What
A complete assets replacement of Stern's TMNT using assets from the 1987 animated series.

Why
I have absolutely no problems with the video assets that Stern put in TMNT. In fact, I think they did an outstanding job. However, there's just no replacing the old school coolness of the original series. Now that my 4-year-old daughter is watching every episode with me to relive the magic, I really wanted to see her face when the pinball machine showed the 1987 series on it. Plus, I think it will make a lot of pinball enthusiasts out there happy.

Updates
* Using 1.57 code now with fixed images

Current version (1.57)
* Pro: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UC84jKz8EsGCOiihFslbWPYYipwo7iFl/view?usp=drive_link
* Premium / LE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UB48HgUUGMtXWKTO_pmp4-yyRX-UL_QY/view?usp=drive_link

Previous version (1.56)
* Pro: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TzvAaTRflZpe5h-gh1Ke_g_oi4r41hh0/view?usp=drive_link
* Premium / LE: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TuXNXQbPBnlwUGZIhM4xXdr3EZShlqmF/view?usp=drive_link

What you need
* 16gb class 10 SD card (note that the original SD card is 8gb and you should keep it safe anyway)
** This is the one I use (SanDisk Ultra 16GB Class 10 SDHC UHS-I Memory Card up to 80MB/s (SDSDUNC-016G-GN6IN) https://smile.amazon.com/SanDisk-Class-UHS-I-Memory-SDSDUNC-016G-GN6IN/dp/B0143RTB1E/ref=sr_1_1
* SD card reader/writer
** This is the one I use (Anker 2-in-1 USB 3.0 SD Card Reader for SDXC, SDHC, SD, MMC, RS-MMC, Micro SDXC, Micro SD, Micro SDHC Card and UHS-I Cards)
https://smile.amazon.com/Anker-Portable-Reader-RS-MMC-Micro/dp/B006T9B6R2/ref=sr_1_3
* Pinball Browser (un-licensed version works fine).

How to install
First after downloading from the link, extract the file if necessary (.zip extraction).
Then follow the instructions here:

Do not use Balena Etcher to write to the SD card! I have had a high failure rate using this program! You will know if it fails if you have any in-game restarts while playing (or more likely when booting). Use Pinball Browser to write to the SD card. Follow the instructions on my YouTube video linked above.

Validation errors
If you have any validation errors, swap to the official Stern code and play a game or two - this should clear the errors out.

FAQ
* Can I switch between this SD card and my original Stern SD card if they have different versions? Yes, you might see a node-board update when you go between different versions, but it will work fine.
* If I want to save all of my settings and high scores on my card before re-flashing it, can I do that? Yes, refer to USB drive backup instructions from Stern (in the pinball menu UTIL-> Save / Load)
* Should I use this with Insider Connect? Works on my machine. That being said, there are validation checks within the software. I don't know what Stern would do with that information, but you can always swap to your Stern SD card to use online if you're worried.

Donations?
No, but I'll take your upvotes.

Limitations / Omissions
* The pizza eating contest animation as you’re smashing the button I left as is.
* The ‘match’ videos remained as is (I turn ’match’ off anyway).
* I did not do the 3 videos (intro, loop and end) for Cowabunga. If you get there, let me know and I will use clips of your choosing!
* Sometimes, there are no real episodes that correspond to the episodes on the pinball machine, so I had to be creative. For example: Slash fighting the turtles in Dimension X.

What it looks like

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PM Dellt for a combo

Premium / LE code is confirmed to work! Thank you djsoup !

That's an interesting note. The DVDs from which these clips are taken has them in 16:9, I actually did not change the aspect ratio when converting. I had wondered about that too myself. I didn't think anything was not in 4:3 in the '80s and '90s. Maybe just has to do with how they publish them on the DVDs?

Lol, thanks delt31

What program are you using, DD Utility?

Your OCD? That drove me absolutely bonkers! I'm hoping in the next release to fix it or make a different animation for the character selection. What's interesting about the character selection is that it's actually not a video, it's just 42 individual images one after the other in a loop. So that presents challenges of making a ~1.5s loop.

The other thing that drives me crazy is when you collect the first reward for training, The text shadow is all messed up. It's actually like that on the original software, but they have a black video background that masks the problem. I tried to get rid of that but I could not.

All things to work on for the next release, which will probably come a little after when Stern releases their next software update.

Nice! I just lost one of your previous streams of TMNT. Yes the left ramp is brutal, especially when you want to start team up or final battle lol. I'll try and pop into the stream to say hello

Thanks for the feedback. I just looked into video cleaner and I could not figure out how to use it. Ideally, I could just set a batch script to clean all the videos in a folder. If you like, I can send you a zip of all the videos and you can process them however you like and I can put it back in the firmware for everyone's consumption. PM me if you're interested!

