http://www.lucaelia.com/mame.phpTransformation of Dapp into RSSinfo@dapper.netMon, 06 Oct 2008 21:14:36 -0400Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0400I've taken another look at the igs_blit.c driver, thanks to Pierpaolo, who managed to decrypt another Mahjong game, Da Ban Cheng., I've added the necessary protection patches / emulation so that it work. While I was at it, I took the chance to clean up the driver, and review the protection handling in the non working games there., I managed to promote to working status the following games: Xing Yen Man Guan (with help from Wei Mingzhi), an earlier version of Long Hu Bang, an alternate world version of Dragon World along with its Hong Kong and Chinese variants (Zhong Guo Long)., Below are the title screens of Da Ban Cheng and "Zhong Guo Long" (Hong Kong) (actual Taiwanese title?):, I've also marked the world version of Virtua Bowling as a bad dump, patching it so that it doesn't reset at the end of a game., The issues still open in this driver are now some lingering palette problems and, of course, proper emulation of the IGS011 and IGS012 ASIC's., Unrelated to the above, I've been doing some work (mostly released by now) on several obscure games, ending up with a preliminary driver for the protected Korean game Quiz Punch 2, a couple of working video pokers – Champion Poker, Galaxi – and some minor improvements to Table Tennis Champions (still working on that).Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400Prompted by Aaron's post I've created an RSS 2.0 feed of my WIP page too., It was fun to code: the feed is generated through HTML scraping, with some help from the WIP page PHP code (meta information on the posts), and some trickeries (stripping out tables, rewriting URL's to be absolute)., I hope some of you will find it useful (just don't expect many updates during August ).Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400This is one of the many gambling games produced by Taiwanese IGS. Specifically, a video slot machine titled Jingle Bell:, It's the Italian version of a game released in 1995 (as written in the rom)., The hardware is similar to other IGS002 + IGS003 based boards, and consists of a Z180 CPU, IGS009 custom for graphics, YM2413 and OKI M6295 for sound., The interesting part is the background tilemap, that is designed specifically for simulating the nine reels of the slot machine. The way it works is similar, but more complicated than what's emulated in iqblock.c or goldstar.c., Frankly, I haven't nailed it down yet., As for most IGS games, it is also encrypted and protected, but I think I've taken care of that., Thanks to drummerboy81 &f205vSun, 13 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400Not a video game this time, but a photo booth where you pose in front of a camera and receive up to 16 printed stickers. You can choose one of several foregrounds that get superimposed on the photo, or pose with a friend., It seems photo stickers booths earned a place in Japan's pop culture history, after their inception in 1994-1995 with Sega's Print Club. They mostly caught on among Japanese female high schoolers and J-Pop fans, so much so that the term Purikura was coined to designate these booths., In the wake of Sega, several other arcade manufacturers followed (more info can be found in history.dat)., Jaleco's take on Purikura, in collaboration with I'Max, is called Nandemo Seal Iinkai:, The hardware is that emulated in the tetrisp2.c driver, plus a camera and a printer (not emulated)., Thanks to Yasuhiro Ogawa / Team JupumpSat, 22 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400Below are screenshots from a poker game by Astro Corp. called Show Hand:, The game is aimed at the italian market (this version at least), and seems to be locked to the default settings (cards with fruits, etc.)., It runs on Astro Corp.'s older platform, on which they developed several gambling / slot / poker games. The hardware is indeed pretty straightforward: a 68000, 256 colour sprites, and an OKI sound chip., Thanks to f205v &Mame Italia.Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500Further steps in the emulation of the IGS games using a Z180 CPU and the IGS017 ASIC. The latter is the video chip (tilemaps + free form sprites) and protection device., This work is based on the decryption, Z180 fixes and skeleton driver done by Pierpaolo in September. I succeded in bypassing the protection(s), so as to emulate the video hardware, add inputs and sound., Below are a couple of screenshots from IQ-Block (V127M):, This is the new version of the already emulated IQ-Block (although I can't read the actual title), released three years later with better graphics and on different hardware.Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500Galaxy Games is a cartridge based cocktail cabinet developed by Creative Electronics &Software (CES)., It contains a series of 2 player mini-games, ranging from Breakout (properly licensed by Atari) to Mini-Golf:, What you see above are screen shots of the 7 base games, included in the ROM's that came with the PCB., More games were released as cartridges, called StarPaks 1 - 4 (up to 4 can be used simultaneously). These are not currently dumped, and appear to feature some properly licensed remakes of classics like Pac-Man, Centipede and Berzerk., Both in game play and hardware-wise this platform is very similar to the Touch Master games by Midway, that I emulated a few months ago. Indeed, it uses the same blitter to draw the screen, but with more layers., Fortunately, the interaction is via trackballs and buttons, instead of the dreaded (and not correctly emulated) touch screen of the latter games. So The main annoyance with getting this to work has been figuring out the ROM/RAM banking., Thanks to Andrew.Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500This is a Japanese puzzle game called Puzzlet (2000) by (I think) Yunizu Corporation., The gameplay is an original combination of Tetris and Gals Panic, in that you must fit together some shapes on the screen (from the former game), to uncover an erotic image (like in the latter game)., The game suffers from several issues as things stand, and is not playable. However, here are some preliminary screenshots:, About the hardware: while the video chip is an Imagetek 14300, as used in the metro.c driver, the CPU is not a 68000, but an H8/3007. This is a variant of the Hitachi CPU used by the subsino.c games that I worked on a few months back., Again, to get it to boot I had to add a dozen unemulated instructions, and add support for the different internal registers of the 3007. I also started to implement the slightly different timers of this model., Despite that, the game does not write to the OKI sound chip (must be the timers), it does not clear the tilemaps properly (hence the corrupt layers), plus it does not populate the tiles table of the 14300 correctly (tile 0 is not transparent)., The images above were in fact taken using a few hacks in the video emulation, and some disabled layers., Thanks to Guru.Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500One of the few arcade games ever programmed in Italy has been uncovered, by the good guys over at Mame Italian Forum., Here are some snapshots from Wheels Runner (1988?):, It's obviously a clone of Atari's Championship Sprint (minus the upgradeable cars feature) and, while I won't comment on its quality, it's nice to have it preserved., The hardware is fantland.c with a NEC V20 as main CPU, and a Z80 as sound cpu (in place of the usual 8088)., It is almost fully working, but I had to resort to a few hacks in the video emulation, that I'll have to investigate further and implement properly., Plus, it's obviously trying to play the crash / hit sounds by driving two I/O ports, but not like DAC's. Indeed, some other games on this platform use a custom sample player in place of the DAC's, but in this case there are no sample roms. So that will require some more work., Thanks to f205v &Mame Italia.Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500This game by Coinmaster is called Internationl Toote (1998):, It runs on seta.c hardware, but with an additional I/O board with two 6821's and two 6850's. The game does not currently work due to this board being used as protection. Though by patching the initial hardware tests, and the betting screen timer routine, you can get to the screens above., Despite the 1998 copyright, it appears to be the German version (or bootleg) of an earlier "Horse Race" game (the I/O Board has 1993 on it), maybe the unemulated Seta's Jockey Club., The gameplay, controls and graphics are very similar to those in Dark Horse, (which in turn is a bootleg of Seta's Jockey Club II)., Thanks to icronnya77., Read posts from last year