Famicom Microphone Games
Which games make use of Controller II's microphone?
Atlantis no Nazo (NES = Super Pitfall II) - get the microphone power-up and then yell into the microphone to freeze and kill most enemies.
Hikari Shinwa: Palutena no Kagami (NES = Kid Icarus) - talk into the microphone to bargain for lower shop prices.
Raid on Bungeling Bay (NES = Raid on Bungeling Bay) - ?
SD Kamen Rider -- in one of the mini games, blow air into the microphone to get a windmill to spin.
Takeshi no Chousenjou - featuring Takeshi Kitano who starred in Zatoichi, Battle Royale, Violent Cop, etc.) Kitano hates videogames and wanted this game to show its players how futile and pointless their hobby was. Amongst the challenges included in the game were a section where the player must hold a single button for up to an hour, a boss that takes over 1,000 punches to kill and of course the microphone section, where players are required to sing a verse of karaoke or talk whilst playing a pachislo minigame. The microphone section was replaced in later versions of the game once the microphone was dropped from the Famicom.
Zelda no Densetsu: The Hyrule Fantasy (cart/disk) (NES = The Legend of Zelda) - yell into the microphone to kill Pols Voice enemies.
Takeshi no Chosenjo (Takeshi's Challenge, featuring Takeshi Kitano who starred in Zatoichi, Battle Royale, Violent Cop etc)
Kitano hates videogames and wanted this game to show its players how futile and pointless their hobby was. Amongst the challenges included in the game were a section where the player must hold a single button for up to an hour, a boss that takes over 1,000 punches to kill and of course the microphone section, where players are required to sing a verse of karaoke or talk whilst playing a pachislo minigame. The microphone section was replaced in later versions of the game once the microphone was dropped from the Famicom.
I didn't realize the game was changed for later versions because of the AV FC. That's kinda interesting. A question I had in another thread was whether or not games with a microphone feature still had the feature in place even when the system (NES) didn't have a microphone. I guess with this game it was necessary to remove the feature because it was impossible to advance in the game if there was no mic.
A lot of them they just remapped the sound part to the 'select' button. The machine obviously couldn't interpret what the sound was, it just detected whether there was sound or not. You could just blow into it for instance, so it's no big deal to just press a button instead.
There were also some karaoke games for the Famicom. Did they make use of the microphone? I would assume so.
I think the karaoke games came with microphone controllers (some of them, at least). Those would be used via the expansion port, not with controller II. Some of them may have worked with it, though, I don't really know ;D
So the microphone was pretty much a big failur then? Seems a shame.
Quote from: Lorfarius on November 12, 2008, 02:07:54 am
So the microphone was pretty much a big failur then? Seems a shame.
I like to talk on my tv with it, so its not a total waste. Its actually quite fun to play with.
Here is a link to a list on Yahoo Japan (http://games.yahoo.co.jp/qa/detail?qid=14534281741453428174) for anyone who wants to either translate it or can read it properly. There are games mentioned there, and information on microphone use, that people may find interesting. :bomb:
Edit: Cleaned up the post to be more readable.
It's a myth that the microphone was almost never used in games. After doing some research I found many more games and I would bet there are still more. I have tested some of them but not all.
Games that supports the mic:
Takeshi no Chousenjou (unconfirmed)
As was said before there are some parts of the game that requires the mic to proceed. But apparently there is a way to pass these parts of the game without a mic (maybe an added feature in later versions of the game as was suggested before in this thread, I don't know) that was added as an alternative for people with the New Famicom, and thus doesn't have a mic. However many people misunderstood this as a built in function in the New Famicom itself and that it would work in every game that uses the mic. Anyway here's what is said about it:
Use the microphone with the New Famicom: Press DOWN and A buttons on Controller II and after that the A button on Controller II will act as shouting into the mic.
Raid on Bungeling Bay
In 2P mode shout in the mic and a mic icon will appear under the score. Keep shouting and it will turn red. At this time up to 6 fighter planes will come attack the heli. It's said that one should shout out "HUDSON!!" into the mic.
Star Luster (unconfirmed)
If you call into the mic when energy is low and part of the ship is in NG condition, a mysterious character called Starnoid shows up, refills energy and repairs ship. But this can only be used once.
