Screenshot tools - Anything else out there like the Konami Game Master?

Door kaladron

Resident (53)

afbeelding van kaladron

24-05-2021, 19:40

Lately I've been using the Konami Game Master cart to take screenshots of games as I play them on a real MSX. It's been super useful, and I can even make use of the screens by using an Amiga to create a disk image from the floppy.

The only thing is, it's quite limiting to only be able to do this with Konami games. Does anyone know if a similar cartridge or tool was ever made for taking screenshots of MSX software/games in general?

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Van NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (6033)

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25-05-2021, 00:26

I'm pretty sure I've seen some in the past... Maybe Turbo 5000 was one of them? I've not tried that, but I remember reading that it allowed dumping the screen to MSX printer... Not sure about the disk though.

Please note how ever that such programs work only with limited number of games. The VDP registers are write only and if the games don't document (ie. trough BIOS) how they use the screen, the picture will most likely come out corrupted. It might also be that the game does not allow the capture software to run at all or it crashes when you try... best way to know is anyway just to experiment and maybe try few different if available.

MSX emulators naturally don't suffer from such limitations... ie. in openMSX you can use "save_msx_screen"-script to capture the screen in native MSX format. How ever if there are some VDP tricks such as screen split used to draw the screen (usually problem only on MSX2 games) then this might give weird results as well. In this case your options are pretty much limited to "traditional" screenshots such as using camera, video capture card or taking bitmap screenshot on emulator.

Van Pac

Scribe (6964)

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25-05-2021, 16:38

Searching on my HD, fortunately I still have a small DOS tool for that purpose developed by the well-known Spanish user Martos. The program is installed on drive B: buffers. After loading a game just pressing GRAPH all the content of the VRAM is dumped to the disk. If you want to try it just contact me through my profile.

Van TheKid

Paragon (1238)

afbeelding van TheKid

25-05-2021, 18:10

Yeah, i temember the amiga having the action replay cart. It was escellent, screen capture whatever you want and even cheating (not that i ever used this option Smile). I so hoped something like that would be made on the msx. And like nyyirkki wrote, i also vaguely remember the turbo 5000 cart could make screendumps. That was the closest to the action replay.

Van Takamichi

Hero (599)

afbeelding van Takamichi

25-05-2021, 18:28

Epson Chakkari copy can print the screenshot any time but I forgot if it could save. It has an SRAM afaik.

Van Randam

Paragon (1431)

afbeelding van Randam

26-05-2021, 08:31

Didn't Cheatmaster from MSX Engine have a screendump feature?