09-04-2022, 09:37 AM
Thanks but you shouldn't really feel bad. Even if it took months for one thing, it's still a great rip. There are rippers who do far more than me in 1 day or the stuff that they do rip blow my mind (anything that RTB does, the detailed rips that Obama and Paraemon have made, people who rip fighting games for breakfast in most cases), it is a case of me really struggling to keep up. Always have, always will.
In fact I'm significantly behind in terms of progress.
Anyway more from this blasting backlog:
Football Manager
Alpha-Jet
Confusingly there were two games called Alpha-Jet that were released in the same year, thankfully one only came out in France (the Coktel Vision game) while the other only came out in Germany that was originally a type-in from a magazine. That's right... In the olden days of gaming, you would had to in modern terms compile the games yourself without any tools and most of the games that did this were programmed using BASIC. Imagine doing that now for these PS5/modern PC games, it'll take you a couple of months every time that you wanted to play the game and probably would only playing for about 5 minutes after taking the account of loading and possibly story on top.
Gilligan's Gold
Star Trooper
Anarchy
Managed to crash the game twice while playing on the first stage or frame as the game calls it.
Postman Pat
Activator
Bosconian 87
Fire!
Basil the Great Mouse Detective
Turbo Cup
Ripping to 2am in both cases. Oh and don't copy that floppy...
On the Run
Looks very BBCMicro like in terms of graphics and yet another game where the black background is part of the sprites... It is very common and even looking at the graphics viewer, it uses the one black and changing that changes it to a completely different color removing the black all together. This is also a Mode 0 game too where you have more colors (Mode 1 just has those 4 colors) and this case they are all taken. Back in those days, people who were making games still had that pre-1984/1985 arcades thought in terms of graphics where black backgrounds are common and applies to many many games on the computer.
Also find it funny that the loading screen Rick Swift kinda looks like Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop but in game, he's an astronaut.
It's a Knockout
Well... Let's put it this way, there's a reason why this game and the game show itself is forgotten now compared to its popularity of the 1970-80s. It has a very dark story that went off behind the scenes. The game itself is rather dull and done in the style of Ocean's ports of Konami sports games both of the licensed and the ripoff variety but with mini games instead (and yet another Track & Field/Daley Thompson sprint). Only ripped it because I believe in the idea of Jeux Sans Frontieres, ranging from Life is Strange to the likes of Call of Duty with everything in between and why 50hz gaming with large borders should disappear for good.
(Yeah, I know Jeux San Frontieres is a French game show and the basis of Games Without Borders but anything that distracts from talking about this game. Let's move on...)
Aaargh!
The character sprites are NSFW due to their death animation...
The Mystery of the Nile
Yeah, the sprites look a little glitchy...
World Cup Soccer Italia '90
Super Monaco GP
Another ripping staple. The home computer versions seem to be yet another variation of the Sega game. It's not like the arcade or the Genesis version (and definitely not the Master System/Game Gear version, the closest that the Amstrad has to that is the port of Continental Circus) yet take cues from both. More so on the Amiga/Atari ST where it has some presentation screens and the racing banners from the arcade.
Speaking of which... A bit stuck ripping those presentation screens. Have ripped the background picture that appears if you have 128k of ram, the game puts a checkered filter effect on that but the actual picture itself is clean. It's the attract mode that's the issue because those graphics are compressed on the graphics viewer. Even with capturing can do the "Sega Grand Prix" model, just not the one with the engine and the stats.
Hot Rod
Yet another unfinished arcade port and honestly... it shouldn't have been released at this state just like LED Storm. Runs way too slow, input lag, slow acceleration taking like 3 seconds before you drive, AI issues to the point where the CPU car disappeared completely, HUD using blue making very hard to see the gas gauge, even the in game border is glitched! This time though it's Activision to blame and their main focus seems to be the C64 version (that's actually considered good, the same developers later went to work on a couple of Micro Machines ports) meaning the other ports were rushed out likely crunched too and that's on top of debt from their parent company. Then again the original game itself has issues with its game design such as the gas gauge going down too quick, the push scroll if you're too far and making it worse the controls.
Oh and unlike the arcade version (well the arcade revision that this was adapted from as there were quite a few), this is 2 player only. So the 3rd player is CPU only and why it's on the enemies sheet. The police car is also different from the arcade as it seems to be an edit from APB from the same developers but changed a bit. At least it was a quick rip...
Rally Cross
Another quick rip, the font is taking me longer to do because as it turns out, it's more than just the font.
There's "just one more thing"...
