The Dumping Union (with help from hap, N. Francfort & Smitdogg) located the rather less common original release of Psikyo’s Space Bomber.
Chances are this version was intended for Japan only, because with the existing set the ‘Version B’ subtitle was only ever shown when set to Japan. Note, even from the first screen you see the localization isn’t quite right when the older set is booted as a World version. It appears they didn’t manage to fit the text on the screen, on the screen which is telling you how much of the screen you should be fitting on your screen… Oh dear. The text was rearranged for the Version B release to ensure it fitted correctly.
Title screens when set to Japan are the same aside the subtitle.
The ‘Space Bomber’ logo in attract mode appears in various colours in the original release, in the version B it’s always red.
Another bug when set to English, again relates to the text display, this time when continuing (also the original version only seems to ever display this one string, the B version has multiple strings) You can see they changed the colour of the Game Over text as well.
Furthermore, there are NO English (or Engrish) cutscenes in the original release of the game it simply jumps from the World 1 boss straight to World 2. This adds more weight to the argument that it was intended as a Japan release, and the ‘World’ region wasn’t fully tested / finished at this point.
Gameplay differences? There are bound to be some, probably game balance related, however I’m not familiar enough with the game to tell you :-)
I’ve been hoping this would show up since I wrote the driver for the Psikyo SH2 hardware many years ago.
I posted the video yesterday, but didn’t have time to write the post to go with it due to having to go out while it was still uploading. Anyway, here’s the update.
Following on from Knuckle Bash, Dogyuun and V-Five, Robiza managed to decrypt the Sound CPU code for FixEight, which uses a different encryption table.
Previously only a bootleg was ‘working’ and that had vastly inferior sound hardware. (and a much lower CPU clock resulting in large slowdowns.)
Unlike Toaplan’s other games FixEight uses an EEPROM for settings / region selection, which caused a few additional issues. I’ve helped Robiza with most of these, and the game correctly loads and saves it’s settings from EEPROM. The only thing strange is that the EEPROM that was dumped from the original PCB appears to be non-functional with the code we have; there are explicit checks for values stored in it, and they’re simply wrong in the dump. Also due to Toaplan using a non-user-changable EEPROM setting for the region in this we have to support the regions as a bunch of clones rather than having the jumper switch if we’re to avoid using hacks in the code.
The Sound CPU in this instance also provides background data (they’re contained scrambled in the program ROM, the V25 program descrambles them) We knew that the sound CPU was involved with the backgrounds somehow, but weren’t sure exactly. It turns out they use an almost identical method to the one used to load the 2nd part of the v25 code on the other games, copying the background data once at startup into shared RAM. Note, even the bootleggers resorted to placing this data in an additional ROM because they couldn’t figure out how the V25 descrambled the data from ROM.
I don’t think this is one of Toaplan’s better games. It’s meant as a followup to the excellent OutZone but the environments are too claustrophobic, and don’t give you enough room to shoot. Coupled with some rather useless alternate weapons which just end up in a single direction, or simply hitting the level environment instead of your enemies and you have what can only be described as a frustrating experience. A Shame, because it’s a very good looking game. The music isn’t even that good, although is infinitely better than that found in the bootleg!
Note, the intro ONLY plays if the invincibility setting is set to ON. I don’t know if this is because Toaplan decided to take the feature out of the game, or if there is another revision with this condition / bug fixed. The bootleg in MAME is the same. There is an explicit check in the code and the bit to enable the intro is exactly the same as the bit to enable invincibility! This seems illogical, but it’s the way it is.
The remaining Toaplan games (Vimana, FireShark, Ghox, Whoopee JPN version, Teki Paki) will need the HD647180 MCUs decapping for proper sound emulation.
See The Decapping project for more information on this. Donations _are_ required if this work is to be done. Proper emulated sound will be far better than the hacked in OSTs found in some other builds as has been shown with the ones we’ve emulated here. As a programmer there is nothing more I can do for those games, in order to emulate the sound, we need the sound code, which is inside the MCU.
Chips 19, 58, and 102 are the Toaplan MCUs. Please note, he does not yet have the MCU for Ghox, or the Japan Whoopee (although the latter I believe has been sourced) Spares of the chips always help in the case of something going wrong.
NG-Dev Team, the team behind Fast Striker and Last Hope Pink Bullets, have just released a teaser trailer for their upcoming 2011 release, Gun-Lord, for both Dreamcast, and Neo-Geo.
