Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Status of the Project (UPDATE 3)


STATUS OF ATOMISWAVE ROMS (With MAME v0151)
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Animal Basket --> Not working on MAME.
Demolish Fist --> Working and released.
Dirty Pigskin Football --> Not working on MAME.
Dolphin Blue --> Working and released.
Extreme Hunting --> Not started working on it.
Extreme Hunting 2 --> Not started working on it.
Faster Than Speed --> Converted and boots fine. Working on analog controls.
Fist Of The North Star -->  Working and released to donors.
Guilty Gear Isuka --> Working and released to donors.
Guilty Gear X ver. 1.5 --> Working and released.
Knights of Valour - The Seven Spirits --> Working and released.
Maximum Speed --> Converted and boots fine. Working on analog controls.
Metal Slug 6 --> Working on MAME but not on the real thing.
Neo-Geo Battle Coliseum --> Not working on MAME.
Net Select Keiba Victory Furlong --> Not started working on it.
Ranger Mission --> Converted and boots fine. Working on analog controls.
Salary Man Kintarou --> Not working on MAME.
Samurai Spirits Tenkaichi Kenkakuden --> Not working on MAME.
Sega Bass Fishing Challenge --> Not started working on it.
Sega Clay Challenge --> Not started working on it.
Sports Shooting USA --> Converted and boots fine. Working on gun controls.
The King of Fighters Neowave --> Not started working on it.
The King of Fighters Neowave (Japan) --> Working on MAME but not on the real thing.
The King of Fighters XI --> Not started working on it.
The Rumble Fish --> Working and released.
The Rumble Fish 2 --> Working on it.

* Green= Converted. May have some issues.
* Blue= Looks like can be converted.
* Red= Not working on MAME. Much harder to convert. Will try all possible anti-bootlegging known tricks.


Notice that converting the games is something that is already under control and this is not what is delaying new releases. Problem comes from the many protections that producers have inserted into the code, to avoid ports or bootlegs, so each game must be converted + fixed. Each protection can take up to 30 hours to fix!

Games from 2003 and some of 2004, have little or no protection, so they are much easier to port. After that companies started using multiple protections to try to stop bootlegers or conversions.
I've seen many tricks, like trying to write to the memory with typical ERASE commands. This has no effect on a Mask rom, but is the precise command to erase a Flash rom. You follow me, right.
Games also check using some complicated algorithms doing calculations with the values present in memory area 0x0-0xFFFF. If the AW BIOS isn't there, game won't boot. Solution is to copy at least part of the BIOS into Upper Naomi memory.

More  updates soon.

1 comment:

  1. This is maybe a stupid comment but for some games, maybe de xbox360 (XBLA) version can help (unpack xbla files)

    XBLA ports are :
    KOF neowave
    NG battle coliseum
    Samurai Spirit

    ReplyDelete