Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

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Norbert
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Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by Norbert »

I have finished the first version of a document that describes the regional differences between Prince of Persia 1 for SNES releases:

2015-09-25_PoP1_for_SNES_Regional_Differences.pdf

The source document (.odt; OpenDocument) is also available, here.
Its main page on popot.org is here.
Feedback is welcome. Just post it in this thread or send an e-mail.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by Norbert »

Several of the changes from JP to US are self-explanatory. The removal of the pentagram is most likely because of its perceived association with Satanism/occultism. (Maybe also socialism/communism/religions/magic.) Somewhat related articles here and here. The Japanese version even contains a(n unused) Star of David. However, the document raises several interesting questions:
- Why have the cloud backgrounds of the fawn levels (pink palace) been moved after the other backgrounds?
- In the marble levels (red palace), why have the backgrounds with pink been changed? (They aren't even used in any levels, are they?)
- In levels 4 and 5, why have those extra bits (100 decimal) been removed from those locations? (They are not animation related, I think.)
- In levels 4 and 19, why have events (and related raise buttons) been flipped? (In fact, in both levels, one of the changed pairs isn't even in use.)
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by David »

Norbert wrote:- In levels 4 and 5, why have those extra bits (100 decimal) been removed from those locations? (They are not animation related, I think.)
"not animation related":
But I think they are.
As I wrote on the wiki, the "Block flags and background animation info" is actually two arrays.
The first (bits 0-1) is indexed by foreground tile and contains floor and wall flags.
The second (bits 2-7) is indexed by background tile and contains animation group IDs.
The differences are in the second one. It just follows the move of the cloud graphics.
Norbert wrote:- In levels 4 and 19, why have events (and related raise buttons) been flipped? (In fact, in both levels, one of the changed pairs isn't even in use.)
"isn't even in use":
The first swapped pair is marked as "trigger next" in each case.
So the second pair is used indirectly.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by Norbert »

David wrote:So the second pair is used indirectly.
Oh, yeah.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by Norbert »

Small correction, if there's ever an updated version of the document:
On page 7, 0x2C-0x43 should be 0x2B-0x42.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by Norbert »

Why do we even think there are EU and US versions of PoP1 for SNES?
Only 3(!) bytes differ between these two versions.
Isn't it more likely that someone modified the (single) non-JP version, and then people thought there are two non-JP versions?

At offset 0x7FD9, there's:
- US: 01 A4 00 32 41 CD BE
- EU: 02 A4 00 31 41 CE BE
(The JP version has 00 DD 00 C9 8A 36 75 there. Slightly related is this post.)
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by salvadorc17 »

Norbert wrote:Why do we even think there are EU and US versions of PoP1 for SNES?
Only 3(!) bytes differ between these two versions.
Isn't it more likely that someone modified the (single) non-JP version, and then people thought there are two non-JP versions?
Youre sure about that, no different passwords or screen/game speed??
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by David »

Norbert wrote: Why do we even think there are EU and US versions of PoP1 for SNES?
Only 3(!) bytes differ between these two versions.
Isn't it more likely that someone modified the (single) non-JP version, and then people thought there are two non-JP versions?
Couldn't that "someone" be the developer or the publisher?
Maybe the console checks the value of the country code, similarly to DVD region codes?
Norbert wrote: At offset 0x7FD9, there's:
- US: 01 A4 00 32 41 CD BE
- EU: 02 A4 00 31 41 CE BE
(The JP version has 00 DD 00 C9 8A 36 75 there. Slightly related is this post.)
According to these docs:
* the 01/02/00 byte is the country,
* the A4/DD byte is the Developer ID code,
* the 00 byte is the ROM Version number,
* the remaining 4 bytes are the Checksum and its complement.
salvadorc17 wrote:Youre sure about that, no different passwords or screen/game speed??
Passwords are the same.

About the speed: The US version seems to be faster. I guess that's because the game's speed is synced to the framerate.
But that does not tell who changed the ROMs.