I'm keeping the builds separate for people who want just the video mod without any changes to music. However, I believe delt31 will keep up with any updates. I'm going to try to limit the updates here to be just when stern releases new code, otherwise version control gets a little hairy.

It is as simple as putting the old SD card back in. Do it when the machine is off of course or risk problems. I keep my old one in the coin box. Also note that your settings and adjustments and high scores live on the SD card as well. So when you put in the new one, you'll have to put it on free play for example.

That's what I thought too, but here we are
I think the author of pinball browser either made some updates, or it worked all along. I know that people are working on edits for Jurassic Park right now too.

It's been awhile since I got the files from a DVD so I don't really remember. The quality of the originals is perfectly fine, but I had to reduce the quality in order to put them onto the image. I had problems with putting in larger file sizes than the original videos, so I had to down sample the edits a little bit. This was my first time working with pinball browser so I tried lots of things until I found a working workflow. In general, having the file size of the edits smaller than the original videos worked well so I tried doing this. Retrospectively, it doesn't look like that is entirely necessary in most cases. However, once you find a working workflow, you best stick to it!

No, I think size only mattered with the early workflow I was doing. Originally, I was importing without conversion. But then I found out from talking to oga83 that I should be importing instead. By that point, it was too late since I already had all of the files in the smaller size. I still think your efforts to clean them with the cleaning software will be helpful. Unfortunately, I don't have the clips in original definition, all the edits were basically made on the fly.

Haha so true! Video editing definitely has a lot of moving parts that I didn't realize. I had never done it before, but now I can see plenty of room for improvement. The first thing, is to save clips as close to original as possible (frame rate, bit rate, resolution, etc). In the future, I would just write a batch script that would take care of down sampling (if necessary) for use on the image. Live and learn

I do not have the episode references and timestamps unfortunately. I did all this on the fly and did not save as I went along. In the future, I would save all the clips in original format, then down sample as a batch if needed to put on the image.

Here's how my process works:
* Get episode from DVD (this was done in 16:9), converting to a useful high res format
* Look at the original video from Stern in pinball browser
* Find a suitable clip that could be placed in
* use OpenShot to create the clip (noting frame count, original resolution, etc of the original), and downsampling
* Save the clip
* Upload to the firmware
* Do the next clip

It's pretty 1-3 heavy. Anything after that was specifically to grab clips of characters not featured a lot, like Casey Jones and Slash. In fact, most of the clips are from the first season which is just around 5 episodes.

Thanks for streaming, I'm watching the VOD and it looks like you guys had a good time!

I honestly couldn't find any good enough clips for cowabunga. If you get there, you get to pick what gets put in (aka I'm tired of looking through for the right clip lol).

Yeah, this seems like exactly it. Open your coin door, press the button on the coin door to the far right (select) twice, go into adjustments (press volume + twice then select), then go to standard adjustments, then go to standard adjustment number 40 and turn free play on. Let us know if that works.

If your put your flashed SD card into the pinball machine and it boots up to see the starting animation, then there is no problem with your flash most likely. If there is a problem with the flash, the game will usually reboot itself over and over again before you get to the starting animation. I think evileye is right on the money with just changing it back to free play. See my instructions on the previous post.

Lol no problem. I once only had one pinball machine too. By this time next year, you'll know it inside out and have five more next to it

Agreed! Working on that for the next release. Thanks for the feedback.

Are you using the .raw file from my link, or the one from @delt31?
A 32gb SD care should work.
If you are flashing via pinball browser, you shouldn't have to open the firmware. In fact, opening it will not work if you want to write it. Check out my instruction video the first post for details. you basically just need to copy the absolute path of the file into the right to SD card prompt in the the smart DMD tab.

Awesome, let me know if you have any critiques

Ha! Yeah I got my dad into pinball in April last year. I lost track of how many he brought home after the twelfth. I bought my first in October last year and I'm slowly catching up to him with my 6th coming in the next few months. I no longer have a dining room and need to get a bigger house now

Nice format for the battle! I need to get streaming equipment at some point. My crotch-cam setup on the first post is embarrassing compared to your setup lol.

Nice, looking forward to the spotlight . PM delt31 for the combined pro version.

Working on the character selection screen. Unfortunately the way that Pinball browser works, the images when they get imported get artifacts. The hard part right now is trying to get the images looking as good as possible. I've been working on trying to get them looking as good as possible. Note that Donatello and Michelangelo look especially crusty on their borders.

Do you guys think this is the right direction?