Bakushou!! Jinsei Gekijou (unconfirmed)
This board game which is based on The Game of Life has an event where you need to sing in to the mic.
Bakushou!! Jinsei Gekijou 2 (unconfirmed)
The sequel also has an event where all human and computer players are forced to shout into the microphone. You can apparently not proceed without a mic (I guess AV Famicom users are out of luck on this one).
Doraemon (unconfirmed)
At the point at defeating the boss in area 3 and if Gian appears, shouting in the mic will defeat all enemies onscreen. But only once.
Apple Town Monogatari (FDS)
The mic is used in one of several easter eggs in the game. When the girl is climbing the upper stairs, hold B on Controller II and shout into the mic. After she falls hold both A and B and shout again. I've tried it long ago but I don't remember all details exactly. Strategywiki has this listed.
Kamen Rider Club (unconfirmed)
When playing roulette, you can blow in the mic to make the roulette move a bit from the place it stopped at. Also something about the pinwheel. Is this the same game as "SD Kamen Rider" in the first post? Kazaguruma can mean both pinwheel and windmill in Japanese.
Family Basic
There's no command to read the mic in BASIC, and the commands STICK and STRIG that are normally used to read the buttons on the controllers can't be used to read the mic. However, with the PEEK command you can read any one of the memory addresses in the Famicom. The mic's current state is stored in bit 2 in memory address $4016, so by PEEKing on that bit we can read the mic's current state. Here's a simple mic testing program:
10 M=PEEK(&H4016) AND &H4
20 IF M=4 THEN PRINT"MIC";
30 GOTO 10
Type RUN to execute, the word "MIC" will be printed on screen every time the Famicom detects that you are blowing into the mic. Press STOP to end the program. Some emulators like Nestopia won't let you use the controllers in Family Basic if they are mapped to the keyboard (since the Family Keyboard is also mapped to the keyboard). If you are running Family BASIC on such an emulator you can add this line 5 B=STRIG(0) to fool the emulator that you are going to use the controller (which we are in the sense that the mic is a kind of controller input but we are not actually going to use STRIG at all). Nestopia will temporarily disable the keyboard if a program with the STRIG command is executed.
This code should work in all flavours of Family Basic and Playbox Basic including V1.0, V2.0A, V2.1A and V3.
By using a logical AND on the value in &H4016 together with the value &H4 (the same as binary 00000100) we can read bit 2 without reading the whole byte. This code uses the same way to read the mic as many commercial games, and is also the way the Family BASIC V3 sample game "Heart" is reading the mic.
I also heard rumors about a mic function in Ninja Hattori-kun and also in some pachinko game where shouting into the mic when you run out of balls would give you more balls (it's possible this is just the pachinko part of Takeshi no Chousenjou which also involves the mic), but I can't find any info on these rumors.
Best use for the mic is heckling your friend in a 2 player vs game ;D
This is mic-related but it doesn't really have any effect on the game AFIK. In the manual for Bokosuka Wars there are lyrics for the background music in the game, and it's suggested that one could sing it in the mic while playing.
進め 進め ものども
邪魔な 敵を 蹴散らせ
目指せ 敵の 城へ
オゴレス 倒すのだ
Susume susume monodomo
jamana teki wo kechirase
mezase teki no shiro e
Ogoresu taosu no da
My crappy translation:
Forward forward, men
kick about the bothering enemies
aim for the enemy castle
in order to defeat Ogereth
There is a version of the song were mezase (aim for) is replaced by a third susume (advance), likely due to a mistake in the manual of the Famicom version of the game (the song is listed twice in the manual and one of them is wrong).
The Famicom Basic manual also suggest to make a karaoke session using the Music Board and con II mic.
Edit: More games that support the mic:
Super Chinese 2
This game apparently has a place in game where you must blow into the mic to be able to proceed. Confirmed in this video: http://www.mmcafe.com/nico.html#http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm18096475 at 22:14 there's a dialogue with princess Leila and she tells you to blow into the microphone to prove yourself.
Star Soldier (unconfirmed)
There are two uses for the mic.
