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It's been years since I've made a sprite ripping thread... and will be the last one too.
Basically anything that is not already on a project thread will be here (excluding small rips such as title screens and stuff).
Aguri Suzuki F1 Super Racing (Game Boy)
Despite the name, it's half F1 game and half karting game. I'm surprised that this hasn't got translated since it is one of the better racing games on the OG Game Boy.
Hudson Hawk (Amstrad CPC)
Slowly sunsetting away from the computer in terms of rips. There's still a few games on the CPC but focus is elsewhere. Doesn't help that a lot of the desirable games including the ones that Ocean had done are very hard to almost impossible to rip, this is an easier one that they published.
Super Chase H.Q. (Game Boy)
International Karate 2000
This game crashes on mGBA so had to use a different emulator hence the slightly different pallete.
Lupin the Third: Shijou Saidai no Zunousen
Once again I have done a worthless rip...
(Had like the tiles of Goemon for about 3 years or so and only just got around to doing the rip)
Ultra Golf / Konami Golf / Konamic Golf / whatever Konami decides to call their golf game
The reason why all 36 holes aren't done yet is because of animated water tiles. Might seem simple enough except that there are 3 water animations, the first one only triggers at the start. Once it finishes, it changes between 2 and 3 with no way of triggering the animation again. Some of the holes, the water is at the other side and needs scrolling to get there due to the background viewer can only load so much (these are the holes with the white border on top).
Sorted out Dead Heat Scramble showing that even neglected games are getting some love:
Finally to top it off... Elevator Action (Game Boy)
Oh and a classic*
* Sensible Soccer is only considered a classic for the Amiga, to a lesser extent the Mega Drive and Atari ST versions. The other versions are either disliked or forgotten like this Game Boy version.
Would have done a lot more rips however there were a lot of issues, both ripping wise and personal preventing me from such.
A skill that would like to learn though is finding a way to hack for co-ordinates to make it easier for background ripping. It's so these pesky baseball fields, football pitches, the Game Boy Super Off Road tracks and the example above with the Konami game get ripped without worrying of missing a tile/section due to the boundaries or limitations of a background viewer. Very few games have a debug mode (only recall a couple that exist) and only some have the ability to view the area (e.g. Madden NFL 2001 GBC, some golf games).
Posts: 1,220
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To think that this post had about 50+ revisions before posting as progress kept flip-flopping. Well it's posted now.
Firstly:
Oooh... Navy SEALs... He's actually nameless in this game (only called Navy Seal or "you" in the manual for the other versions) but since he looks so much like Charlie Sheen and follows the plotline of the film.
Remember when I was talking about sunsetting regarding the Amstrad CPC? Well...
Decided to have a break on the Game Boy and SNES for a bit (still working on some sheets including waves that race and bubbles that bobble) outside of a few title screens to beef up the sections. Instead focused on getting the massive backlog down.
Have been going through a bunch of games on the computer using CPC Game Reviews as a guide. Any that looked interesting or appealed to me. Then booting up Caprice Forever to see if they are rippable, many of them aren't. If they are, it's on this list. The ones that I intentionally skipped are the recent homebrew games as in games made in the past 15 years or so and especially the Spanish scene/Batman Group where they have done some impressive stuff. It's because I respect the developers working on the games, sometimes even crunching for a competition that's a bit wrong for something that is meant to be for fun. Anyone who worked on the CPC scene and want their sprites on the site though, just let the tSR staff know.
Hollywood or Bust
The Addams Family
Buggy II
There was no Buggy 1 in case anyone asks.
Formula 1 Simulator
Motocross Simulator
Was in the backlog for ages (since December 24 last year), the game is waaaaaaay too difficult. The timing to do the jumps is extremely tight and doesn't help with lag to boot. Took about 200 attempts just to do the first jump and doesn't help by the end of the first stage where you have to jump over a gap, due to the push scrolling most of the time you can't make it and think that only did it 3 times successfully over countless attempts. Haven't got much further than that... Luckily got all the sprites for the rider though and that counts. It even says something that the person who reviewed the game and made the trainer version (the game with built in cheats) says "It is let down by the game not being at all easy to get into - getting your bike over the first obstacle can be a feat in itself." Probably for fans of the Sonic 3 level select as even Souls fans would ragequit.
Joe Blade 2
The Adventures of Bond... Basildon Bond
One of the first games made by Probe (if not the first) and you get see some weird licensed games... Literally based off a sketch from a British 1980s comedy show that is suppose to be a 007 spoof yet the character looks more like a 1980s ninja played by Richard Harrison.
Speed King
Like Formula 1 Simulator, this has no loading screen compared to the other versions. It seems to be a common thing from Mastertronic. Also a little known fact, this was co-developed by the same person as the legendary Deathchase on the Spectrum.
BMX Kidz
Closest thing on the computer to Excitebike. No loading screen as it is case. Oh and BT (British Telecom) published this game and had a few labels (Firebird, Rainbird, Silverbird), they were very prolific famous for bringing out the Bubble Bobble ports but also for Don't Buy This on the Spectrum. They published over 130 games. You wouldn't think that a phone/telecom company would be one of the more well known publishers for games back then?