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Yeah you're probably right, I'll probably just put back the 3D models in on the next release. Less work for me lol!

Yeah these images are taken from the character champion screens. I had to rotate Michelangelo, but there's not much I can do about those teeth lol. I also had to splice them out of their backgrounds so that they would look decent on the character select screen.

Within the past couple weeks, someone asked og83 about the compression and he said there was nothing he could really do about it unfortunately. It basically has to do with when there are any alpha channel pixels (transparency). I know this, since I did some direct Photoshop on the borders of each of the characters and that's where the transparent pixels come in. It looks especially crazy if you have a mostly transparent image. If you go to the pinball browser forum post, you can see example images someone is trying to work on for iron maiden.

Basically, it needs to be a square image without transparent pixels. So I can improve on the photos I took above by removing the alpha channels inside the square. Not sure if there exists any high res photos of the characters outside of the software, and the ones in the software involve some tweaking.

That's actually what I originally thought about doing, but then I wanted to just use the artwork exclusively from the TV show. Now that I'm thinking about using zombie yetis work, this doesn't seem like a stretch.

I just saw the 1.22 code was released today though, so for now I'll probably just work on making the release and use the original character selection artwork.

I should have it ready in the next few days.

Interestingly, I tried opening up the new version of code in pinball browser and it no longer works. It claims to be unknown firmware. I reached out to the developer of pinball browser to see if there is anything he can do. Here's hoping!

Well as of right now, pinball browser will not work with version 1.22 of TMNT. According to the pinball browser developer, it sounds like the latest firmware changed the way that sounds are decoded which also prevents me from using it at all even for just video. If there's an update to pinball browser, then I can update this code to 1.22, but for now we'll just have to wait.

I've installed Stern's 1.22 using a separate SD card and then gone back to the 1987 code (1.21) no problem. When you switch, it may do a node board update every time you switch. Seems like it's not a big deal to switch between the two.

Update for everyone!
The pinball browser dev is working on getting 1.22 tmnt firmware working - so once that is ready I can make updates for 1.22.

Hmmm.. not sure what to make of that. delt31 may have some ideas?

Hmm, what hardware are you using to write the image and what sd card?
Maybe try the suggested ones in my installation video?

So the only difference is between your setup and mine would be the PC and potentially the image.

Can you try writing the image from another PC?

The image may be corrupted when you download it.
Try downloading with another browser or maybe if you have virus protection software it may be interfering with it?

Are you able to see the videos on the video tab when you load the firmware in pinball browser?
Another note, make sure you are not opening the firmware in pinball browser before writing it to the image.

One more thought, it's possible that the USB port you are plugged into is finicky.

Try plugging the card writer into another USB port directly into your PC.

Nice, glad you figured it out. I had no idea lol.

I don't have the motivation to go back and edit all the videos again, but I could certainly show you guys how to do so

For what it's worth, the original videos even from the dvd are not that great of quality. I heard they had taken the vcr tapes as a source for a lot of them.

I will say there are certainly compression artifacts on some of my conversions in some dark scenes, but I honestly don't notice them on most of the clips. The only one that comes to mind that I really notice is the ninja pizza multi-ball loop scene.

Yes you can swap back and forth no problem (even different version 1.21 to 1.22).
High scores do not move with the cards.

Send a PM delt31. He would be happy to supply it.

The average video clips I put in are 90 frames at 30fps (3 seconds).
About the only exception to this is the attract screen using the TMNT intro which is about 1 minute.
I found that if I import without conversion, I likely have to deal with bad images. Import with conversion was really the only way to make sure it worked. I imagine that importing without conversion can be dangerous since it likely writes over data outside the video file on the card if the file import is too big. Just my guess, but check with oga83. I remember oga83 said that import without conversion was just a temporary fix for some weird edge cases and it should not be used normally.

Looks like you got quotes around everything but .raw in your path:
'C:\Users\billy\Downloads\turtles_le-prem-1_21_0.Release.16G.sdcard.1987.dav'.raw

Paste this in there instead:
C:\Users\billy\Downloads\turtles_le-prem-1_21_0.Release.16G.sdcard.1987.dav.raw

Oh sorry I thought I already replied to this but I guess it did not actually post.

The video clips are mostly about 3 seconds (90 frames at 30fps). At most, they were about 15 seconds. The only exception is the attract screen being about 1 minute. Luckily there was still no stutter on that one either.

I always use conversion based on what oga83 suggested.

Yes.

The software we use to make this code is pinball browser. Stern changed something in the way the image of the software can be manipulated on TMNT starting at version 1.22. The developer of pinball browser is working on being able to read it, but until that works we cannot make the custom software image for version 1.22.

