=---------------------------------------------------------------------= New Console Stuff from NCS @ 9/29/94 || the Super Wild Card DX =---------------------------------------------------------------------= The long awaited Super Wild Card DX will begin shipping from Front Fareast during the second week of October. The bios of the new system is nearly complete with only a few minor bugs and additions to take care of before release. Front first announced the Super Wild Card DX this past February and had promised its delivery every other month or so after that. This time however it is ready for sale and Front shipped a sample unit to us for testing purposes and evaluation. NCS' review of the SWC DX follows. The Wild Card DX looks exactly like the Wild Card that many of you have gotten to know (and love) in the past year and a half. The plastic case is the same, down to the cartridge lid that many of you have had the misfortune of breaking off in the past year and a half. Its a poor design because of the extremely fragile notches that are used in the lid. Front does not plan to redesign the SWC case but the SWC still looks nicer than say, the Pro-Fighter X, lid or no lid. Internally, there is little change from the SWCs that Front were still shipping as of two weeks ago, the PCBoard layout is exactly the same with two notable exceptions, the eprom is now a 32 pin 512K device as opposed to a 28 pin 128K device in the SWC. The 20 pin peel at u6 is now a 24 pin PAL logic controller. The PCB also uses a 32M ready layout, i.e, it is 32M without the visible rewiring and trace cutting necessary to make a SWC recognize 32Mbits. Due to the similarity between pcboards it is very likely that Wild Card owners who have the new pcb design in their unit will have the option of upgrading their system to a DX. As a point of reference the new board design started appearing in SWCs with serial numbers of 27,000. If you have one of these then you may be able to get the DXs capabilities on your system if Front comes out with an upgrade for you. The only option for older Wild Cards to upgrade to a DX will be a pcboard swap. Upon power up, you will be greeted with a simple text message from Front, which then fades to Wild Card DX logo complete with a musical jingle and then the main menu will pop up. The menu of the SWCDX is crisp, colorful and features eight main icons to help you back up your cartridges to disk. From first glance, some of the icons seems vague as to their function. The Super Wild Card icon is obvious, as are the cartridge and disk icons but a joystick icon and flexed arm icon are unclear as to what purpose they perform until you click on them to see their options. Just so you know, the joystick icon will give you three sub-options, a PCX picture file viewer, and two demos from TWK, a good friend of mine. There is really only one demo, but in two languages - English and Chinese. The demo features scrolling text w/ music and is quite good. The final version of the bios will include an original puzzle game under this icon (hey, so the joystick icon wasn't so bad). The flexed arm icon will reveal the Magic Finger code entering feature along with a new feature that will hunt out codes for you in a cart backup that has been loaded into memory. The main menu also features a scrolling background, with 32 backgrounds to choose from. You can pick SNES joypads, jigsaw pieces, no smoking signs, bowling pins, etc depending on what you're in the mood for. You can also pick the color and language of the ubiquitous Super Wild Card DX logo - there are 7 logo color choices (15 if you count the Chinese logos also). Then there's window color, 16 choices and finally, remember those icons I was telling you about? While I prefer the default logo set with the flexed arm and joystick icons, there are 7 others to choose from, the other logo sets range from artistic to, "thats nice". These preferences may be saved to the Wild Card's B-RAM so you won't have to set it everytime. I will now briefly go over the other icons in the default set-up: Wild Card icon: Rom image and battery sram transfer options, program information, and memory edit. This is an actual hex string editor that will allow you to go through the entire rom image in memory. This icon will also allow you to load a rom backup to memory but not run it so you can look through it with the hex editor or get some information on it. Disk icon : Basic dos functions such as format disk, rename file, copy file/disk, and an edit function which will allow you to edit a rom backup from disk without having to load it into memory first. Camera icon : Real Time Save. To activate the memory features in a game, the cartridge backup must be loaded under this icon. The Super Wild Card DX features 16 levels of slow motion and the ability to return to the SWC DXs main menu just about every time so that you can do a memory edit or a real time save position dump to disk. This feature works surprisingly well on a good number of cartridge backups that I was able to try on the unit, including a number of high