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Developed by the co-founders of Tiertex so you'll know what to expect (Tiertex was founded after this game was released). Also one of the few games where you can literally choose what palette scheme that you want for the game via the pause screen. Yeah the default is Indy wearing blue and the CPC doesn't have any brown... Still Indy in blue...
But that's not the end of the story! While ripping this, discovered that the game uses collision detection based transparency meaning that I literally had to hack away the background tiles so it could show the boundaries of the sprites. As for why, the game only displays 4 colors and one of them is in black (remove the black from the graphics viewer affects the sprites). This is a trick for fake transparency which is why it looks a bit funky. It took too long...
Lost Caves
From Indy himself to being inspired by the series but plays like Boulder Dash. Ripped pretty quickly by comparison. It's also one of the few games actually programmed by a magazine editor (Amstrad Action fittingly enough). Probably got a good review then 
Oh and no fancy collision detection based transparency, the sprites... well... tiles really are 4 colors. You can even see the tiles overlapping when a boulder is moved.
Beach Buggy Simulator
Really stretching the use of simulator here... Still the idea of buggies firing rockets at helicopters while jumping and listening to a 4 minute song does seem cool.
Bounty Bob Strikes Back
What platformers were like before Super Mario Bros, considered to be a Commodore 64 classic (that I might end up doing).
Scalextric
Nebulus
Galachip
Galaxian or Galaga weren't released on the CPC but didn't stop people making clones and this is a decent French developed one by Carlo Perconti. The computer had a metric ton of Space Invaders clones (and an official sequel) including one that Titus made but not as much for the Namco shmups and many of those were homebrew that you had to type in yourself from looking at a magazine/book. This was a retail release though.
Despite looking simple to rip and most of it is, there were just two things that I couldn't find in the graphics viewer at all... The Chip logo on the loading screen and the white pixels used for the starfield, the former seemed to be part of the screen (no different than a capture) and the latter seems to be generated by the game. Those two things took longer to figure out than 90% of the rips of the game!
While ripping this, discovered that this computer had a Fantasy Zone clone! So obscure that neither the CPC fans or the Fantasy Zone fans know about it.
Volley-Ball
Penalty Soccer
Basically a mini game packaged as a retail game, at least the graphics aren't too bad. Also there's something strange that's unused...
Wacky Darts
The only thing wacky in this game is the collision detection. A shame that you can't play as the computer opponents with rockets, shurikens and axes as your darts because that would have been pretty cool. This was also a late Codemasters game from 1992 and find it interesting that they still supported these home computers when every other company either closed down, moved onto other systems, just make compilation packs (that themselves also did), making the likes of Count Duckula 2 or just having homebrew.
Australian Rules Football
Bully's Sporting Darts
Have some Bully for you.
A Question of Scruples
Finally we have...
Mega Twins (Prototype)
There are two builds of the game, both very unfinished and both have one thing that the other doesn't have. From the looks of things, it was shaping up to be a good port and there are far worse arcade ports that were released. Plus this version gave the players default names which is something that isn't in the other versions being more randomised if you don't choose your own.
On top of that done most of Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future, a famous cat & mouse duo as well as some housekeeping.
The irony of all these Amstrad CPC rips? Never had the home computer and only played on 1 game on a home computer (Horace Goes Skiing on the Spectrum). For most people under the age of 30, a home computer is what people had before playing on consoles or computers. Imagine a PC but instead of being a laptop or a desktop, the entire computer is inside the keyboard. Depends on the model, some you would had to connect a tape player (Commodore 64, the earlier models of the Spectrum), a floppy disk drive and only the 16-bit computers had a mouse due to the menus on older computers being in command line (Atari ST, Amiga and the Acorn RISC based PCs had a GUI). They were popular due to the price of the games and if you couldn't afford it/didn't want to pay, people just copied tapes/disks that annoyed publishers.
As for why, it is a case of forgotten history in terms of the gaming world. A lot of gaming companies started on home computers, some that are still alive today (EA, Ubisoft, HAL Laboratory, Codemasters just about). The French and the Spanish gaming industries grew especially in the case of Ubisoft where it was their start. That's why their games are buggy and have bad frame rates.
Another reason is because it is easier for me to see just because Caprice Forever shows the sprites double their actual size (or double the height for Mode 2 stuff) for the graphics viewer. Really, it says 32px for the Y position but looking at it shows up 64px. Even then usually have to zoom in as much as 800-900% in GraphicsGale to see the pixels clearly enough and sometimes even have to zoom in the graphics viewer because sometimes we're dealing with a few pixels for a sprite (e.g. when a car zooms out in a racing game and it's the last sprite before disappearing).
Left for me to do in terms of the backlog:
Aaargh!
Activator
Aladdin's Cave
Alpha Jet
APB: All Points Bulletin
Anarchy
Archon: The Light & The Dark
Athlete
ATV Simulator
Ball Bearing
Basil the Great Mouse Detective
Beach Head
Bosconian 87
Bronx Street Cop
Cosa Nostra
Cred Breaks Out
Daley Thompson's Super Test
F-16 Fighting Falcon
Fast Food
Fighting Soccer
Fire!
Gilligan's Gold
Grell & Falla (from 2018!)