In order to swap between the SD cards, make sure your power is off and swap them. Then turn on and you will notice a node board update and you should be good to go.

If you try to update the code by usb to 1.22 on the 1.21 1987 code it definitely will not work. I would format the SD card and do a complete rewrite of the 1987 1.21 code.

Thank you for the kind words! I actually kind of like the image quality as is. It reminds me of my childhood times lol. I'll just put a CRT TV in place of the stern screen...

That's pretty good for a remake - my only complaint is how they made the mouths look.

Yeah you can't ever take a stern update and apply it to the sd card with the 1987 code on it.

Unfortunately, we just have to wait for pinball browser to be compatible with the latest updates before I can make any updates to the latest version. It stopped working on TMNT version 1.21.

This is actually pretty cool! It would take some manual work to map the videos to the new locations but it is certainly possible. Like you said though, the images would not be possible without pinball browser (character select screen, static loop with awards, mode intro screens). That would be a good intermediary though without pinball browser.

Awesome work, I'd be happy to give you the new videos for the new mode once I make them. The attract video I would recommend keeping as the original Stern one since we can't remove the images that overlay it. Also, the premium and LE share the same firmware so you only need to do two images

So I have been working with cabal on the side to make version 1.23 without pinball browser. We were basically done, then it looked like pinball browser got an update to work with 1.23!
Either way it's good news for everyone. I'll get out the new version sometime in the next few days.

1.23 is up - see first post for the links!
I would appreciate if someone with a Premium / LE could confirm that the 1.23 image is working
Good luck getting to Neutrino Pizza Party!
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Ha! That is awesome. I did the same thing to my 4-year-old and it took her a while too

Thank you for confirming!

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If you really want to force it onto an 8gb card you can use Win32 disk imager. This may or may not work, and I do not recommend it since some people might accidentally write over their original SD card from Stern since that one is 8 gb.

However, you should just be able to write to your 16 gb SD card with pinball browser without any problems.

Try to get the latest version from the pinball browser forum thread.
If you're having trouble with writing it in pinball browser, you can try Balena Etcher or Win32 disk imager.

Also how did you format the card? You shouldn't have to format it but it is possible that if you formatted it incorrectly it lowered the readable amount of space. Do you remember what file structure you used? Like exFat or FAT32 or NTFS?

Let it go to 100%. It should take about 10-15 minutes. You won't be able to see the files on it on your computer. After you let it go to 100%, make sure you safely eject it by right-clicking the drive in my computer and pressing eject. Then insert it into your pinball machine. I have a video for the installation instructions on my first post if that helps.

What card reader are you using?
It's possible that the card reader is not working.

Can you get the standard stern image written onto the sd card? Use this link and follow their instructions.
https://sternpinball.com/support/sd-cards/
If you can get that to work, try writing the 1987 image with the same software that Stern suggests (Balena Etcher).

Glad you got it working, I was very confused by the issue you were having!

Once you have this code on your machine, you can swap the SD card from Stern with this one without any issues.
Do not attempt software updates from Stern onto the 1987 code SD card, it will not work.

So for example: card 1 has Stern 1.23 code on it, card 2 has 1987 1.23 code on it.
* you can update to 1.40 code from Stern on the Stern SD only
* updates to 1.40 code on the 1987 version requires a full image download from this forum and will re-write everything (including high scores and settings) when you write to the card again. (you can save high scores and settings first using the built-in option on the pinball diagnostics settings).

With help from @cabal, we are making an update without the use of Pinball Browser
I need to make 22 new videos, so give me about a week.

v1.41 is up!
HUGE thanks to cabal for doing the magic to make this happen without Pinball Browser (since it is not compatible with the latest firmware).
Half Shell Challenge videos have been added

Hey thanks that's actually a great clip! Will make some changes and put up a v2 in the next few days.

New version using this suggested video is up (replacing the previous 1.41 link).
Thank you for the recommendation.

Only once Pinball Browser is compatible.
According to @cabal, the music is all encrypted as one big file, so using his method we cannot change the music.

Just made some minor tweaks and uploaded.
* Fixed missing screen for final battle intro
* Removed wonky text shadow on training level 2 complete screen

Pinball Browser is now compatible again with the latest TMNT firmware, however the sound imports are not quite working.
Once it is working again, I will add the 1987 theme song back in.

Yes, I did the latest update this morning around 10AM EST.
Hopefully now that I have them zipped the download times are much shorter!

Hello and welcome to pinside, you're going to love it here! I'm honored that your first post is in this thread

Visit the first post in this thread for all of the links for the firmware, and the video on how to install. The only new thing to note since I made an installation video is that you must extract the firmware once you download it (it is in a .zip archive). Let me know if you have any questions.