This walkthrough by Christian Wall mistakenly claims that the USA version matches the Japanese, and differs from the European, based on the fact that USA and Japanese both use NTSC.

The covers on MobyGames list the following countries:
* United States, Canada and Mexico (NTSC) -- This is the US version.
* Japan (NTSC) -- This is the JP version.
* Germany (PAL) -- This is the EU version.
* Australia and New Zealand (PAL) -- Um. Since it's PAL, this is probably the EU version?
The list of country codes says that 02h is for "Europe, Oceania, Asia", but then it also lists 11h for Australia specially.

And then there is the list of releases...
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by David »

Norbert wrote:Nice find, that document https://github.com/gilligan/snesdev/blo ... llsnes.txt
I have had a copy of that (and other console docs) for a few years.
It's originally here (HTML) and here (TXT).
I linked the copy on GitHub only because it lets me link to a specific line.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by salvadorc17 »

David wrote: Why do we even think there are EU and US versions of PoP1 for SNES?
Only 3(!) bytes differ between these two versions.
Some levels like 19 have small differences with japan rom, i have find that using an online file comparer some extra bytes changed, but is really weird that usa and eu are not big different except from the frame rate.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by David »

I found a page about these differences: https://tcrf.net/Prince_of_Persia_(SNES)
The Japanese version allow you to skip the title screen, while the international version forces you to wait until the title screen is fully displayed.
I didn't know about this.
In the Japanese version you can press a button as early as the Masaya intro, and the game will skip straight to the main menu.
In the Europe/USA versions you can't interrupt the Konami logo or the copyright screen. And both of them take quite much time to "build up".
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by NITM-T »

Hahaha, yeah, we can do that.
I don't know how much games has this "skip intro" when they are release for more than one company, but I know that we cannot skip Donkey kong Country 3's intro too, but as soon the game starts, if you reset it, you can skip it and go to 1996 Nintendo screen. That is pretty use for speedrunners.

Also, Masaya don't has song in its intro, so that sound select option (Start + Select) has only 33 sounds and both US and EU versions has 34 because the first song is for the Konami intro:

Image

JP version also has a special password that give you max HP and we start the game with 105 minutes left: UUUUUUW.
I don't know and I've never seen a magazine/forum/site or something that speaks about a password like that for US and EU versions. I think is exclusive for JP version, only.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

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NITM-T wrote: May 19th, 2018, 1:55 pm JP version also has a special password that give you max HP and we start the game with 105 minutes left: UUUUUUW.
I don't know and I've never seen a magazine/forum/site or something that speaks about a password like that for US and EU versions. I think is exclusive for JP version, only.
You can look up the format of SNES passwords here: https://www.popot.org/documentation.php?doc=SNES_pass
From the first two rows of the table, you can read out that the US/EU equivalent of that password is "777777R".

While at it, the password for activating cheats is also different between versions: viewtopic.php?p=15926#p15926
In the Japanese version it's "SPECIAL".
You can't even enter that in the US/EU versions, because they don't allow vowels in passwords: viewtopic.php?p=22339#p22339
So those versions have "SPCCMD!" instead.

Note the difference:
The max HP password is just a "regular" password that happens to begin with six identical characters.
You can decode and generate it the PoP1 SNES password tool: https://www.popot.org/other_useful_tool ... =SNES_pass
The cheat password, however, is checked specially by the game.
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Re: Documentation (Prince of Persia 1 for SNES Regional Differences)

Post by NITM-T »

I saw those threads before and those with "how to know they work" stuff, I thought were for those players that want to know how to make a new password style like kaslghnoon did.

So, yes, I know that they made password different for each version (there're more games like that if I remeber correctly), but about that 777777R works for US version, was new to me! Like I said, I've never seen this before and all these passwords and glitches are old like we already talked about them. Your study "inside" the game is amazing! I'm glad that I was able to meet people like you, David! People who know they stuff like you, it's like meet the programmers themselves. Thanks!
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