Micom Mahjong
A surprise! The first ever dedicated plug & play mahjong machine. It's only just been added into MAME as of a week of writing and actually it was pretty simple to rip, just had to arrange the tiles via YY-CHR. The ROMs have only just been dumped (August 2022) however there has been a dedicated emulator that existed since 2020. So yeah, I've ripped a bit of Japanese history here...
At least it is getting down. Some are actually fairly close whether needing palettes (Obsidian, literally every room the player gets a new palette and there are two revisions to boot with different palettes), got the sprites but have to go through a longplay video if it exists because the game is THAT tough and check to see if anything is missing (Ole Toro), ripped some of it but the remaining sprites are really small.... (Wings of Fury), in layers (Cosa Nostra), the sprites are mixed with the background tiles meaning that would have to do a bonus edit (Athlete, Track & Field) and partially ripped but the emulator decided to press a button that got stuck (lost count). So many times had to close Caprice Forever when it started doing that and the bug never got fixed... Shockway Rider has to be partially reripped because of the sprite boundaries.
As for APB, the issue here is that there's no longplay video and playing the game is yet another unfinished port that got out of the door. A shame because it looks the part and plays fine in some cases but the frame rate drops making it perhaps a bit too ambitious for the hardware and the bugs (getting stuck in the grass, time up with in about 10 seconds of gameplay in a level and the enemies are indestructible along with killed by dynamite loop at Day 16). Since I can only get to Day 16 via the Level Select, I don't know whether it has the rest of the days as the arcade with some vehicles yet to be identified. Can't exactly do much of a comparison either due to differences of graphics between the two.
Then there's the case of Tales of the Arabian Nights... There are two versions of the game that came out in the same year, similar yet completely different. The story goes that for this Arabian clone that the first version was finished and was released on a trade show selling between 2-3000 copies however the publishers and the copy protection programmer weren't happy with the game. It got completely remade by different programmers. Both versions eventually ended up being released on the same tape. In a way similar to some versions of Street Fighter 1 on the Commodore 64 where both the US and the Tiertex versions are on the same tape.
This is version 1 and this is version 2. I just don't know how to handle this.
Weirdly Version 1 got an unofficial sequel called Aladdin's Cave (same programmer, same graphics for the playable character, different publisher).
In fact I'm significantly behind in terms of progress.
Anyway more from this blasting backlog:
Football Manager
Gameplay Sprites
Alpha-Jet
Alpha-Jet
Enemies
Confusingly there were two games called Alpha-Jet that were released in the same year, thankfully one only came out in France (the Coktel Vision game) while the other only came out in Germany that was originally a type-in from a magazine. That's right... In the olden days of gaming, you would had to in modern terms compile the games yourself without any tools and most of the games that did this were programmed using BASIC. Imagine doing that now for these PS5/modern PC games, it'll take you a couple of months every time that you wanted to play the game and probably would only playing for about 5 minutes after taking the account of loading and possibly story on top.
Gilligan's Gold
Gilligan
Outlaw
Star Trooper
Star Trooper
Enemies
Anarchy
A.C.E. MK2 Interceptor
Droids
Managed to crash the game twice while playing on the first stage or frame as the game calls it.
Postman Pat
Postman Pat
Activator
Activator
Enemies
Bosconian 87
Starfighter
Orbitals & Spacestations
Items
Fire!
FIRE
Basil the Great Mouse Detective
Basil
Fidget
Thugs
Lizard Thug
Turbo Cup
Porsche 944 Turbo
Rival Car
Ripping to 2am in both cases. Oh and don't copy that floppy...
On the Run
Rick Swift
Enemies
Looks very BBCMicro like in terms of graphics and yet another game where the black background is part of the sprites... It is very common and even looking at the graphics viewer, it uses the one black and changing that changes it to a completely different color removing the black all together. This is also a Mode 0 game too where you have more colors (Mode 1 just has those 4 colors) and this case they are all taken. Back in those days, people who were making games still had that pre-1984/1985 arcades thought in terms of graphics where black backgrounds are common and applies to many many games on the computer.
Also find it funny that the loading screen Rick Swift kinda looks like Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop but in game, he's an astronaut.
It's a Knockout
Flying Flans
Harlem Hoppers
Titanic Drop
Diet of Worms
Obstacle Race
Well... Let's put it this way, there's a reason why this game and the game show itself is forgotten now compared to its popularity of the 1970-80s. It has a very dark story that went off behind the scenes. The game itself is rather dull and done in the style of Ocean's ports of Konami sports games both of the licensed and the ripoff variety but with mini games instead (and yet another Track & Field/Daley Thompson sprint). Only ripped it because I believe in the idea of Jeux Sans Frontieres, ranging from Life is Strange to the likes of Call of Duty with everything in between and why 50hz gaming with large borders should disappear for good.