Meijin's Finger: You get 16-shots-on-screen auto-fire (look up Takahashi Meijin if you don't know him) if you shout into the mic when you shoot at this panel (a blue panel with a light blue hand pointing with the index finger). It's found on stage 3 at the second continent. According to http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Soldier/Stage_secrets it works in the NES version as well if you have some means to use the mic.
Ura stages: Play a harder version of the game. Strategy wiki also explains the process in English here http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Soldier/Codes. It's a button combination that involves the mic:
1) At the title screen, press Select button × 4
2) On controller I, press and hold Right d-pad + A button + B button + Select button. On controller II, press and hold Left d-pad.
3) As you press Start button on controller I, you must shout into the microphone on controller II. If successful, the title screen will blink back on to the screen.
Press Start button to begin the game.
Kaiketsu Yanchamaru / Kid Niki: Radical Ninja (unconfirmed)
Strategy wiki has the following information on stage 5 in this game which involves the mic:
Quote
Secret area 5-8
When you reach the first Buddha statue, walk to its lap, squat down, and shout in to the microphone. You will be transported to a bonus area that contains scrolls which bob up and down. Some scrolls reveal coins, while others may reveal Princess dolls or extra lives. If a scroll does reveal a doll or an extra, it will float up from where you struck the scroll and a large hand will sweep across the room from left to right. If you are hit by the hand, you will lose a life. For both of these reasons, it is recommended that you jump up and strike the scrolls when you are on your way down from the jump and the scroll is low in the air. This will allow you to a) duck when you land to avoid the hand that sweeps across and b) collect the doll or extra since it won't float particularly high. If you miss any dolls, don't be concerned, one is provided for you at the end of the section. When you exit, you will be deposited on the hand of the second Buddha statue at 5-12. Note that this secret is present in the North American version of the game, but without a microphone, it is inaccessible.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Kid_Niki:_Radical_Ninja/Stage_5
Edit: New finding!! I found the following code in the beginning of Bokosuka Wars:
;ROM with iNES header
004A AD 16 40 LDA $4016
004D 29 04 AND #$04
These two instructions here is the microphone reading routine that most commercial games use.
After some googling in Japanese I found a rumour that there's a command to make your army start out at the highest level of strength. Some suggest that there's a button combination involving both the mic and Start+Select on con II (which of course is normally impossible on any Famicom or NES), while other says you just blow into the mic immediately after booting the game. Yet other people shrugs this off and calls it an urban legend. But the code I found makes me believe it's more than an urban legend.
People have also noticed that if you have a NES or New Famicom you can hold Start+Select on controller II when booting, and the title screen music will be delayed a bit. Is this some kind of hint?
Other people say that you need two Ascii Sticks and use Start+Select on the second one. Here's the full instructions:
Play with the strongest army
-Prepare two Ascii Sticks.
-First connect one Ascii Stick (we call this stick A).
-Then connect another Ascii Stick into the first stick's expansion port (this is stick B).
-While holding Start+Select on stick B, press the RESET button.
-Face the II con mic and shout "Nattechonmage. Teka～".
-When starting the game, all your men will be at the strongest level.
I guess you can use any external controllers though as long as you have a multitap. I haven't been able to test this though and I couldn't get it to work on an emulator.
Interesting, although it's odd that the cheat would have you say a particular phrase (since the mic is just a binary on/off switch).
Does the assembly code do anything with the result in the accumulator after that point? It may just be some boilerplate controller-handling logic that was never optimized. I guess I can check the code myself later.
Yeah it's possible it's never used in the game, but since these rumours exists, it makes me think it's not just a coincidence.
I can't tell if the code is used in the game or not but, it looks like it increases $2E if the mic bit is set using the BEQ instruction, then it does some nested loop with nothing inside (some kind of delay?) and after some more branching it finally loads $2E into the accumulator and compares it with #$C8. It gets too complicated after that. lol
;ROM with iNES header
004A AD 16 40 LDA $4016
004D 29 04 AND #$04
004F F0 02 BEQ $0053
0051 E6 2E INC $2E
0053 A2 10 LDX #$10
0055 A0 00 LDY #$00
0057 C8 INY
0058 D0 FD BNE $0057
005A CA DEX
005B D0 FA BNE $0057
005D E6 2D INC $2D
005F D0 E9 BNE $004A
0061 A5 2E LDA $2E
Quote from: UglyJoe on July 08, 2014, 06:27:28 am
Interesting, although it's odd that the cheat would have you say a particular phrase (since the mic is just a binary on/off switch).