Hot Rod
Hyper Sports
International Speedway
Kwik Snax (ripped but needs sorting out, all enemies use the same death sprites)
LED Storm
Les Aventures de Pepito au Mexique
Lode Runner
Macadam Bumper
Mad Mix
Mad Mix 2 en El Castillo de Los Fantasmas
Mange Callioux
Manhattan 95 (early Ubisoft game)
famous cartoon mouse x 2
Mr Wong's Loopy Laundry (not sure to rip as it features a Chinese stereotype as a playable character but was published by Amstrad themselves)
Mike Gunner
Moon Cresta
Monument
The Mystery of the Nile
Ninja Grannies
Obliterator
Obsidian
Off Shore Warrior
Ole Toro (already ripped the bull but waiting for the matador)
On The Run
Operation Wolf
Out of This World
Postman Pat
Power Boat Simulator
Pro Skateboard Simulator
Psycho Soldier (from 2018!)
Road Blasters (ditto)
Rally Cross
Run the Gauntlet
Sabre Wulf
Simulador Profesional de Tenis (ditto)
Shanghai Karate
Shockwave Rider
Skull and Crossbones
Space Racer
Spellbound Dizzy (also check Dizzy 1, 1 Amstrad Action, 2 & 4 as well)
Spy Hunter
Star Trooper
Street Gang (enemies nearly done, just Mickey to finish)
Super Monaco GP
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Teenage Queen
The Vindicator
The Willow Pattern Adventure
Titus Classiques Vol 1
Turbo Cup
Willy Wino's Stag Night (another early Probe game)
Various Grand Prix motorbike games
Westphaser / Steve McQueen Westphaser
Wings of Fury
World Cup Soccer Italia 90
WEC Le Mans
Renegade 3
Don't worry, once the massive backlog is down it'll be back to the console rips and the much smaller Spectrum backlog. Saying that did manage to find a new Commodore 64 emulator that has a graphics viewer but before I can even get onto that...
Hint for what's to come in the not too distant future: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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Amstrad Backlog 2: The Sugar Strikes Back
Willy Wino's Stag Night
Cred Breaks Out
Let's see I've ripped games directly from a fast food company and not just a licensed game either, a telecom company, a cereal company, a bakery (on the GBA though), oh about a bank? It's just like the Atari 2600 when you had all sorts of companies publishing games. It was the only game by TSB that kinda still is around today (I say kinda because they merged then unmerged).
Shanghai Karate
International Speedway
Pro Skateboard Simulator
Lode Runner
LED Storm
Ball Bearing
The Willow Pattern Adventure
A rare treat, ripped most of the game including the background tiles. On other computers, this was a redone version of Treasure Island (same developers, same gameplay but different setting and graphics) but the CPC didn't get that game... At first glance appears to be based off an ancient Chinese story, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Journey to the West but actually it was an English Victorian creation to sell porcelain hence the name Willow Pattern.
The Chessmaster 2000
Was wondering when Ubisoft was going to show up... While they published later ones in The Chessmaster series, this was the first game in the series that they published and only on this computer. The others were handled by Dro Soft (Spectrum/MSX), EA, The Software Toolworks, Hi-Tech Expressions, Mindscape... even Nintendo (PAL NES) and Sega (Game Gear) published this game!
Couldn't find the board and not happy with my attempts in capturing. 
Fighting Soccer
More from this game was going to be ripped such as the intro, it's rare for the computer to have an animated intro in a game. One problem? I cannot find the sprites at all for some of the animation.
Found the graphics for the backgrounds (player and the goal), as well as the ball and part of the title screen text but... The sprites for the small player, the goalkeeper and the rest of the title screen cannot be found. Tried switching modes since sometimes it happens (e.g. storing Mode 2 graphics in a Mode 1 game or even Mode 1 for a Mode 0 game e.g. 5 a Side Footy) but no result.
Noticed that this problem has gotten bad to the point of being serious. There are some rips that I'm not happy with and had to resort to capturing just so someone wouldn't complain "X SPRITE IS MISSING!" World Cup Carnival... Galachip... A certain famous mouse...
Ninja Grannies
Haven't ripped a fighting game with a roster this crazy since Human Killing Machine! Perhaps even more so. Yeah, just like Street Fighter 1 and HKM, you can only play as one fighter.
Bridge-It
Wondered what is considered one of the worst games on the computer? Imagine Manhole on the Game & Watch but make it worse. That's Bridge-It.
Mike Gunner
A Light Gun Shooter, yes there were light guns on the computer. Three different ones with each game supporting one but not the other (Spanish made games like this supported the Gun Stick, Lorciel did the West Phaser and some games even supported the Spectrum Magnum Light Phaser).
Finally we have...
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles: World Tour
About an obscure TMNT coloring book?
More to come.
Incredible stuff as always, Yawa. Puts my one little submission in months to shame, haha.
Happy to see you still going at it!
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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).
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09-10-2022, 03:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-10-2022, 04:08 PM by Yawackhary.)
Shockway Rider
Imagine Fatal Fury but remove the fighting and replace it with throwing stuff, put on a conveyor belt and that's the game. One of the sprites is glitched, that's how it appears in the graphics viewer...
Formula 1 Simulator (Commodore 64?)
