JOTEGO

Midnight Resistance Compatible FPGA core

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Midnight Resistance comes to the FPGA world this week. This game was ported to most home systems in the 90’s. It belongs to the run & gun genre, but it isn’t as hard as most titles. Unless you set the difficulty to hard, the game can be beaten with a little practice. The use of colour by the artists is very good, particularly in the backgrounds. Compared to the home versions, colour is probably the most obvious difference.

This gam...

Hippodrome/Fighting Fantasy

Hippodrome

We’re back to the Data East DEC0 system this week. This arcade hardware is built around two graphic chips called BAC06 and MXC06. The games using it come at least in three flavours from what I have seen so far:

1. A MOS6502 for audio and a i8751 for protection (Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja, Heavy Barrel)

2. The same MOS6502 for audio but a HuC6280 for protection (Robocop, Hippodrome)

3. No MOS6502, and the HuC6280 controlling the sound (Sly S...

MiSTer Shadow Masks, Mikie Public Release, NGP and Bug Fixes

MiSTer Shadow Masks, Mikie Public Release, NGP and Bug Fixes

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If you haven’t heard of shadow masks, it is a way to make your HDMI look a bit closer to how a CRT looks like. It is a very nice feature and it was recently accomodated inside the MiSTer OSD together with other nice video filtering options. This week, I updated all JT cores to support it. Please check the video to learn how to enable it. Run the updater to get ...

Bay Route

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The core compatible with SEGA System 16 still has some pending work so I went back to it this week. Bay Route, a very nice run and gun, was freezing soon after the game started. The unencrypted version (bayroute1) was just a blank screen. As the unencrypted version had one fewer element -the decrypter-- and it also failed more quickly, I started with it. I spent two days inspecting the CPU activity without finding anything odd. Then I turned to ...

Mikie - 新入社員とおるくん

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This week we visit another Konami 8-bit arcade: Mikie. This game has an interesting story as the original Japanese one had place in an office and you played as a new employee whereas the western counterpart was about a high school student. This a similar setting change to that of Renegade. Another common point with Renegade is the Japanese title, both following the same style.

This game doesn’t use as many custom chips as the other ones,...

Public Releases: Yie Ar Kungfu / Super Basketball

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This week comes with two public releases. The 8-bit Konami titles based around the chips 082, 085, etc. is ready for prime time. We will see more of these 8-bit titles soon, as they are as classic as arcade gaming can get! The titles are now available in JTBIN (or update_all). No need for jtbeta_zip for them anymore. Supported FPGA platforms: MiSTerFPGA, MiST, SiDi, NeptUNO, Multi-Core and Multi-Core 2+

The NeoGeo Pocke...

Robocop core

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Each year, in the night of the 5th of January the Three Wise Men bring presents to the children. They must have been checking your twitter replies as they have left these files in my hard drive. I am only passing them on, all the magic comes from them.

Although there are some problems with percussion sounds, Robocop now has its own cor...

Super Basketball

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I love Konami's basketball games. They know how to make vibrant, dynamic games using the technology available at the time. To close 2021, we are visiting the first basketball game they made. I bring you an FPGA core compatible with Super Basketball!

Gameplay: you need to press one button to bounce the ball and you cannot move without bouncing the ball.  You are always on the offensive. If you lose the ball, the game will di...

Yie Ar Christmas!

(Español abajo)

Yie Ar Kungfu is an old Konami title, very popular among 8-bit users -both console and microcomputers. It's the earlies SF2-like game you can find. The title means: one, two, Kungfu! And it's full of funny moments, like when you hit a male opponent's nether parts and salute them with a nihao.

Konami...

Tracking down hard bugs

(español abajo)

Although probably not easy to spot, the starfield in Side Arms was wrong. And it was driving me crazy. I had the schematics for it, so in principle, I should have been able to replicate it perfectly. However, when people sent me photos of their cabinets, I could see differences.

Emulation did not help in this case as the star field in MAME was completely different. A curious thing about MAME though, was that it referred to a ROM twice the size of ...

Kicker (Public Release) and System 16 flip mode

(español abajo)

After fixing the reported bugs for Kicker (a couple of mild things), the core is ready for the public and is now out in JTBIN. I have also reported the discrepancies I found between MAME and the actual PCB hardware so that the emulation scene will benefit too.

