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Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 3:30 pm
by streeker
Concerning "Beam Force" I took one last shot:
I downloaded the official VMI file from here https://web.archive.org/web/20070331081 ... cas.ne.jp/ , took the circulating VMS, renamed it to match the VMI, opened the combo with VMIwriter and got... an error message: according to the VMI the game should be 12126 Bytes in size, but the actual filesize is only 11776 Bytes.

To sum it up, all available copies of "Beam Force" including the ones on BlueSwirl, Dreamcast Live and the Dream Explorer/VMU Tool CD are corrupted and obviously haven't been uploaded fully back in the day. So, unless someone comes around with a fresh dump of the minigame, this one kinda seems to be lost forever...
:(

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 3:30 am
by colgate
Here it goes, 12126 bytes in size.

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 12:44 pm
by streeker
Thank you! Thank you!! THANK YOU!!! :)
This one finally works! And we're now one step closer to a full romset.

Out of curiosity: have you actually download the minigame back in like 2000 and kept it save on a VMU until now?

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 1:58 pm
by Rolly
So, only NBA 2K1 VMUv was left (https://web.archive.org/web/20010608121 ... vmuv.shtml) ?
Or are you still looking for some mini games / DLC ? Let me know, I'll try to search all my archive CDs and demo disks.

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 2:51 pm
by streeker
- "NBA 2K1 VMUv" is the only minigame/animation that is completly missing.
- Then there is "Mothra Dream Battle", which has to be resetted or in the best case dumped once again from a Special Edition Mothra VMU, that hasn't been activated yet.
- And finally it came to my attention yesterday, that there are still 132 character animations missing for the "Shenmue Goodies" minigame. I am working on a complete list of all missing characters right now.

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 5:45 pm
by colgate
I crawled all the websites I could back in the day, unfortunately I lost some of them in a hard drive wipe long time a go but I still have a good number.

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 6:08 pm
by streeker
colgate wrote:I crawled all the websites I could back in the day, unfortunately I lost some of them in a hard drive wipe long time a go but I still have a good number.
Kudos, sir!
Do you possibly happen to have any of the items mentioned above? Any of the stuff, that is still missing?

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 8:57 pm
by colgate
Unfortunately not. Funny that I got almost all Sega US games but nba2k wasn't one of them...

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Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 8:41 pm
by megavolt85
streeker wrote:- "NBA 2K1 VMUv" is the only minigame/animation that is completly missing.
animation?
may be you find this?
vmuv.gif
vmuv.gif (9.85 KiB) Viewed 6986 times

Re: VMU archiving project

Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 1:50 pm
by streeker
Unfortunately no. Your file is 260316 Bytes - that's like twice the size a normal VMU can handle. The file/animation we are looking for has to be exactly 36864 Bytes.

... But wait. I managed to convert the .LCD file of yours to .VMS - and afterwards it almost matches the filesize and runs like a regular minigame. So, in a way I guess this is what the downloadable animation had looked like. The difference in size might derive from a custom icon that reads "LCD Anim" instead of what SEGA originally wanted it to look like. Does anybody know a way to alter icons from VMU files (like savegames, minigames, etc.)?