It's been a long time since I last ripped a Commodore 64 game and used a new emulator! Well kinda new... The Spectrum emulator that I use that was bundled with the CPC emulator (not the one that I use for ripping outside of that anti-piracy screen) now includes a C64 emulator called CSFEC. Like those two, it has a debug mode where you can view the graphics from the game and also has an active sprite viewer because the C64 supports sprites! All sprites have to be recolored but the plus is that you don't need to use a 20+ year old tool that require savestates from old emulators (still useful for C16 games though). Judging by the palette of this game thankfully not ruined by the black background that would have happened if it did have the right palette... The other downside is that it only supports the PAL C64 so no Simpsons, Castlevania, Metal Gear, the better version of After Burner etc however the PAL library is larger.
WEC Le Mans (C64)
The CPC version is taking too long to rip and this was much quicker, it took a couple of hours in total (half of the player car in 30 minutes, about 30 minutes for the rival car and the rest in the crash sprites that's on the end of the tape). In all honesty, think that I booted up the game just to listen to the title music.
I won't be ripping much on the C64. Not because of any dislike (those older retro "gamers" that are pro-Spectrum/anti-C64 and vice versa are very disrespectful to the medium and act more immature than the kids around here) but because it would take about 5 years just to get the section to par.
Saying that do have a mini rip list though, Commando... Turbo Out Run... If it has Rob Hubbard's or Jeroen Tel's music, even better. Will look into a few more racing games as well even if some aren't as good (including this game) but some are better (Out Run on the C64 was the only decent home computer version because it wasn't a mess). Might even rip a couple more Ocean games.
As for the CPC progress, gone really slow due to problems both physically and in terms of the rips:
Aladdin's Cave - Almost there, have to see if there's a longplay video to verify.
APB: All Points Bulletin - Already mentioned
Archon: The Light & The Dark - Ripped both light and dark sides but needs sorting out. No good at strategy games...
Athlete - The background tiles are mixed with the player (meaning that it is no different than capturing on something that doesn't support background removal). Basically I might have to do an additional edit to make the sprites usable.
Cosa Nostra - Have assembled a 1/3 of the player due to the layers, the unassembled raw sprites are ripped.
Daley Thompson's Super Test - Ripped much of the pistol event and some of the diving
F-16 Fighting Falcon - Ripped some of the plane. Also going to be checking MiG 29 Fighter because I think both games use the exact same sprites but need to check. A bit funny that the same developer made two similar games to two different publishers, wonder if anyone noticed back in the day... It wasn't a re-release either.
Grell & Falla - No progress, this was ripped on a long gone computer so have to redownload the game to continue. I can't remember whether it was an early Caprice or as old as the WinAPE rips (the second generation rips e.g. Amelia Minuit).
Hyper Sports - Most of the swimming is done. Hoping to have both this and Super Test uploaded at the same time.
Kwik Snax - Ripped but needs sorting out, all enemies use the same death sprites. Decided to have the death animation on a different sheet otherwise it would be repeating the same sprites 8 times. Should be done within a week.
Les Aventures de Pepito au Mexique - Ripped much of Pepito but needs assembling and ripping the remaining sprites. Actually has rather large sprites for a game.
Mad Mix 2 en El Castillo de Los Fantasmas - Ripped a bit of Mad Mix but not much else. The eyes yet to rip have their own layer.
Mange Callioux - The penguin itself is ripped but just some misc sprites to sort out
Monument - Ripped much of the player but managed to crash on the 1st level...
Nigel Mansell's World Championship - Yes, another one... Seem to have a habit of ripping the same game on other platforms. Ripped some of the car in the 128k version but none for the 64k version.
Obsidian - Palettes...
Ole Toro - Ripped some of the matador (all of the first round where you wave the red sheet but not the stabbing on the horse or stabbing the bull), have to check a longplay video with the rest if it exists.
Operation Wolf - Ripped some of the enemies however unlike every other sheet, it is on a different newer computer so progress will be slow.
Out of This World - Ripped some sprites, needs sorting out.
Power Boat Simulator - Needs sorting out but have noticed that some of the sprites don't seem to be on the graphics viewer. It's when you move about in your boat and the splashes (white dots) behind.
Run the Gauntlet - Done the watercraft but needing palettes. Other vehicles left to do.
Skull and Crossbones - Ripped much of the playable character (One-Eye or is it Red Dog?) but had the dreaded Caprice input bug
Space Racer - Ripped much of the playable character, hoping to get it done soon
Spy Hunter - Progress is stuck due to unable to change the weapons while playing to check on those sprites.
Street Gang - Struggling with Mickey. Basically I can't get far in the game... Mickey has weapon based sprites but I just can't verify them, there's also a lone sprite facing left that there is no right and some legs where I don't know where it goes... (Last minute edit: turned out that I only ripped enemies from Stage 1...)
Tales of the Arabian Nights - The two version business mentioned above
TechnoCop - Needs a re-rip due to a palette cycle but should be done shortly regarding the driving sprites. Not done the action sprites.
The Vindicator - Ripped the pieces but the assembly doesn't seem right...
Track & Field - See Athlete as it's the same
Various Grand Prix motorbike games - Ripped the flagman from 500cc Grand Prix but progress is mixed on the bikes.
Wings of Fury - The remaining plane sprites are very small (literally pixels in size) that I can't seem to find... Doesn't help that much of the level after take off is down to those small sprites.