Yes of course it doesn't matter what you say into the mic. I think that part of the cheat is just some joke, although I didn't get it. I asked a Japanese friend what it means, but he haven't answered yet.
Quote from: P on July 08, 2014, 08:22:38 am
I can't tell if the code is used in the game or not but, it looks like it increases $2E if the mic bit is set using the BEQ instruction, then it does some nested loop with nothing inside (some kind of delay?) and after some more branching it finally loads $2E into the accumulator and compares it with #$C8. It gets too complicated after that. lol
;ROM with iNES header
004A AD 16 40 LDA $4016
004D 29 04 AND #$04
004F F0 02 BEQ $0053
0051 E6 2E INC $2E
0053 A2 10 LDX #$10
0055 A0 00 LDY #$00
0057 C8 INY
0058 D0 FD BNE $0057
005A CA DEX
005B D0 FA BNE $0057
005D E6 2D INC $2D
005F D0 E9 BNE $004A
0061 A5 2E LDA $2E
It looks to me like the code is ensuring that you're yelling into the mic for more than a single frame. I'm not sure what $2D is getting initialized to prior to entering the routine, but that's controlling the overall loop (004A - 005F). Each iteration of the overall loop will increment $2E again if the player is still yelling into the mic.
The game must be checking the value of $2E later on to see if it's above a certain value, meaning that the player was yelling at the mic for all or most of the iterations (enough so to consider it being used instead of just picking up a few bits of random noise).
I see. $2D and $2E are both initialised to 0 before this code (unless they are changed in one of the subroutine calls that comes before it). It certainly seems to be a working mic reading routine unless some of those branchings before it skips it entirely.
I gotta build a multitap later when I have time, so I can test that Ascii Stick cheat command.
I think the code is legit.
I set a breakpoint in the code that process $2E. If you play the game as one normally would, the breakpoint never snaps. However, if you hold down Select + Start on the player 2 controller (easy to do in an emulator) and reset, then the breakpoint does snap at the titlescreen after a short delay. Once the debugger snapped, I set the accumulator to $FF (basically telling it that I had screamed into the mic the whole time), and then started the game. This time, my "K" meter was set to 320 instead of 220!
I don't really know the mechanics of this game well enough to say exactly what it does, but it definitely reads in the mic (if I don't up the accumulator to a high value, then it doesn't work) and it only does so if you hold down select and start on player two's controller (not player one, and not either/or).
I may see if I can rig up something later and try it on real hardware.
I'll be darned! You mean it actually worked with Con II Start+Select and Mic? Maybe they built a special controller for debugging. So that delay we saw in the code is what delays the title screen music after all.
I can get the title screen sound to be delayed in Nestopia (although it's hard) but I can't get the strength boost no matter how many times I try.
K means King Suren's battle strength and I think 320 is max. The random factor in this game is huge though, so there's always a chance to loose. If you bump into trees and rocks, and prisons you can rescue allied soldiers that's been transformed by Ogoreth and they should be gold coloured if they are at max strength.
I've always wondered if it's possible to add Controller II Start and Select buttons to a Red & White Famicom. Nesdev wiki says a Famicom always returns 0 for those buttons.
So I had a really fun time explaining to my wife why I was yelling into an old game controller :-[
I used my Hori Laser Commander controller, since it has a 1P/2P switch. I put it in 2P mode, held down start and select, and then pressed reset. The pause before the title screen music definitely occurred! So then I tried it again while blowing into the mic...no good. Tried talking, yelling, tapping...no good. So close to getting this to work, but now I don't know if my mic is bad or something. I'll probably write a quick test program in Family Basic to see if I can figure out what's going on.
