...

The Vintex 64 team would be interested in making it. We actually put the Mario version of these games on single carts. Get in contact, and see our website for more details.

Post a Comment

ShareThis

 

Login | Create Account