WEC Le Mans - The game stores the sprites split between the shadow mask and the detail so it takes longer to assemble. Examples on the site including Pro Skateboard Simulator and that one took a while.
Renegade 3 - Have to re-rip because the white was accidentally applied as transparency making it green by mistake...
Not ripped yet:
ATV Simulator
Beach Head
Bronx Street Cop
Fast Food
Macadam Bumper
Mad Mix
Manhattan 95 (early Ubisoft game)
Obliterator
Off Shore Warrior
Teenage Queen
Titus Classiques Vol 1 - Actually did try to rip the Space Invaders type of game but the sheet wasn't saved...
Westphaser / Steve McQueen Westphaser
From the looks of things dropping Moon Cresta and Sabre Wulf... Cannot find the sprite boundaries of the former while the latter is not only upside down but looking at it is no good for my eyes.
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Ole, Toro
Spanish tradition or animal cruelty? It's both. The Amstrad version was only released in Spain and lucky because the Spectrum version was released in the UK as well and it is considered one of the worst games on the computer that says A LOT. One magazine gave it 0, the others gave it low scores and people complained to CRASH magazine (considered the most popular at the time) that they weren't harsh enough. Not because of the game itself but because of bullfighting (even though the complete irony, some Brits actually go on holiday and go to a bullring for a visit). They complain about this but don't complain about Cabela's Dangerous Hunts/Adventures series where you kill animals and some endangered ones for some of the spinoffs, complete double standards from gamers. Even the review on CPC Game Reviews felt uncomfortable playing the game despite having detailed graphics and timing based gameplay. Wait... Was there a Spanish only PS4 game that had bull fighting?
My opinion? It was one of the earliest games from Dinamic from 1985, this is actually one of the easier games since they are known for tough games (the Spanish scene is like every game is Dark Souls). The game is okay gameplay wise from that era. Controls need to get used to (press up to call the bull then the direction and the fire button where the bull is heading towards with the right timing, it took a lot to work it out). Do think that there should have been an option not to murder the bull and let it live honorably after the passes with the red sheet.
Another game where the background is part of the sprites.
Techno Cop
Half Mode 0 (driving) and half Mode 1 (action) meaning that the game has two different styles of graphics. Something that isn't in the other versions. Had problems due to that Caprice input bug. Will do the enemies at some point.
Bronx Street Cop
Another Light Gun shooter but using the Magnum Light Phaser this time. On emulation, using a mouse feels great to play yet apparently the light gun itself was known to be bad. The keyboard/joystick version however feels very clunky to play (struggle to get past the Training Mission yet can almost complete the game with the Light Gun version). This game was published by Codemasters on the Spectrum but Mastertronic on the Amstrad along with American Turbo King, Jungle Warfare and F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Different publishers re-release games all the time but in the case of these games seems very unusual, especially since Supersonic Software and Optimus more or less only developed games for Codemasters. It can't be the gun as that was made by Amstrad even if it plays a part of it. Now that's a mystery that I wonder myself along with why does this use the same soundtrack as Motocross Simulator?
Speaking of which...
F-16 Fighting Falcon
MiG 29 Fighter
No, you're not seeing double. They used the exact same plane! Checked both games thoroughly for graphical differences and there are none. Actually a lot of the graphics are the same in both games (probably a good 85-90% if I have to guess) but technically they are classed as different games and specialist web sites such as CPC Power, CPC Game Reviews and Spectrum Computing all say the same thing (the Spectrum version is more interesting due to different staff on both games, the Amstrad version has both done by Supersonic Software). It even got two different reviews both contradict each other!
Now to get the Spectrum backlog down and a more interesting one to start with:
As a warning due to how the Spectrum does graphics, all the rips are in monochrome (black and white) as the palette is generated by the computer using 8x8 blocks even if the "sprites" aren't hence the colour clash. The palettes if there are any are provided. So if you're wondering why the rips look like that, that's why because it was designed for just two colors and some games also have shadow masks too. The exceptions are the loading screens as those have to be captured (but you can see the palette workaround that the computer does) and will do an example if Super Hang-On gets ripped.
Road Race
Ocean were working on a port of Konami's Hyper Rally (presumably would have been published under Imagine) originally on the MSX. When it got late into development, they felt that the game wasn't to their standard and cancelled the game also probably saving money by not giving Konami any royalties (this was their 4th MSX port after Yie Ar Kung Fu 2, Konami's Tennis and only by name Konami's Golf, there were no more MSX ports from them afterwards). So what happened then because the game was more or less done on a technical level, Ocean changed a few things (the car, the name of the game, km/h to mph, minor HUD details and the loading screen) and released the game for free in a magazine. This was considered one of the first full games that Your Sinclair gave out before the magazines were giving out free games at a monthly basis to the annoyance of the gaming industry. It was only until years later where people discovered the origins of the game from Mark R Jones. The Konami copyright and the Hyper Rally text are still in the font.
Sure the game is basic in terms of gameplay but it is decent and there are far worse games on the Spectrum. It does feel unfinished though such as the non working attract mode. Also noticed that the game also sends junk (cut off sprites) into the RAM, spent about a 5 hour goose chase comparing pixels from a sprite when it turned out after resetting the game and reloaded back into gameplay that the sprites weren't there. If it isn't for the backlog, probably will end up ripping the original game.
