The JTFLSTORY core now covers one more game:
Baseball game released by Taito in 1984. The game uses the names of Japanese professional baseball teams of the time. Players who were active on their respective teams at the time also appear but with slightly different names. The batter and pitch...
2025-02-21 18:36:04 +0000 UTC View Post
I resumed work on the JTFLSTORY beta. There are a few more games that run on similar hardware. The new beta brings support to two more games.
Released by Taito in 1985, this action game tells the story of a female fighter: Yuki, a dojo breaker....
2025-02-07 20:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostThis week JTTWIN16 beta is expanded to support Gradius 2. This game was originally failing because the scroll settings that affect the sprite location were not applied at the expected time. That caused the game not to detect any collisions so the ship would just have a peaceful travel to the boss scene, and then stay there as you cannot hit the boss. Gladly, it is working now.
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2025-01-17 10:26:07 +0000 UTC View PostHappy New Year and welcome to the first release of 2025. We just had JTTWIN16 beta featuring Dark Adventure a few days ago so I am sure you did not see today's one coming!
Update your BETA.KEY file for this release
Developed by Tecmo, this belt-scrolling action game was first released in North America and Europe in October 1988, note that the Japanese release came later! The evil general Bladedamus, who has the blood of Nostradamus in his ...
2025-01-03 17:14:13 +0000 UTC View PostDevil World in Europe, 魔獣の王国 Maju no Okoku in Japan and Dark Adventure in North America, where the game system was significantly changed. This Konami's 1987 game was developed by Hiroyasu Machiguchi, who worked on "Gradius" and "Life Force", together with other members of his team.
The story is about an archaeologist professor who discovers an ancient coffin. The lid o...
2024-12-31 13:51:19 +0000 UTC View PostA couple of small things that affect almost all JT cores in this week's release:
Better low pass filter implementation, with more precise cut-off frequency, attenuation and much less quantization noise. This is a side effect of the work I have been doing on implementing the equalizer for JTFLSTORY
Support for screen rotation on vertical games over HDMI and VGA outputs (30kHz) for SiDi128, courtesy of robinsonb5 and gyurco.
Support for The FairyLand...
2024-12-21 08:23:44 +0000 UTC View PostSaturday release this time, as there was a last minute hickup yesterday.
History
This fixed-screen action game was developed and released by Taito in 1985. Compared to "Chack'n Pop", a game with a similar system released by the same company the previous year, the number of items and enemy types increased significantly, making it an epic game with a total of 101 stages. C...
2024-12-14 12:06:30 +0000 UTC View PostWork on Tehkan World Cup electrical schematic diagrams is finished. It has brought up a number of new discoveries on this hardware:
correct video timing (including frame rate)
3kHz antialias audio filter for PCM
16-step volume control for PCM audio
priority control for character and sprite layers
Comparing to last week's update, the new version of the core implements:
analog controls via analog stick on g...
2024-11-29 12:17:12 +0000 UTC View PostThe most popular soccer game in the 80's arcades was released by Tehkan, the former name of Tecmo in 1985.
There were two types of cabinet of it: upright one which had a uniform shape when viewed from the side and table one which had a step or gap between the control panel and the table. Many people were injured by over-enthusiastic trackball operation, hitting their little fin...
2024-11-08 16:05:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Work on Konami-compatible hardware continues. Impacting several cores. See the post images for examples of fixed scenes.
Fixed missing button 3, missing OSD option for dip switches and shadow problems on X-MEN
Fixed title logo did not display correctly on Sunset Riders
Fix...
2024-10-25 16:31:25 +0000 UTC View Post
We bring a new beta core, JTXMEN, compatible with KONAMI's X-MEN hardware. KONAMI's X-MEN is based on the 1989 US-aired PRYDE OF THE X-MEN cartoon, and the colourful costumes conform to those of the time. The appeal of this title was that players could choose from six main characters, with flashy explosion effects and flying gadgets to keep us hooked. Although there were not many units produced, a six-player cabinet existed, and the cabinet had six coin-op slots. Instead of c...
2024-10-11 19:24:12 +0000 UTC View PostService release this week, with special attention to NGPC as more games work now:
Revisited shouse: flip not working which did not work well on Analogue Pocket.
Fixes on the NeoGeo Pocket color core have rendered many more games playable. This was tracked on the following GitHub issues: ngpc: fat...
2024-10-04 14:33:28 +0000 UTC View Post
There have been developments related to CAPCOM's Avengers (1987). A copy of the Trojan schematics appeared in the internet a while ago. It included a sheet for an MCU (microcontroller unit) that was not used on Trojan. Looking more into it, this was for Avengers. Recently too, a dump of this MCU also appeared on the internet. Dumping MCU ROMs is often done through silicon die shots. You have to identify each bit visually and we are talking of 32768 bits. If you are looking for an evening's pa...
2024-09-21 16:12:21 +0000 UTC View Post
There have been developments related to CAPCOM's Avengers (1987). A copy of the Trojan schematics appeared on the internet a while ago. It included a sheet for an MCU (microcontroller unit) that was not used on Trojan. Looking more into it, this was for Avengers. Recently too, a dump of this MCU also appeared on the internet. Dumping MCU ROMs is often done through silicon die shots. You have to identify each bit visually and we are talking of 32768 bits. If you are looki...
