Chrono Trigger ROM on PSX CD!?!?

[fuchisasquatch]

haha...i sent this email to square a couple of days ago...

Dear Customer:

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail us.  Unfortunately, we do not have
access to the information you requested, nor do we have any information on
what other resources might have it.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Ryan Riley
Customer Support Supervisor


On Sun, 15 Aug 2004, Jamie !!!! wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Why did you use a Super Nintendo ROM in the remake of Chrono Trigger on the
> PSX. I am very intrigued and don't think that it is worth the money for a
> ROM.
>
> And you should have made it less suspicious as just the file name gave it
> away to me. Plus it also makes it easier for people to gain illegal copies
> of your games.

great customer service

[halkun]

Having worked in coustomer service, you were sent an auto-reply as the human who read it didn't find it worth replying too.

Taking a step back, your tone in the letter was really childish.

I am very intrigued and don't think that it is worth the money for a ROM.

Were you complaning that you were ripped off for buying a re-release? I take the distrobution of the ROM a very generous gift. I can now play the rom on my PC and the PSX game on my PSX. I can play the original game and probably learn a thing or two about Japanese.  

And you should have made it less suspicious as just the file name gave it away to me.

Are you griping that they didn't hide the data file to your likeing? Dude, the deveopers were giving you the rom. It was a bonus gift!

Plus it also makes it easier for people to gain illegal copies of your games.

Are you saying *YOU* are going to start distributing the rom? That's what it sounds like.


Also you didn't talk to Square. You were probably getting some outsourced Customer Service place in India. The likely hood of anyone at Square seeing that letter is less than 0

[fuchisasquatch]

Hehe, that letter wasn't sent to find real info. I just did it for fun.

But yeah, just because the rom is there, doesnt mean that we can legally play if. Its just like in away pirating the game (copying it to your computer) and also by using an emulator to run it would be an illegal action too... so yeah.

[The Skillster]

that rom.bin find is actually very very very old find here in these forums.

[fuchisasquatch]

Oh really, woops i didnt know that... Sorry then.

[Valour]

I know this is old but wanted to clear up some of this.

The rom in the PSX cd is just a very unique way to hold game data, it's *NEVER* executed.

The Chrono Trigger CD does not not contain an emulator, nor is the rom emulated.

The PSX CPU and Video are *NOT* backwards compatible with the SNES esp. w mode 7 . The game is emulated just like FF6.

I am not sure about the SNES Sound Chip, the SPC700 maybe compatible as stated, if this is true why was FF4 (the first SNES port) music streamed and not sequenced?

If you look in the FF6 PSX CD and do a compare with the SNES rom you will find that that CD contains the rom too, but in FF6's case, the rom has been "shattered" and split up into individual data sets. The the executable data has been stripped.

Chrono Trigger also has the ROM split up into 3 different pieces just like FF4, 5, 6 etc. which emulates the actual game. The ROM.BIN you are referring to is not used to run the game as you previously stated (this is true).

So the PSX CD contains two versions of the ROM, the ROM.BIN and also 3 pieces split up that is packed into the emulator just like FF6 etc.

The CT rom was actually there as a "secret bonus"  for the Japanese market. It was put there on puropse.

However, the US version of Chono Trigger has an exclusive distrobution contract with Nintendo. If you run US CT ROM in an SNES emulator it says "Licenced to Nintendo" in the US version. Because Nintendo has the rights, Square coudn't release the english version of the rom in the US.

This assumption is rather ridiculous that Square would put a hidden file (no less) called ROM.BIN so people could use unauthorized Emulators.

The US version's file is not in the root dir, it is in a sub dir and has been modified and does not run properly on an SNES emulator. The Licenced to Nintendo text is from the SNES Cart version from 1995, not the 1999 emulator. To clear this up there are 3 different ROMs we are talking about.

Additionally Nintendo had nothing to do with the PSX port, it was published by Square Electronic Arts LLC (same as FF4-6) nothing special or new with CT.

[Myria kitty]

When I looked at FF5, its assembly code looked very, very strange.  I believe that it's actually a statically-recompiled version of the original ROM's 65816 code.  The instructions looked like they were doing very roundabout things to accomplish their task, which is what I would expect from such code.

Static recompilation means that they had a program analyze the 65816 opcodes and convert them to either C or MIPS code.  The R3000 CPU in the PSX wasn't powerful enough to do straightforward interpretive emulation of the 65816.  They had to do something special to get it fast enough, and it appears that static compilation was their solution.

Another big reason that I believe that the games use static recompilation is that they work exactly the same way as the originals.  FF4 and FF5 still have the same bugs - have Lydia cast Dejon after Calcabrina in the dwarven castle, and it'll work just like on SNES.  FF6 had some bugs fixed, but not all.  The US FF6 PSX was actually derived from the Japanese PSX version rather than by recompiling the US SNES version; for example, the mosaic bug in the Skills menu was fixed in US SNES but is still broken in both the Japanese and US PSX versions.  No idea about Chrono Trigger.

The GBA versions, in contrast, are rewrites of the game engine.  They do not have the same bugs at all, *except* when they involve script bugs - the script code is mostly identical to the SNES originals, interpreted by the new engine.  For example, the bug in FF5 where you can see a scene in world 2 where Galuf speaks even after he dies.

This is in contrast to the GBA re-releases by Capcom, who apparently used static recompilation there as well.  Note how Rockman & Forte, Zelda - Triforce of the Gods, Breath of Fire and Breath of Fire 2 are exactly the same.  (Unlike Zelda 3, Super Mario World wasn't ported by Capcom, and it is not the same engine.)

[halkun]

This conversation died in 2004. Please make a new topic.

Necromancy is bad 'm-kay?