Nightmare Rally
Rolling Thunder
Rocky/Rocco
Another early Dinamic game but had to be recalled in the UK due to copyright reasons with a certain movie. Yeah, the graphics are like this... Yeah, that's Glass Joe as a portrait and on the loading screen... Frank Bruno's Boxing wasn't the only Punch-Out clone back then.
Smiths Super Champs
Let's add a packet of crisps (potato chips) to the list of stuff Yawackhary had ripped from non-gaming companies releasing games. Smiths were a company who released snack foods (examples include Scampi Fries, Bacon Fries and err... their bacon rashers Frazzles) but did release chips such as the Salt & Shake that I believe might be still going (they are plain crisps with a small blue bag where you add the salt in yourself instead of getting salted or ready salted as they are known in the UK). Now they are a sub-brand of Lay's, sub-brand because Walkers is used as the main brand in the UK and only using Smiths as a sub-brand for a few snacks including them awful Funyuns that you see in supermarkets piled high that no one eats. Not to be confused with the Australian Smiths potato chip brand.
James Bond 007 Action Pack
Lord Bromley's Estate
Q's Armoury
Bundles are popular such as the Genesis having Altered Beast or Sonic, SNES having the glorious Super Mario All-Stars & Super Mario World, Switch having all sorts including the recent of writing Splatoon 3, even the Amiga had the Batman pack. For the Spectrum, the James Bond 007 Action Pack was the bundle for the second generation. The Spectrum is divided into two commercial eras, the first were the ones who bought it mainly as a cheap computer to program stuff and play games on the sly but the second era was when Amstrad took over and made the computer a lot more accessible with the 2A. Having a built-in tape player, more focused on games because Clive Sinclair hated the idea and why the QL only really had one notable game but Alan Sugar was more for gaming, cheap budget games from £1.99 (imagine paying a few bucks for a brand new game), re-releases like the PlayStation Hits of today and magazines gave out free games. It also improved the games because the 128k was the default now having a better sound chip and more RAM. Actually I vaguely remember my older brother having this bundle.
This makes it interesting because the emulator that I use ZXSEC doesn't support the Magnum Light Phaser and only the Gunstick but because it loads the graphics into the memory, it means that I can rip from the games even if I can't get past the title screen... Actually the only emulator that works with this gun out of dozens is RealSpectrum and the palette is different compared to the newer emulators. Can see what they mean now by the gun...
A Nightmare on Robinson Street
Basically Operation Wolf meets Neighbours.
Pang
Trans-Europe Rallye
WEC Le Mans
Really enjoyed playing and ripping this one. For a Spectrum racing game, it's fast and still very playable today. Noticed the differences between the Spectrum and the Amstrad versions in terms of their approach. With the Spectrum, there isn't many cars on screen, less roadside objects with Konami signs. While with the Amstrad, there are more cars on screen making it a bit harder, more color despite using a similar mode to the Spectrum, more roadside objects (with an Ocean sign that the C64 version also got, that was on the sly) but the frame rate takes a bit of a hit. Despite that, it's still playable in terms of the hardware and both versions are one of the best racing games on their computers easily within the Top 5 in terms of the commercial era.
Rocman
Have a guess why I ripped this.
Mr. Wimpy
Not too much left on the Spectrum backlog, most of them are racing games (Enduro Racer, Super Hang-On, Days of Thunder), a few arcade ports and a doctor who is popular. Having problems finding the graphics to some of the enemies in Deathchase and for Road Racer (aka Formula One on the TC 2068), the boundaries aren't 100% correct. Yeah, unless I find something else that interests me that's it for the Speccy. Like with the CPC, many of the Ocean games are a no-go for me due to doing various programming tricks (split bitplanes, compression, nightmare layout). There's like 1000s of games, nearly 8000 that Spectrum Computing class as arcade alone and still gets new stuff. The modern games can look lovely but like with the Amstrad Spanish scene, won't be ripping them in the respects of the programmers. Am tempted to rip a couple but the last thing that I want to do is annoy the developer just for ripping graphics from the game. Very rare that I rip homebrew or fan games, mostly stick to commercial titles and prototypes.
Speaking of which, there is one rip light due to that the sheet got lost and that's because the game is cursed. Speed Duel. My usual ripping emulator doesn't get past the joystick select screen (but got the graphics) so had to boot up on RealSpectrum. On there it couldn't do a race as literally as soon as you start the car kept crashing by itself until Game Over. It even caused my computer to crash at 11am while ripping, a computer that rarely crashes and just about count with two hands over 4 years. I was extremely close of finishing the rip, just one palette away. Not risking that again...
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The first update in a good while where it's not focused on mostly just one or two machines because the backlog is going down:
Amstrad CPC
Mr. Wong's Loopy Laundry
For some reason there are two versions, it's listed as "color red" and "color yellow" in the tape dumps. Color Red has red text for the title and logical colors. Mr. Wong is yellow but sadly it was the state of the 1980s and its casual racism. Color Yellow however while it has yellow text on the title, changes the yellow to green and only has two colors for the clothes. The palette is also more blue/green focused and the bubbles flash a different palette. The one with the wong... wrong colors is for green screen monitors to make it easier to see, usually that's an option rather than having two print runs of the game though.