System16 vertical games do not come with a flip option, and there is a good reason for that. The sprite engine is designed in such a way that a...

Work Update

(Español abajo)

I miss releasing new games on Fridays, but don't think we're not busy here! This is what's going on:

-NeoGeo Pocket CPU design for FPGA is at the architecture stage, with a few options already discarded. The design has now the indexed memory controller, the register bank, the memory fetcher and dummy control to hold it together

-Some long-standing issues in old repositories were fixed last week. They were affecting Double Dragon, Tokio and Willow ar...

Kicker (Shaolin's Road) Beta

Finally, it's here, the beta for Kicker. Extracting the full schematics was not the full story. For a specific custom chip, I had to write a small custom code to run in the original board to check what it was doing.

I could verify that the chip was reporting the current scan line to the CPU. The game software actually reads it, but I'm not sure what it does with it as MAME just return a constant zero, and the...

Konami's Kicker Schematics Restored

Using first-hand sources for information is vital for our preservation and reproduction purposes. Arcade schematics contain all the connectivity information of the devices on the PCB. For some games, that's all you need to know. But this information is not available for most games. And even when we have them, schematics do not often represent the final manufactured version of the game.

As I work from home and cannot offer a brilliant career path to someone with a tech grade, my attempts...

Sonic Boom, Dunk Shot, MVP & Excite League

Another System 16 week, the following new titles are supported now:

-Sonic Boom, a 1987 vertical shooter
-Dunk Shot, use the analogue stick to control the player
-MVP, a baseball game
-Excite League, another baseball game with obscure controls!

And the analogue-control versions of Action Fighter now operate using the analogue stick.

The reported problem with the US and world version...

Fantasy Zone 2, Riot City and Toryumon

(español abajo)

SEGA surprised us with a new System 16 title in 2008! It was a sequel to Fantasy Zone, and it was designed to run on a System 16 board expanded to 256kB of RAM. This week's core update gives support to this variation, also known as System 16C. If you liked the first game, Fantasy Zone 2 will catch you from minute one.

Do you remember CPS2 Puzzle Fighter? A similar game was done for S16 and with characters and music that will remind you of...

Halloween Cotton

(español abajo)

A witch flying through a haunted forest, opening cauldrons and fighting zombies... the perfect plan for Halloween.

The new S16 beta now supports Cotton, which was plagued with bugs before (give it a go with the old RBF file for comparisons). There is still a small graphical glitch in a couple of places, but the game is fully playable now.

Coming forward, I want to close System 16 in November. Believe it or not, there are still about 50 MRA files pen...

Heavy Barrel!

We have one more game working on the Dragon Ninja hardware this week: Heavy Barrel. This is an Ikari Warriors clone, so prepare for going around and around over yourself.

To make life easier, if you use MiSTer you can turn around using the right analogue stick. Set the game controls like a modern game: move with the left stick, point with the right stick and use the shoulder buttons for shot and bomb.

If you don't have a dual-stick gamepad or use MiSTer, you can s...

DIY Arcade PCB Reproductions

I wonder if people would enjoy assembling an arcade PCB at home as a DIY project. There is the well known Harlequin ZX Spectrum clone, so this would be something similar.

Not all arcade games are good candidates for this. The ones better suited for a DIY project are from ~1986 and older, like Ghosts'n Goblins, or even Flying Shark.

As I have been producing arcade schematics lately, getting the PCB layout done is just one more step. If there's inte...

Dragon Ninja (beta), Fast Lane (public)

Important: jtbeta.zip has changed. Copy the new file to games/mame in your MiSTer SD folder. Or simply unzip the jtninja_20211015.zip to the root of your SD card.

Directors asked to get a top arcade title out next, so there you go: Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja!

This game does not require an introduction, but let me talk about the hardware a bit. It has an M68000 CPU for the main gameplay, but the sound is done by an M6502 (C64, NES). There is a third processor: the i...

Turbo Double Dragon + Star Strider

Run the updater or copy the files from JTBIN

Double Dragon is famous for its slowdowns. And they are not by design. The developers have said in interviews that they did not have the resources to prevent the slowdowns. So ever since I published the FPGA core for these games, I have been asked to speed up the gameplay.