Did you extract it first?
Make sure you are flashing with the '.raw' file in Pinball Browser.
If it is the '.zip' file, you have to extract that first.
I started zipping the file so that downloads would be faster for everyone.
After extracting, follow the instruction video for any parts that you may be missing.

If you cannot get Pinball Browser to work for some reason, you could also try 'Win32DiskImager'.

New 1.41 version updated to fix the missing final battle intro speech.
Thanks to cabal for the expert work!

Pro tested working.
If anyone tries 1.41 premium/LE let me know if it works (loads and you can play a game and fixes the final battle speech).

No it does not change the other sounds unfortunately.

If you are talking about writing the SD card image to an SD card you "should" be able to do that on any operating system as long as the program you are using can take the SD card image as an input.
I have not tried this on a mac, but you could start with https://www.balena.io/etcher/ since it works for mac too.
This specific program tends to fail for me randomly even when verifying data - the write process 'looks' successful, but the card just reboots endlessly when used in the TMNT pinball machine. If that happens, try writing again a few times and it probably would work.

Update for anyone who cares:
I tried getting the original theme song onto v1.41 using the latest Pinball Browser update (7.80) to see if it works with TMNT again.
Unfortunately, it does not quite work.
Putting the theme song onto the image somehow disables the music that plays during the first ball and there were some other weird quirks.
Based on what the dev is saying in the Pinball Browser forum post, the codecs used are not always the same from game to game and his insider for help is no longer available.
Long story short, it looks like replacing music is not yet working.

Crashes during turtle power multi-ball are very rare and happen even on the original stern code. Whenever I had that happen, it was usually on the first game after writing the software to the card.

The fact that it set your volume level to 18 is suspect though. If you have any other weird behavior, I would suggest writing to the SD card again. Try using another method like win32diskimager if you plan to write the data to the SD card again.

Yes they are the original PinStadiums! I recently upgraded to the Neo PinStadiums and they are freaking amazing on this game. Can't go back to regular ones. The other change I made was to tie the UV flashers to the shaker instead of the center pop flasher. Subtle, but I like it better that way.

Check out the first post of this topic for getting set up.
Enjoy!

The combined code is only available through PMing @delt32.

Keep in mind that the latest version of combined code is not the same version as the latest stern code since Pinball Browser became incompatible with later TMNT code from the audio side (video was still compatible).

delt31. Not 32

Mental note: Google drive links will need to be updated after Sept. 13 because of a google drive security update.

Just did the update now, but it looks like the links are identical.
Please let me know if you have trouble downloading them.

Also, I removed older versions to clean up the space.

I hope you make it there - I have only been there once and that's when I played a four-player co-op game with myself!

Well I'm pretty sure there have been at least a couple hundred installs across different machines and no one has mentioned bricking their game to me yet.

If you can follow instructions and swap an SD card then there's no harm.

Only caveat I would say is if you get the new insider connected apron with automatic updates and Wi-Fi connectivity to Stern's system then maybe you would have a problem.

You are very welcome! Glad I could take your posting virginity too

Yeah I don't think he is distributing it anymore. Also, the music only worked up to a few versions back, so you would be missing out on some of the newer code anyways.

Awesome!

Seems like the link works for me at least.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/acdc-display-and-modify-dot-matrix-images

If that doesn't work still, you can try using Balena Etcher, but it does have tendency to create failed writes. You'll only find out once you plug it into your machine. If it has a failed write, then the game will not boot correctly.

Weird! I'll make a mental note the next time someone has an issue.

The second any kind of money is exchanged, you could get into trouble with the license holder. I would recommend you get a local friend to help you out.

Nice! Looks like they finally did a stern code release today
I'll start looking at seeing if it's possible to bring the 1987 code up to 1.50...

The current 1987 code does not work with 1.5 code. If you try to update using the Stern usb code onto the 1987 code SD card, it most likely will not work at all.

Additionally, I would caution you to never have the 1987 code on a pinball machine connected to the internet. There are validity checks in the new 1.5 code and I wouldn't want you getting banned or bricked just from using the 1987 code.

However, you should still be able to swap between an original stern SD card and a 1987 code SD card just fine. Even connecting to the internet on the Stern code.

Will keep you guys posted when we have an update ready.

1.50 Pro is up. Premium / LE coming soon.
Added text to Extra Ball and Shoot Again screen by request.

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Unfortunately getting music and sounds in custom code is dead in the water unless Pinball Browser becomes compatible with the latest versions.

That is correct. For these updates of the latest versions, we are actually not using pinball browser. But pinball browser did allow changing the sounds and music.