More would have been done but at least Space Racer is getting there though.
Nearly got all of the graphics of Athlete but couldn't find the rest of the background in the graphics viewer and tried two different emulators. It's missing some of the track and the HUD. I've highlighted two examples that don't appear in the graphics viewer at all:
![[Image: 8000pVlTCs8y.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/8000pVlTCs8y.png)
Spectrum
Firstly ripped a certain plumbing duo meaning that most versions of the game are on the site. It's missing the Atari developed Commodore 64 version (would do that but as mentioned the emulator only supports PAL games...) and the PC-88 that judging by screenshots may use some sort of system characters anyway, probably as far as done in BASIC. Actually there is also a port of the Game & Watch game on the C64...
Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future
Joe Blade
F-1
Being in the backlog for quite a bit, it was one of the earlier Spectrum rips since February and only because the plans were to rip the Amstrad version then realised that the game was a "Speccy port". So might as well rip the original and turned out to be better because of less work to do (ripping the Amstrad version would have meant resizing the sprites because they are in Mode 2 where they are vertically stretched on the graphics viewer, recoloring because the viewer shows up in blue and white instead of the correct black and white) and the game was a bit better to play due to the frame rate (Spectrum is playable, CPC is unplayable due to a low frame rate that looks more like frameskipping). Good thing that I kept an older version of the emulator to finish the rip because the game broke in an update where when you start a race nothing shows up at all and pressing Enter finishes it.
Impossible Mission II
Mille Miles
Yes, French Spectrum games do exist and the company who made this fittingly enough is called Sprites. Wonder if it was an Oric or a Thomson port since from what I know those were the main computers in France before the Amstrad CPC...
There's not much in the game... Not even any CPU cars.
Rock'n Roller
Enduro Racer
Mountain Bike Racer (Positive)
As for why it is Positive, there was another game of the same name by Zeppelin that came out at the same time. Tried to look at that but couldn't rip it... It is actually somewhat common for this to happen having games of the same name by different companies at the same time... yet there are different and not re-releases. The region wouldn't work because both were released in English (and Spanish for this game). Also yeah... the sprites are badly defined making it hard to see.
Have compared the sprites of International Match Day to the original Match Day for differences and there isn't any in terms of graphics outside of the loading screen (sound is a different story, IMD plays a catchy version of the Match of the Day theme while in MD it sounds like farts). Since it's almost done, have it ready by a certain event.
Now I'm stuck on both Road Racer and Days of Thunder due to vertical boundaries and no way of figuring them out. While the width is fixed towards 8 pixel steps for the bitplanes, the vertical is unlimited as in that something could just be 1 pixel in height or 192 pixels in height. The graphics might have no gap (Impossible Mission II, Mountain Bike Racer Positive) or they might have a boundary. Then again internally the Spectrum thinks that it's some sort of printer or something, the graphics on the computer is classed as PAPER while the colors is classed as INK and to display them you PRINT them.
Game Boy
Bubble Bobble Part 2
Bubbles that bobble indeed. This is just the first batch out of around 80 rounds and done Rounds 4-20 (1-3 were done a bit ago) just because I wanted to rip something a bit more modern and fairly easy. Still tiring though... ohh...
C64
Death Race 64
Not just the N64 that had games that ended with 64... It's a graphically improved version of the Commodore 16 game and despite the name seems to be inspired by the Sega arcade classic Turbo.
TurboGrafx-16
Strip Fighter II
Super Volleyball
Sonic Spike / World Beach Volley
Power Golf
Was experimenting on what PC Engine games that I can background rip from (started off with Parasol Stars then Batman but stuck on the 3rd stage). While ripping last Sunday, banged my head on the fridge when in a supermarket shopping and afterwards had extreme difficulty opening my eyes for about 5 hours. Using any computer based device or the TV was out of the question, all I could really do was go to bed for a while. Then intensely bathed my eyes and muscles around my face for about 15 minutes just so they could open. It was really scary...
So I've decided due to health reasons:
- Any game that has tiny pixels is out from now on, games that were either decided beforehand or already ripping are whether they get done or not. (This is the same reason why some of my game collection is also gone due to small in game text). No more shmups, run & guns or anything that has bullets I'm afraid... Same goes for older racing games with those distance sprites with the cars and roadside objects. Currently some games have to be zoomed to 1000%+ but usually between 600-900% regarding the Game Boy, Spectrum and Amstrad rips, the latter all sprites are already zoomed in 200% of their size anyway. This is why the Game Boy, C64 and the Spectrum are the highest priority due to their lower resolutions.
- Focus on the more easier to do rips. This is something that has been ongoing for the past couple of years. It is why I've been focusing more on background rips, title screens, and in the past error messages. Not all title screens or background rips are easy mind you...
- Some of the rips sadly would have to be scrapped and from the looks of things include waves that race. My original plan was to keep ripping for at least another few years (was aiming for around 5 years) but it is looking more like months now. Even I can't give an exact date, it could even be sudden...
- Try to finish the Spectrum backlog (Crazy Cars 1 & 2, Dick Tracy, Pole Position, Angel Nieto Pole 500, The Living Daylights, Paris to Dakar, Super Hang-On)
- Sunsetting the Amstrad CPC, finish the backlog but will drop a few games. As a gesture hopefully will be ripping the GX4000/Amstrad Plus Burnin' Rubber as the final game. That would have to be ripped differently due to actually using sprites for the player car!