Cool we are so close!! :D In my experience shouting isn't doing much for the mic, but blowing into it is more effective to get a fairly constant high mic bit for as long as you want/have lung capacity (although the shop clerks in Paluthena aren't impressed at all :(). The mic test program I wrote in Family Basic is super sensitive so you might want to make a program that makes it easier to tell the mic bit's duty cycle when blowing. Or try Makimura's mic test program on the Everdrive or Powerpak. http://rdev.g-pw.org/makimura/homebrew/2p-mic-test
Now that I think about it, it isn't that strange that it works on external controller II as well as the normal controller II. In the controller reading subroutine they probably read all 4 possible controllers (like most other games do) and save the results in the same 2 variables which are then checked for the cheat.
Quote from: UglyJoe on July 09, 2014, 05:12:37 pm
So I had a really fun time explaining to my wife why I was yelling into an old game controller :-[
lol ;D
Yeah, I tracked down your FB mic test. It looked like the mic was fine. However, I added an extra line to print "NOPE" if the read did not detect the mic. The test then showed a world of difference. It's mostly "NOPE"s with just a few "MIC"s in there. I'm wondering if my mic dirty or something, though. I put it up to my TV's speaker and turned the volume up until I got a nice loud feedback loop going. It would still only register the mic occasionally.
The game does 256 reads and I have to get the mic to work for at least 200 of them in order for the cheat to activate. It'll actually not work if you get all 256 reads, since your read "score" will loop back to zero!
I entered your program and I also get very few "MIC" in a lot of "NOPE"s. If I open the con II and blow into the mic it becomes much more sensetive, but it's still pretty bad. Yet another mic testing program http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9909#p109236 this one by Chris Covell.
All mics I've seen have been like this, I suppose they were fine when they were new. Cleaning the PCB and metal part of the slider was enough for Zelda but it's still really bad. I've been considering replacing the microphone part for a new electret condenser microphone.
So I rigged up some wires on a 3.5mm plug, taped the bottom shell and PCB from a player II controller to my desk, and used some helping hands to pin the wires onto the microphone. (pic (http://i.imgur.com/9wfkBCq.jpg)).
I typed in the FB mic test from before and tried playing some sounds from my PC. It's pretty neat to hear your computer audio coming out of your TV via the Famicom ;D I found a software signal generator and tried many different sine and square waves. Some settings worked better than others (high amplitude, and frequencies of ~160Hz and ~200Hz, for some reason). It was never really too consistent, though.
I started up Bokosuka Wars and tried a few of the more promising signals. No luck :'(
This cheat code does exist, but I'm not sure it's technically possible to get it to happen. It needs the mic to be activated between 200 and 255 of the 256 reads. As a comparison, the Pols Voice code in Zelda only needs the mic to be activated 20 times -- and you can have as many gaps between the activations as you want.
It's strange that this cheat would be known in Famicom communities if it didn't work. I guess it could be the developers that leaked it out and it appeared in gaming magazines and such but no one actually got it to work since it's impossible.
Maybe we would be more successful if we were to wire a push-button (and possibly a pull-up resistor unless there is one for the mic already) to get a cleaner high signal on the mic line.
Oh and about "Nattechonmage. Teka～", nattechonmage means "please succeed for me", and teka is like "or how should I put it..." so you are basically begging the Famicom "Please work! Or something～" further suggesting that this cheat is a real b**ch to get to work.
I heard you can try to haggle with shopkeepers in Light Myth: Palthena's Mirror (Kid Icarus) with the microphone, but it may be a rumor.
Yup, that one's true. It's in the first post.
Quote from: UglyJoe on September 07, 2014, 05:43:10 pm
Yup, that one's true. It's in the first post.
Oh, didn't see it. Sorry.
It's okay ;D
From what I heard, Takeshi's Challenge used the Mic. Except that game takes 50 minutes to get past the beginning so I eventually gave up.
It's in the first post (Takeshi no Chousenjou) ;)
Nintendo VS System
The arcade system series based on Famicom/NES doesn't have a microphone but the same input port that the Famicom is using for the microphone ($4016 bit 2) is used for the Service Button on the VS System. The Service Button is normally used by arcade games to insert coins without incrementing the coin counter, so that the game can be easily tested by a repairman without affecting the bookkeeping information.
This means that you can insert coins in many VS System games, if you play them on a Famicom, simply by blowing into the microphone. I tested this with the Everdrive and it worked with several games, but not all games seems to use this button. The wrong palette makes VS games not really playable on a Famicom, but it's still pretty cool.