Not much is known about the game at this stage, apart from a tagline of 'Jump, Shoot, Explore'...which sounds pleasingly similar to Magician Lord.
Keep your eyes peeled for this one in the coming months.
Get ready to update and rename all your sets... this update's a biggy!
******************************* The Old School Emulation Center 19/01/2011
Hi all, and welcome to a brand new TOSEC release! It's another big one, so enjoy....
The focus since the last release has again been the continued tracking down and correcting of any existing errors and legacy renaming. We have continued to make strides at migrating the old depreciated 'Various' category and to standardize the current categorisation. In addition, many older DATs have been revisited to add newer TNC flags such as country and language.
As well as this, significant work has also been undertaken on a number of existing DAT hierarchies, as well as introducing lots of exciting new DATs and systems.
As always, this project is what it is because of the continued involvement and contributions from all of its volunteers. So a big thank you to everyone!
All folders and contents should be self explanatory. All new CUE and GDI files are also included. There are also some scripts in 'misc' to assist in creating TOSEC folders, and some 'move' scripts for those of you using RomVault.
Phew! Pretty massive update! One of the biggest in many years from the Tosec team.
Batsugun wasn’t encrypted, so worked as soon as AWJ had added the needed features to the CPU core.
Knuckle Bash, Dogyuun, V-Five and Fix Eight were all encrypted and needed extra work.
Robiza noted that the Knuckle Bash sound CPU program seemed very similar to the Batsugun one, apart from the encryption, and started work on decrypting it. He quickly found that, despite having different chip markings, Dogyuun and V-Five used the exact same encryption table.
This allowed him to work on all 3 at the same time, and eventually he got the games to boot with the Sound CPU running (it does a handshake with the main CPU and passes along the dipswitch information before the games boot).
There were a couple of issues with the sound at first due to missing / incorrect opcodes in his decryption table, but he quickly sorted these out.
That gives us fully working sound in Knuckle Bash, Dogyuun and V-Five.
Fix Eight uses a different encryption table for the CPU, however, Robiza has also noted that the sound program on that seems very close to the one found on Dogyuun, so again, thanks to being able to decrypt Dogyuun earlier he has a reference to work with. He’s currently figured out ~60% of the Fix Eight table, but so far it still isn’t booting. Fix Eight also uses EEPROM instead of Dipswitches, and protected some background data.
Here are some videos of Robiza & AWJs progress.
Oh, and just so that there’s some actual news from me in this post, I cleaned up some of the rewritten video functions, and fixed flipscreen in these games again which broke when I did the rewrite last year. For the most part I’ve just been working on maintenance of the driver while Robiza and AWJ figure out the encryption tables.
AWJ (Alex Jackson) added support for the extended V25/V35 features to the NEC V20/V30 core in MAME.
These features (timers, memory-mapped register banking, custom interrupt controller) are used by the sound programs of several Toaplan titles. He then hooked things up properly in the driver, giving full sound to Batsugun.
Batsugun has unencrypted sound code, so was the easiest one to get running.
V-Five / Grindstormer, Fix Eight, Knuckle Bash, and Dogyuun will also benefit from this once their sound code has been fully decrypted. This is just a matter of time and a bit of effort in figuring out the programs.
For the remaining Toaplan games (Teki Paki, Vimana, Fire Shark, Ghox, Whoopee JPN version) the sound MCUs need decapping, which will require funding / donations for this purpose.
And for those interested:
* 12th March 2000: Quench sent in a Toaplan2 update with support for Ghox, V-Five, Dogyuun and Batsugun.
* 0.139u3: David Haywood fixed incorrect VDP mixing in Batsugun.
and now 0.141u1 (when it arrives) will finally have the game in full working order!
Combining my previous graphic fixes in 0.139u3 with the complete sound emulation from AWJ, means that for the first time ever the game will be 100% working in an emulator! It’s only taken almost 11 years :-)
So much for the proposed Mortal Kombat remake that Warner Bros. Pictures had hoped to get off the ground. Still, fans of the bloody battle are in for a treat as Bloody Disgusting learned that director Kevin Tancharoen - who directed the awesome online short - will return behind the camera for a 10-episode web series dedicated to the popular video game. Penned by Tancharoen, Todd Helbing, and Aaron Helbing, star Michael Jai White leads the cast as "Major Jackson 'Jax' Briggs. Shooting will take place in Vancouver this coming February. Contested expected to be cast are: Shang Tsung, Liu Kang, Sub Zero, Durak, Kabal, Kitana/Mileena and of course Scorpion. No release date is planned, and there's no word on that R-rated remake. The only plot details we could conjure up is that a few Earthlings will fight to save the planet from Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung, two Gods ruling over parallel universes, or something to that effect.