rom and fast rom cartridges that did not work on the PFQ, GDSF3, DPF or Super Wild Card. Some animations on certain games can only be appreciated under slow motion, the attention to detail by the programmers is simply amazing and easily missed in normal speed. The first level of slow motion is slow enough so that most anims can be seen but fast enough so that the game is still playable. Flex icon : See above. Cart icon : Run cartridge, dram test, cartridge info, memory edit for a cartridge in memory and an SRAM transfer option for backing up SRAM directly from a cartridge's battery to disk and vice versa. Joystick icon : See above. T.V. icon : Screen choices (color, icons, backgrounds), the ability to put your own one line text message on the main menu, and a default switch for going back to the default menu. There are currently three language choices in the Screen setup menu, English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. The final bios will include European languages such as German and Italian. Magnifying : SWC DX Diagnostics. A dram test for testing out your Glass icon memory is in here but it is not functional yet. An SRAM and disk drive test are here also (these should make our test runs on systems somewhat easier...). A SWC info screen will give you your available ram, date of bios, available B-Ram and Sub-Memory. Finally, we have the credits for the development of the SWC DX presented in a fade in, fade out manner. So thats the surface of the matter on the DX. Now, how does it run and perform? Very well, thank you. The Double Pro-Fighter has long been able to back up and run cartridges that are protected using checksum and static ram detection routines. The SWC DX does this all in the bios, without need for an additional TRAM. Another plus of the DX is the memory edit ability, which comes in handy but its really only for those who are familiar with SNES hex addresses and checksums. Anyone out there care to do a tutorial? The SWC DX also features an auto-load function. Pop a disk into the drive, turn on the system and it will begin loading the disk. If you are in the main menu and do nothing for a couple of seconds, the disk will start loading by itself. For cartridge backups than span more than one disk, you no longer have to press the 'B' button to start loading again after the first disk is finished. It is now automatic that the drive will load after a new disk has been inserted into the drive. A nice feature during the loading of a backup is the information screen that the DX will give you, specifically the name of the cartridge, country of origin (SFC for Europe and Japan, SNES for the Americas), the mode of the cartridge (high rom, fast rom, regular) and whether or not the backup uses SRAM or a DSP. The loading also features a loading bar, similar to the bar found on the MGH which counts down as the backup loads into dram. Best of all, the loading speed is the same as the speed found on the SWC with bios v2.7CC and up, which is by far the fastest loading time on any system so far - and thats with or without a power adaptor! The DX now gives you the option of adding external power if you find that the unit blinks too much on your SNES. This is common on new SNES' with serial numbers UN24xxxx and above. The DX can also recognize every backup system file format out there, including Multi-Game Doctor II (which includes GDSF3 and MGH), Magicom, Pro-Fighter Q/X high rom, Super Interceptor, all in their native file names. DSP capability is the same as in the Super Wild Card but the commercially available DSP1 adaptors that are designed for the PFQ and GDSF3 do not run on the SWC. Wild Card/DX owners are stuck with using a cartridge which includes the DSP in it to run other rom backups. SFX capability is not available and probably never will be. The SWC DX is a great new SNES only cartridge to disk backup system. It easily beats out anything out there now for the SNES in terms of backup capability, ease of use, user options, memory functions and disk access time. As great a system the SWC was (and still is), this DX is even better. 'Nuff said. So, it's here and its been worth the wait. Call [NCS] today to reserve yours. National Console Direct : (718) 523-5774 [DPFs, SWCs, PFXs, GDSF3s] Pager : (917) 788-0699 Cellular: (917) 881-4498 Fall '94 Info-Paks available upon request [Allow 3 days for receipt] Repair services available for DPFs, SWCs, PFQs, Super NES' and Genesis. Addendum: A couple of firsts found on the SWC DX and on no other system: User configurable menus and logos, a bell that rings if you take no action for 10 minutes so as to wake you up, a built in game, built in demo, user message option, pcx picture viewer, memory edit feature, auto disk load, multi-language options, and last but not least, its a new system debuting in an old case. If history is any clue, the other console backup system manufacturers will start putting these new functions into their own systems, blatantly. It has always been this way, with Front leading the way in innovation and the others following behind.