Metro Cross

History

This side-scrolling action game released by Namco in 1985 is very very simple. It's a race against time as a man runs towards the goal while overcoming traps and obstacles set in a mysterious space. It is unclear whether this project required the use of a "trackball", or whether the designer of the game on which the main character was based was inspired by a certain Japanese TV program, but the main character just needs to reach the goal within the time limit for all 32 rounds.

If the countdown reaches zero you will be electrocuted and the game will be over, so to avoid this there are various strategies you can use, such as using a skateboard or stepping on a blue can to stop the time!

How to increase your time

• Stepping on blue can gives you 2 seconds

• Special drink can: pick it up to run with high speed for 5 seconds or step on it to stop time for 2 seconds

• Use a skateboard to speed up

• Make a big jump by landing in the center of the square obstacles on the floor that have a party popper inside

This game was ported to pretty much all home systems, although some versions altered the art style may be too much!

Technical Trivia

Although this game is associated to Pac Land on the System 16 web, the hardware is kind of a budget version of Namco System 86. Instead of having two tilemap chips, it only has one and the Yamaha FM chip is missing too. The backgrounds are drawn with just 2 bits per tile (four colors) instead of the 8 that the tilemapper supports. Arguably, this may have been a cost saving decision to save one ROM chip.

With this in mind, I extended the JTTHUNDR core to support this game by disabling the unused FM, second CPU and second tilemapper chips, plus making other necessary arrengements. The MiSTer MRA files have changed a lot to cope with this so the .rom files need be regenerated for the Analogue Pocket, and all other FPGA systems except MiSTer.

Other games

The game Alien Sector/Baraduke is almost working on the core too, but not ready yet. There are two more Namco games from this era: Dragon Buster and Sky Kid (not the deluxe one). I have to look at whether they fit better on the JTPACLAN core or JTTHUNDR.

Other Namco games seem to already have cores for the MiSTer from other authors. I think a couple of odd ones, like Thunder Ceptor, have not been ported yet but their hardware is radically different from JTTHUNDR/JTPACLAN.