DR GARFIELD (NES/Famicom) V22

Find out why everybody’s calling on Dr. Garfield.

(This may sting a little.)

Looking for an intense new challenge?
Dr. Garfield is here and he's got the cure! 

Three kinds of ugly, nasty viruses are on the loose. But these germs are fun to catch. Garfield throws multi-colored vitamin capsules into the bottle. You can move, shift or spin the capsules as they fall. Arrange them to align with other capsules on top of the virus. If you can get 4 or more of the same color in a row, POOF! The viruses disappear! Destroy all the viruses in the bottle and you progress to the next round, where things get even more difficult. Play alone or enjoy simultaneous 2-player action, only from Nintendo on your Nintendo Entertainment System or Nintendo Game Boy.

Dr. Garfield—the fun is contagious!

Garfield and Garfield characters © 1978, 1990 United Feature Syndicate, Paws Incorporated.
Dr. Garfield © 1990 Nintendo
Nintendo of America Inc., P.O. Box 957, Redmond, WA 98073-0957, 1-800-633-3236, Fax: 206/882-3585

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IPS Patch for this ROM:

"Virus_(USA)_(1990_Proto)"
or
"Virus (USA) (Beta) (1990-02-02)"

The ROM used is a proto version of Dr. Mario.
https://tcrf.net/Proto:Dr._Mario_(NES)/Virus_1989_%26_1990

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From Pangent Technologies.

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkqfMeMGDww

Full credits:

Pangent Technologies - Graphics, graphic layout and coding, general hacking and box/label design.

BogaaBogaa - ASM coding, including win and loss animations, the Odie pause screen, Odie logic, Jon menu logic, music logic and HDPack Music Logic.

Amilgi - Musical arrangements as NSF.

StudsX - Music insertion into ROM, music and unpausing logic, coding fixes, and theme remix.

Thanks to KasumiDirect for solving many issues, particularly with the title and menu screens, and palettes. Creator of I-CHR.

Thanks to Lumpytouch for the in-game viruses.

Thanks to Cyneprepou4uk for additional advice on ASM code hijacks for bankswitching.

Some graphical acknowledgements to Garfield: Big Fat Hairy Deal by Stephen Cargill and Neil Strudwick.

"Big Fat Hairy Deal (Amiga)" composed by David Whittaker (probably)
C64 sound by Neil Baldwin

"Garfield and Friends Theme (Friends Are There)"
"Buddy Bears Theme"
composed by Desiree Goyette and Ed Bogas

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HDPack

An HDpack for the Mesen emulator is available which makes the game more colorful using PNG images, including some custom backgrounds.

Copy this HDPack directory into the Mesen/HDPacks directory. This directory must have the same name as the ROM (such as DrGarfield).

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An option to disable periodic speedups exists, which is activated by changing RAM address $723 to a non-zero value.

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New in Revision 22:

This build is the first to have the correct original music, thanks to coding and arrangement by Amilgi and StudsX. "Friends Are There," "Big Fat Hairy Deal" and "Buddy Bears" themes are included, and will all play during a normal playthrough.

This build has improved, revised player graphics in 2-player mode. The large graphics of Jon and Odie were designed for the HDPack of version 19, but were not included in the actual ROM. A large Garfield has been newly designed, replacing the small Garfield used previously.

This is also the first build to include Nermal Mode.

Previous builds used music left over from Tetris, and also included menu options for music speed. These tracks are removed here and replaced with a new music engine. In the menu, Music speed is replaced with "Monday Level" as a placeholder.

In version 19, an HDPack was available with your choice of OGG music. This has not been implemented this time, since the "correct" themes are used here. It would be fun to do again, but required additional coding on the menu and so on.

There is less choice of music now, but a remix of the main "Big Fat Hairy Deal" theme is offered.

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Thoughts about this build:

The Odie loss frame is not implemented, or a left-facing Odie for the pause screen. It's been discussed that the pause screen could have been programmed into more of a minigame. There is some free space in the code for this but nothing that ambitious has been done.

The HDPack has some animated backgrounds, which use condition tags mapped to tiles in the original animated backgrounds. These can be swapped out, or more animation could be added as desired. The title screen could be animated with conditions based on the animating virus sprites.

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A Dr. Mario AI which would almost certainly have to be rewritten to work with this ROM.
https://meatfighter.com/drmarioai/

Dr. Mario virus placement discussion here:
https://tetrisconcept.net/threads/dr-mario-virus-placement.2037/page-1

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Audio replacement in HD packs in the Mesen emulator adds a number of read/write registers in memory and they can be used to play OGG files specified via <bgm> and <sfx> tags. This was done in version 19, but is now not used in this version. The registers:

$4100: Playback Options (BGM looping on or off)
$4101: Playback Control (Pause/Resume/Stop)
$4102: BGM Volume 0-255
$4103: SFX Volume
$4104: Album Number
$4105: Play BGM Track
$4106: Play SFX Track