As expected, Call of Duty: Black Ops continued its sales dominance during the final month of sales in 2010. Read on to see how other Black Friday blockbusters fared against December's new releases and the rest of 2010's top games in the December year-end NPD report.
Call of Duty: Black Ops had another stellar month to close 2010, with the combined sales for the IP topping 12 millions units for the two months it was available on the market in the United States. To put it in perspective, the second-ranking 2010 seller--Madden 2011--sold less than half of that amount.
Three new games debuted on the NPD charts this month--World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, Disney Epic Mickey, and Michael Jackson: The Experience. Cataclysm is the first PC-exclusive to land on the charts since it's incorporated PC titles. Other single-sku games that performed well but landed outside the top ten were Kinect Sports and Dance Central on the Xbox 360, as well as UDraw Studio with UDraw Tablet for the Wii. Here's the December 2010 sales rankings.
1) Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, Wii, PC, DS - Released 11/09/10)
2) Just Dance 2 (Wii- Released 10/12/10)
3) World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (PC- Released 12/07/10)
4) Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (360, PS3- Released 11/16/10)
5) Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii- Released 11/21/10)
8) Michael Jackson: The Experience (Wii, DS, PSP- Released 11/23/10)
9) NBA 2K11 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PSP, PC - Released 10/05/10)
10) Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PS3, 360, Wii, PC- Released 11/16/10)
While the Nintendo DS continued to lead the overall hardware sales rankings--in fact it passed the PS2 on the US' all-times sales charts--the Xbox 360 finished the year strongly with another month atop the home console sales charts. The Xbox 360 had its top-selling month of all time on the heels of Black Ops and the Kinect, becoming the only system to grow in terms of sales in 2010.
In addition to the December sales figures, the NPD also provided a few notes about 2010 sales as a whole. Despite the fact that console and console software sales saw steep drops of 13% and 6%, respectively, the video game industry only saw a slight drop in overall sales, with the year-end figure looking to land between $15.4 to $15.6 billion. The reason? Boosts in the accessories market and PC game sales due to the Kinect and Cataclysm, respectively.
The NPD Group also provided the year-end sales software rankings. Like the new monthly formula, the list ranks the IPs instead of individual games for particular systems. Here's the 2010 sales rankings:
1) Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, Wii, PC, DS - Released 11/09/10)
I have recently downloaded this emulator and I have been playing it quite a bit. After doing so, I have to give the makers of it a lot of credit. It not only has a TON of games that work for it (including the majority of the wii ware ones), but it runs surprisingly well too. I am operating on WINXP with 4.0 ghz of CPU power and 4 gigs of DDR800, and I can get New Super Mario Bros. Wii to run at 100% easily the majority of the time. And the emulator is literally updated every few hours (the newest version is only 6 hours old), so they are constantly improving upon it.
A quick list of some of Dolphin's features:
# You can save a running game whenever you want and reload a state.
# Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering makes the games more brilliant and realistic. Typically a game looks much better on Dolphin than on the original Wii console. Actual quality depends on the graphics card.
# Play on maximum resolution in high definition up to 1080p. This is a remarkable feature the original Wii console lacks of.
# Connect your Wiimote and Nunchuck to your computer for a better gaming experience.
The Link to the main site is listed at the top. If you want to see the status of individual games you can go here on their site: Clicky
There is also a thread on this emulator in the forums if you want to discuss it further or ask for help here
Sony's legal suits are at it again, filing a lawsuit against famed hacker George 'Geohot' Hotz and the fail0verflow team. Along with Hotz, it specifically names Hector Martin and Sven Peter, both of whom gave a revealing presentation on Sony's broken PS3 security last month at 27C3. 100 other individuals have been targeted as well, although they remain unnamed.
The suit contests that said defendants are in violation of DMCA under U.S. law, pointing to the recent publication of the PS3's encryption routines and subsequent release of Hotz's firmware 3.55 jailbreak.
Click the link at the top to see the original article, as well as to access links to the motion for the temporary restraining order by Sony, and the proposed order as well. You can also discuss this topic in the arcade@home forums here
Bombjack Twin has been supported in MAME for a long time. It’s a solid followup to Bombjack which updates the original game with new graphics and sound as well as a simultaneous 2 player mode.
