SFC clones of SNES games?

[kwyxz]

While checking out the latest No-Intro datfiles for the Super Nintendo romset I have stumbled upon new entries like this:

http://datomatic.no-intro.org/index.php?page=show_record&s=49&n=1114

There is now a bunch of games qualified as (Japan) (En)

The No-Intro website calls them clones of European games, but I'm quite puzzled. Does anyone have any idea what they are? Where are these coming from? As far as I know Japanese SFC and European SNES are not compatible because of a region-locking chip incorporated in the cartridges so I am left wondering what these clones are about.

Now in regards to the boxarts, what's the consensus with these clones, should we use Japanese or European boxarts? (I'm leaning towards Japanese but ymmv)

[hizzlekizzle]

I assume these are games that were made by Western studios and released in USA/PAL-land before being localized for Japanese release. I would use the Japanese boxarts.

[kwyxz]

Thanks for your answer! I will be using the Japanese boxarts. Regarding the origin of the games, it's very unclear : a lot of them indeed are made by western studios but there is a bunch of 100% Japanese games as well, for example:

Human Grand Prix III - F1 Triple Battle (Japan) (En).png
Human Grand Prix II (Japan) (En).png
Human Grand Prix IV - F1 Dream Battle (Japan) (En).png
Human Grand Prix (Japan) (En).png
HyperZone (Japan) (En).png
Jaleco Rally Big Run - The Supreme 4WD Challenge (Japan) (En).png
Mario to Wario (Japan) (En).png

Puzzling indeed.

Edit: just had an idea, could it be Japanese releases for the Super Famicom, but with English translations?

[hizzlekizzle]

Yeah, definitely could be.

[RobLoach]

Would symlinks work for clones?

[kwyxz]

Are symlinks even preserved on Github? (I use hardlinks on my personal repo)

[Alcaro]

Git supports symlinks, so GitHub does too. Not sure about hardlinks.

[kwyxz]

Good to know! I'm quite positive hardlinks are not supported, hence my question.

[RobLoach]

Curious to see if it would work. Symlinks would save a lot of disk space, and ease maintenance across all the clones. My only concern would be if the buildbot preserves them.

Have a clone that we could test it on?

[kwyxz]

I could give it a try with the Japanese clones mentioned in this ticket. Like you said, using symlinks could save a lot of space, things like Final Burn Alpha / MAME would benefit a huge deal from it.

At the very worst, the links would be converted into copies of the target as they do with hardlinks I guess.

[kwyxz]

So I gave it a try. All "En" clones of Japanese games in https://github.com/kwyxz/libretro-thumbnails/tree/master/Nintendo%20-%20Super%20Nintendo%20Entertainment%20System/Named_Boxarts were replaced by symlinks.

I am assuming it wouldn't be a problem with Linux or Mac OS X systems. Anyone running Windows willing to check out if it breaks everything?

[RobLoach]

Tested in RetroArch, and the menu resolves the symlinks correctly.

RetroArch: Frontend for libretro -- v1.3.6Compiler: GCC (5.4.0) 64-bitBuilt: Dec 15 2016
Linux 4.4.0-57-generic #78-Ubuntu x86_64

[kwyxz]

Closing this, I got the answers I needed! :)