2024-09-20 13:54:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Do you remember the thrill of stepping into the arcade as a kid, hearing the roar of the crowd and the iconic entrance music of your favorite WWF wrestlers? WWF Superstars, released by Technos Japan in 1989, was the game that brought all of that action to life.
It was the first WWF arcade game, and it had everything: real WWF legends, their signature moves, and even their classic entrance poses. You could tag team up with two of the six iconic wrestlers, including Hulk ...
2024-09-06 19:52:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Very busy three weeks working on many, many items. Some of them involved changes to many cores. 515 files have been edited in the source code since the last JTFRIDAY, so plenty of work. The main achievements are:
A new classic game core: JTCIRCUS for Circus Charlie. Circus Charlie is an action game published in by Konami in 1984, the NES version is very ...
2024-08-30 17:32:34 +0000 UTC View Post
No big announcements for this summer week but plenty of items to report.
Analogue Pocket cores JTSLYSPY and JTFLANE are promoted to public as not issues have been reported on them. JTLABRUN core, compatible with Trick Trap/Labyrinth Runner, enters beta phase.
Four gunmen looking for action under the hot sun. If you have not met Sunset Riders before, get ready to fall in love with its smooth animations, humour and saloon girls. We welcome a new core: JTRIDERS, compatible with Konami's Sunset Riders hardware. This core operates in all FPGA platforms (including the small SiDi) and should present no problems to CRT screens.
The core has proved to be challenging due to its protection chip. This is a chip that s...
2024-07-27 09:25:03 +0000 UTC View Post
The arcade game with arguably the most popular music ever visits us this week. JTS18 beta adds support for Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. This game has proven hard to support. First, there were problems to make it boot up because of some odd timing issue with MegaDrive's VDP chip. Then the music was severely broken, which is a show stopper for this title. And finally, the children you have to rescue were not visible.
The music bugs had been there in JTS18 all along. So...
2024-07-12 16:29:23 +0000 UTC View Post
JTSHOUSE core (beta) gets support for the action puzzle game Rompers and the action shooting game Bakutotsu Kijutei this week. These were the final two games pending on this core.
Rompers released by Namco in 1989. The aim is for the main character, Chap, to get into a demon-controlled labyrinth to save his girlfriend, kidnapped by the devil. Each stage is like a maze. When you collect all of the mul...
2024-06-28 16:30:42 +0000 UTC View Post
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We have added the MegaDrive VDP chip to the JTS18 core. This chip is responsible of all the graphics and part of the audio in a MegaDrive console. On SEGA System 18 boards, it was only used for auxiliary video. Pretty much all you see in the screen is always coming from arcade-exclusive graphics chips but in some scenes of some games, the MegaDrive chip will come in to help.
How much was that help needed? It is a bit unclear. The pink flat enemies a...
2024-05-31 10:46:49 +0000 UTC View Post
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Lots of items to cover this week:
After using the same beta key since January, we are refreshing it. The new one is attached. As usual:
MiSTer users, copy jtbeta.zip to games/mame
Pocket users, unzip jtbeta.zip to Assets/jtpatreon/common or folow the instructions of your Pocket updater
We have the first beta of...
2024-05-24 10:55:27 +0000 UTC View PostWhat type of screen do you use to play FPGA cores?
The information from these polls guides development effort.
2024-05-11 16:24:46 +0000 UTC View PostEspañol abajo
Several SEGA System 18 games are booting up in the upcoming JTS18 core but I found an unexpected hiccup in the connection of the MegaDrive VDP. This arcade system uses a combination of video chips in which the MegaDrive VDP also plays a role. We have two versions of this VDP available, which you may have already experienced in the old and the new MegaDrive cores for the MiSTer. Sadly, there is something going on messing up what should just have been a sim...
2024-05-10 06:33:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Very quick update this week for five new games supported on the JTSHOUSE core.
Tank games
Blazer, an isometric tank shooter that looks really good and has solid play
Tank Force, a funny game to play with friends. Only the two player version is available in today's update
Sports games
Three games with a clear Japanese accent:
Face Off, ice hockey
Public Releases
We are giving priority to finishing off the cores in beta phase. This week we promote two to public releases:
JTTMNT, supporting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, MIA and PunkShot is finally ready for prime time after implementing ROM checks
JTMX5K (Pocket), supporting MX5000 as no issues have been reported after a month
S...
2024-04-19 08:35:16 +0000 UTC View Post
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Work continues toward closing the JTSHOUSE and JTTMNT betas. More GFX features have been implemented for JTSHOUSE, fixing problems in Splatter House and Galaga '88. We also bring support for Pac-Mania in this week's update.
Reports about music instruments going crazy in Splatter House led to detailed research. It turns out that Namco's sound driver in this system does not comply with Yamaha's specifications. After checking ...
2024-04-05 18:13:45 +0000 UTC View Post
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The sound conversion for JTSIMSON, JTTMNT, and JTALIENS, cores compatible with 16-bit Konami titles, is ready. With this update, the problem of FX being too faint is solved. The FX-music balance of Bubble Bobble took a bit more work. We found that the percussion instruments did not have the right volume in JTOPL and fixed it. Then we discovered that JT03 (compatible with Yamaha 2203) was producing sound -6dB lower. After fixing these issues, Bubble Bobble...
2024-03-29 16:02:00 +0000 UTC View Post