Recently a prototype board showed up, while we weren’t sure exactly what would be different about it it was known that it would be a different version of the board due to the lack of the ‘Demo’ text displayed in the Attract mode. (See 1:26, the other sets have DEMO displayed at the bottom of the screen)
What wasn’t so expected is the other change found in this version of the game which came as a bit of a surprise when we started looking at the emulation for it. We noticed that (apart from the roms being entirely unencrypted) there was extra graphic data in this set compared to the others. More specficially there were title logos for Dooyong’s Gun Dealer (another game developed by NMK) as well as various girls in different states of undress. The ROM definitely didn’t come from Gun Dealer, despite containing the logo so what was it for? Bombjack Twin isn’t that type of game to have such content, is it?
Well, as it happens, it turned out that the prototype version DOES display these images, after the bonus games. (see 3:20, 6:02) The images shown in the video here are fully clothed girls, I don’t know if getting a ‘perfect’ on the bonus stage will reveal different images. (Another minor change is that the Bonus Game text is also missing during the bonus round on this set)
Why the images? I guess that secret will remain locked in the minds of a few people at NMK. Maybe it was a version being tailored to the Korean market where this kind of thing was more common, or maybe it was just a misguided choice early in development before NMK realised they had a good enough family game to do without it!
This version will be supported in the 0.141u1 release.
Members - post your news here
Ok, this thread is only for members to post gaming news articles to be turned into separate threads to appear in the news section.
Please keep on topic, no squabbling, back-chat, revelations regarding sexual congress with fleshy fruit etc.... This is for gaming news, the whole gaming news and nothing but the gaming news please :)
If it's news you're taking from elsewhere, make sure it's good quality and "proper" news - opinion pieces/blogger guff don't really count. And make sure it's a source that allows reposting, an increasing number of sites are making it clear their content can't be reproduced elsewhere without permission.
Be aware that only 10 news articles can appear on the front page, so "spamming" news is probably counter-productive.
Of course, usual rules apply - no swearing, no linking to illegal content, no adult/offensive material and all the rest.
Please see Teckel's guide below for brief instructions on the coding required. If you need examples, just quote/edit one of the existing articles to see the formatting, use cut & paste to get yourself a "template" if needs be.
You can sanity-check your HTML with this handy tester here - just paste your code into it and hit the button to view it.
Mods - please post in here before you add an article, just to make sure we don't get duplicates cocking up the front page.
Deano
Tim here. Hello. Because topics posted here end up on the front news page of Arcade@Home, a few guidelines need to be followed:
If you want to start a new line, you'll need to use the html BR tag as a standard return does nothing in an html document
You must use html code, bb code won't work outside the forums
If you want to creat a link, you need to start the topic message out with "Link: http://..." on the first line (see other topics as an example).
For lists, you need to use the html tags UL and LI. For HTML examples, see this handy HTML site
Keep the subjects fairly short and don't add exclamation points except for something like a new version of MAME that's released. Oh, and if a new version of an emulator is released, say "Released" in the subject so people know it's released as opposed to just news about it.
Bombjack Twin has been supported in MAME for a long time. It’s a solid followup to Bombjack which updates the original game with new graphics and sound as well as a simultaneous 2 player mode.
Recently a prototype board showed up, while we weren’t sure exactly what would be different about it it was known that it would be a different version of the board due to the lack of the ‘Demo’ text displayed in the Attract mode. (See 1:26, the other sets have DEMO displayed at the bottom of the screen)
What wasn’t so expected is the other change found in this version of the game which came as a bit of a surprise when we started looking at the emulation for it. We noticed that (apart from the roms being entirely unencrypted) there was extra graphic data in this set compared to the others. More specficially there were title logos for Dooyong’s Gun Dealer (another game developed by NMK) as well as various girls in different states of undress. The ROM definitely didn’t come from Gun Dealer, despite containing the logo so what was it for? Bombjack Twin isn’t that type of game to have such content, is it?
Well, as it happens, it turned out that the prototype version DOES display these images, after the bonus games. (see 3:20, 6:02) The images shown in the video here are fully clothed girls, I don’t know if getting a ‘perfect’ on the bonus stage will reveal different images. (Another minor change is that the Bonus Game text is also missing during the bonus round on this set)
Why the images? I guess that secret will remain locked in the minds of a few people at NMK. Maybe it was a version being tailored to the Korean market where this kind of thing was more common, or maybe it was just a misguided choice early in development before NMK realised they had a good enough family game to do without it!
This version will be supported in the 0.141u1 release.
News Archives
NewsBoy
E-Mail
