Best way to rip NES sprites and graphics?

[Local H00ligan]

Been looking to try to rip some specific sprites from Super Mario Bros 3 as accurately as I can, but I have no idea on how to do so.

Right now, I'm operating with TLP (Tile Layer Pro), and the FCEUX emulator. I'm struggling with trying to get accurate NTSC palettes for the sprites, and have pretty much no clue on how to work with FCEUX palette-wise. Is there any alternative emulators or software that I'd be better off working with? Can anybody show me how I can get what I already have to work, or how to get the proper palettes for TLP or FCEUX?

Thanks,

- Local H00ligan

[Yawackhary]

Just to let you know there is no such thing as an accurate palette for the NES due to how the console works and is not the only console that this happens. Basically the palette of the NES depends on what type of TV you have, the connectors and even the console itself. There's a lengthy explanation of someone attempting to get a palette using an AV Famicom, PAL NES and a MiSTer using a Sony PVM and every result was different.

Due to this palette wise on the NES, it means that a lot of palette files were made and what palette is personal preference. e.g. someone might like FirebrandX's palettes or someone might like the Sony CVX palette. There are a lot more but those are the two that get mentioned a lot.

Actually pretty surprised that this still isn't common knowledge at this point considering that emulators supported palette files for a very long time...

If you're looking for an alternative emulator, there's Mesen that I use that has a palette viewer as well as a tile/background viewer and Nestopia. For Mesen and FCEUX, the palette viewer can be found via the PPU Viewer. Since the NES uses different terms for things, the PPU is the NES video unit, nametable is the background viewer, CHR is the tile viewer (CHR believe means character). You might not even need TileLayerPro since FCEUX and Mesen have tile viewers built in but if you still want to use a tile viewer, there's also YY-CHR and TileMole-ster. Those two support savestates from emulators that you can use to get the palette however the emulators that they officially support aren't the ones still in widespread use (YY-CHR supports VirtualNES as both of those are Japanese). Since SMB3 is a popular game, you might be able to get the direct palette address somewhere and use it directly in TileMole-ster.

Also if you're going for the PlayChoice 10 option, there's also MAME but not sure whether the palette viewer works on the NES (you could also try NES games on that, MAME does support the console especially on newer versions but is one of very few NES emulators that doesn't support palette files).