(Yeah, I know Jeux San Frontieres is a French game show and the basis of Games Without Borders but anything that distracts from talking about this game. Let's move on...)
Aaargh!
The character sprites are NSFW due to their death animation...
The Mystery of the Nile
Christine / Janet Dwight
Michael / Nevada Smith
Muhammad al-Hasan
Enemies
Yeah, the sprites look a little glitchy...
World Cup Soccer Italia '90
Players
Field
Super Monaco GP
F1 Car
Rival Car
Another ripping staple. The home computer versions seem to be yet another variation of the Sega game. It's not like the arcade or the Genesis version (and definitely not the Master System/Game Gear version, the closest that the Amstrad has to that is the port of Continental Circus) yet take cues from both. More so on the Amiga/Atari ST where it has some presentation screens and the racing banners from the arcade.
Speaking of which... A bit stuck ripping those presentation screens. Have ripped the background picture that appears if you have 128k of ram, the game puts a checkered filter effect on that but the actual picture itself is clean. It's the attract mode that's the issue because those graphics are compressed on the graphics viewer. Even with capturing can do the "Sega Grand Prix" model, just not the one with the engine and the stats.
Hot Rod
Cars
Enemies
Yet another unfinished arcade port and honestly... it shouldn't have been released at this state just like LED Storm. Runs way too slow, input lag, slow acceleration taking like 3 seconds before you drive, AI issues to the point where the CPU car disappeared completely, HUD using blue making very hard to see the gas gauge, even the in game border is glitched! This time though it's Activision to blame and their main focus seems to be the C64 version (that's actually considered good, the same developers later went to work on a couple of Micro Machines ports) meaning the other ports were rushed out likely crunched too and that's on top of debt from their parent company. Then again the original game itself has issues with its game design such as the gas gauge going down too quick, the push scroll if you're too far and making it worse the controls.
Oh and unlike the arcade version (well the arcade revision that this was adapted from as there were quite a few), this is 2 player only. So the 3rd player is CPU only and why it's on the enemies sheet. The police car is also different from the arcade as it seems to be an edit from APB from the same developers but changed a bit. At least it was a quick rip...
Rally Cross
Cars
Another quick rip, the font is taking me longer to do because as it turns out, it's more than just the font.
There's "just one more thing"...
Micom Mahjong
Tiles
A surprise! The first ever dedicated plug & play mahjong machine. It's only just been added into MAME as of a week of writing and actually it was pretty simple to rip, just had to arrange the tiles via YY-CHR. The ROMs have only just been dumped (August 2022) however there has been a dedicated emulator that existed since 2020. So yeah, I've ripped a bit of Japanese history here...
At least it is getting down. Some are actually fairly close whether needing palettes (Obsidian, literally every room the player gets a new palette and there are two revisions to boot with different palettes), got the sprites but have to go through a longplay video if it exists because the game is THAT tough and check to see if anything is missing (Ole Toro), ripped some of it but the remaining sprites are really small.... (Wings of Fury), in layers (Cosa Nostra), the sprites are mixed with the background tiles meaning that would have to do a bonus edit (Athlete, Track & Field) and partially ripped but the emulator decided to press a button that got stuck (lost count). So many times had to close Caprice Forever when it started doing that and the bug never got fixed... Shockway Rider has to be partially reripped because of the sprite boundaries.
As for APB, the issue here is that there's no longplay video and playing the game is yet another unfinished port that got out of the door. A shame because it looks the part and plays fine in some cases but the frame rate drops making it perhaps a bit too ambitious for the hardware and the bugs (getting stuck in the grass, time up with in about 10 seconds of gameplay in a level and the enemies are indestructible along with killed by dynamite loop at Day 16). Since I can only get to Day 16 via the Level Select, I don't know whether it has the rest of the days as the arcade with some vehicles yet to be identified. Can't exactly do much of a comparison either due to differences of graphics between the two.
Then there's the case of Tales of the Arabian Nights... There are two versions of the game that came out in the same year, similar yet completely different. The story goes that for this Arabian clone that the first version was finished and was released on a trade show selling between 2-3000 copies however the publishers and the copy protection programmer weren't happy with the game. It got completely remade by different programmers. Both versions eventually ended up being released on the same tape. In a way similar to some versions of Street Fighter 1 on the Commodore 64 where both the US and the Tiertex versions are on the same tape.
This is version 1 and this is version 2. I just don't know how to handle this.
Weirdly Version 1 got an unofficial sequel called Aladdin's Cave (same programmer, same graphics for the playable character, different publisher).