NES cartridge dumping (the cartridge equivalent of disc ripping) takes a bit of hardware, but is much more accessible than it was five years ago. A $20 Kazzo with NES pins gives you basically everything you need. Each dump only takes about 30sec, but you may need to do some pin cleaning and research on which script for what cartridge (since all NES cartridges use different layouts). It took some tweaks, but overall I got everything up and running in just a few hours. All you need is a tiny bit of command line experience (using cd to change directories, etc).



NES ripping!

So, Kazzo is the key device here. It comes in three flavors, any mix and match of NES, Famicom, and SNES pins (but SNES can’t be used for dumps yet - just loading new code onto your cartridges). At $20 for just one, $25 for two, and $30 for all three, it’s a great deal. For NES ripping, you only need the $20 one. The only other hardware needed is an old USB A to USB B cable (as seen on arduino and in most old printers).

Arrived in the mail and ready for action.

Heads up first: go through the Kazzo NeoGAF thread first and install the software like it suggests. It did not work for me from there, but it takes case or most of the preliminary setup.



Kazzo will arrive with software for games programming, and you would likely prefer the old software for original kazzo devices (the new ones from InfiniteNesLives use their own firmware by default) so you will likely need to flash the hardware with the old firmware. This is super easy though! Just switch the hardware’s physical switch on the device to “BL”, then there’s a batch file (.bat) in the zip for software/firmware package that you downloaded from InfiniteNesLives’ website. The batch file is called “click to load kazzo” - you basically make that switch to BL mode, double click that script, and then switch back out of BL mode (into “RUN” mode) - that’s it! You’re now ready to use Anago, the much more reliable old command line dumping software (and it comes packed in that software/firmware package too!).

Anago at work!



You can find anago in that software package at the address or path of kazzo/kazzo original/unagi_client_windows_060_commandline/anago/anago.exe, but you have to run it from within cmd (so here is where light command line use is needed). Then type the command “anago.exe d [scriptname.ext] [gamename.nes]” where d means dump mode, scriptname is the script for the game’s chipset for dumping (eg. mmc3.ad) and gamename.nes is whatever you want to name the game, then .nes so emulators can run your fair use backup.

These scripts are all custom, so that makes it a bit tricky, but you can find a list online named nesmapper.txt that has most scripts for most games already listed. A few scripts, like gnrom.ad, are not included in anago but can be found online at places like arantius’ github project: anago-scripts.

A slightly off script produces slightly off results!

So sometimes the scripts listed are not quite right, but a little experimentation goes a long way. Many games listed as “—-” for their script are really mmc3, but that still produced incorrect results fairly often in my attempts. The script mmc1 gave the best results on average for me when the script on the list didn’t work, but don’t be afraid to do additional research online. I only got half my games working, but I also didn’t have rubbing alcohol or q-tips on hand for pin cleaning either, which supposedly often has a huge impact (and I believe it - the same games have just as much trouble running on an NES as dumping in Kazzo).

Success!

If you are having trouble, the average game you own has likely already been dumped before by someone else, and both nesdev.com and assemblergames.com has forums full of people talking about past games they’ve dumped with kazzo. That’s where I got the suggestion to switch to anago, and there are plenty of unique cases where people explain how they got TMNT2 or other games working on there. The neogaf kazzo thread is still the best place to start, but hopefully my guide will offer a little additional information on the process.

And don’t be afraid to dive into the scripts yourself! Many are very simple, and I was able to solve an issue in one obscure script I found online by following the error code’s instructions and tweaking the script itself to more closely resemble another script in anago’s folder for Duck Hunt / Super Mario Bros (a combination cartridge with a unique chipset). NES dumping, while still more code heavy than Wii / GCN, was much easier than I expected it to be.