I finally got it working in a stable way this week. The results are shocking: it feels like a completely different game. Whereas before, the slowdown...

Tough Turf! + more ROM sets

Unlike CPS, where a consistent protection system was used for all games, SEGA System16 had many hardware variations with different protection schemes. Some games have encryption in the M68000 of two possible types; others have it in the sound CPU, others have an MCU messing with the CPU. And a few ones didn't have protection!

Each protection system has its challenges. This time I'm adding the games with protection on the sound CPU. This is based on Blackwine's implementation, which is b...

Fast Lane

Summary:

-New Konami core: Fast Lane

-MiSTer: unzip the attached mister file directly on the root of your SD card, OR run update_all and copy jtbeta.zip to games/mame manually (only if you need to). jtbeta.zip is inside the mister zip file.

-All files are also stored in the Discord #betafiles channel

-jtbeta.zip has not changed, you don't need to update it.

Details:

This game is what arcades are about: fast mechanics, addic...

MX5000/Flak Attack: a tale of two chips

Summary:

-New Konami core: MX5000/Flak Attack
-MiSTer: unzip the attached mister file directly on the root of your SD card, OR run update_all and copy jtbeta.zip to games/mame manually (only if needed). jtbeta.zip is inside the mister zip file.
-All files are also stored in the Discord #betafiles channel

Details:

As you may know, Contra was the first Konami core I made. That game hardware is centred around a custom chip called K007121....

Golden Axe & E-SWAT

As announced last Friday, here we have two of the most well known SEGA titles working on the FPGA core. These games had problems before that seemed fixed in last week's RBF, but we hadn't tested them fully. Now we have.

This week is only an MRA update. I was planning to improve compatibility with more hardware variations but ended up working on Konami titles almost every day. We will have more on that next week.

Just run update_all or use the MRA files in the attached zip...

Dynamite Dux, Aurail, Bullet & Flash Point

Important: copy the attached jtbeta.zip file to games/mame on MiSTer

After the Exed Exes detour, we come back to System16 to continue increasing compatibility. This week has been focused on solving strange flickering and palette issues with Dynamite Dux. The root cause was in a CPU-related module that was slowing things down. Although other games seemed fine, they also used the buggy module so I have been updated all RBF files.

Apart from the tuxedo ducks, we have...

Exed Exes Schematics and Core

On the 2nd of August, I took on the challenge of extracting the full schematics of an arcade PCB. I had normally worked on systems with schematics available, but that was a big limitation. Most arcade games don't have schematics published.  Of course, you could check what emulators do, but we are not here to port emulators. We are here to recreate the original systems in new hardware.

Exed Exes was one of the old CAPCOM games missing a conversion. I had the board but no schematics....

Support for Altered Beast & Wrestle War

It's been three weeks since the last core update. I'm surprised at how hard it was to get the System 16B, once the 16A was done. But there's nothing constant work can't beat, so here we are at another update.

For technical reasons, System 16 games require four different RBF files now. I am not sure whether we will end up with a fifth one added by the end of the journey.

We add the following games this week:

-Altered Beast (in alt folder)
-Wrestle War

And System 16B ...

System 16B Status

Work done this week:

-Sprite and background full support completed for all Altered Beast variations
-Miscellaneous sprite bits processed
-Tile ROM banking support
-Working MRA files for Golden Axe and E-Swat
-Object priority corrected (fixing Dynamite Dux map screen)
-Scroll paging improved, fixing MVP although still not perfect (E-Sway hi-score screen)
-PCM decoding works, but it's unstable

Games working (PCM sound unstable)

-Altered Beast
-R...

System 16B Sprite Scaling

Another week well spent on SEGA System 16B development. One hardware feature I added this week is sprite scaling. This one is very interesting because it isn't that common but from a hardware point of view, it's rather "cheap" to implement.

S16B can only scale down as much as a 0.5 factor. It goes from 1x to 0.5x in a total of 32 steps and the way it's done is by simply summing up a number. Let's see how it works for the sprite height.

If you didn't have to scale the sprite, you w...