- Restricting the C64 rips to just a few games; Batman: The Movie, Commando (most likely to be ditched), Dynamite Dux, Out Run (WIP), Pole Position, Pitstop, Pitstop II and Turbo Out Run. Maybe The Untouchables as well... If it wasn't for the standards issue, Pole Position 2 and plumbing duo (Atari) would have also been ripped.
- Have a look at finishing as much as I can regarding the SNES backlog. Yeah, this means that Operation Europe will start in terms of rips after delaying it for like 8-9 months. Someone a while ago requested about the enemies from Romancing Saga 1 & 2 however said website that was used as a reference has now closed down. This is how bad my backlog is with rips...
- Finish off the Game Boy rips and Bubble Bobble Part 2 is just the start. Some are just going to be intro/title screen stuff though. Normally intro/menu rips are simple enough but Three Lions/Golden Goal is a bit of a nightmare. So many versions/variations of a poor football game and this is coming from the publisher of some really acclaimed open world games.
- Finish off the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 background rips and figure out Batman. Also complete the Buster Bros. rip that I was working on. I'll see if there's anything else on the console.
- Figure out how to sort out F1 06 PSP, various parts have been ripped months ago.
- Ripping the GBA Choro Q/Penny Racers/Gadget Racers/Road Trip/whatever backgrounds and putting them onto sheets. Already ripped a couple so far. The weirdest thing, the game runs at full speed until you pause the game. After pausing... for me runs at 13-21 fps for the races and runs like that even if the game has been reset. Full speed for the menus but the unplayable frame rate bug is very off putting.
- Fingers crossed regarding the GBA RoboCop game...
- There are a few arcade games that have been in the backlog for years and wanted them done. e.g. The Destroyer of Jail and Super Dead Heat, I started ripping those when they only just got added into MAME. Also due to the update, ripping Hang-On, maybe even Enduro Racer and Super Hang-On. (Wanted to rip Hang-On for years and could tell by that Hang-On Jr. rip a long time ago, first discovered it via the arcade in Shenmue and actually enjoyed that and Space Harrier far more than the game itself).
- Hoping to finish some Genesis rips including a few prototypes. There are a few including the addons too hence the X clue. It's going to be small scale though so have low expectations.
- Finish off the Monaco GP Saturn rip, something that I wanted to do for YEARS since it is the only official port of the arcade classic (SG-1000 version changed some things). It's not working in MAME to this day since it is one of the last games that used discrete circuitry.
- Finish off the Lupin FM Towns game and if I can... The Castle of Cagliostro and The Legend of the Gold of Babylon games on the MSX. Yes, they made Lupin games based off those films.
It will also mean for the time being that there will be less progress done. Once Bubble Bobble Part 2 and Power Golf are background ripped with some C64/Amstrad/Spectrum on the side, going to be sorting out my games and that will take a while (especially those lengthy installs with the PS4).
Also any unfinished sheets will be posted here, maybe they get finished at some point.
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10-09-2022, 12:21 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-09-2022, 12:40 PM by Barack Obama.)
Quality rips as always, great work man.
But please take care of yourself, the thing with your eyes sounds spooky. You always come first, rips are not so important compared to your own health.
Yeah! As much as we love seeing you still hard at work, your health is much more important. Take care of yourself. I hope you're back up to 100% soon.
![[Image: b1.php?u=39480955]](http://my.puregaming.org/banner/b1.php?u=39480955)
Quote:You had wasted MY LIFE... waiting for just a goddamn bunnelby model.
-The prestigious Farlavor
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Thanks ever so much.
Yeah my health hasn't been 100% for a while. My eyes aren't going to get any better due to a diagnosis from the hospital so yeah, they're getting worse and it's going to take years to get sorted. For now, being using eye spray and drops as a recommended stop gap.
So not much I'm afraid due to sorting out my gaming collection and taking it easy which is less said than done...
Power Golf (TurboGrafx-16)
There's just the course objects, the ball, title screen, name entry and a few misc things left. Weirdly the "background" that's used for behind the golfer view? That's actually completely done with sprites since the console can only support 1 background layer that's already used for the course. Thank goodness for modern tools otherwise this would have been impossible for both that and the player back in the day.
Batman
The vaguely closest thing to a Halloween rip... This is it so far due to Stages 3 and 5 change the layout once you've collected the pieces while Stage 4 uses animation for the acid. Oh and the game loads garbage tiles on the maps, proving that this game was a rush job when the planned side scroller got cancelled.
Amstrad
Rock'n Roller
Track & Field
Konami found out about Daley Thompson's Decathlon and Ocean had to make an official version (wonder whether this caused Konami to split up with Ocean briefly and when their arcade porting venture failed went back to them for a few games). Yet Ocean were crafty and only released this as a compilation for the Spectrum/CPC as Atari already brought out a C64 port in the US. I'm actually surprised that Konami didn't push Ocean to port 88 Games instead considering that it came out in 1988, AFAIK that doesn't have any ports... Then again Ocean decided to make another Daley Thompson game instead with the gimmicks of training and choosing the right ADIDAS TM branded trainers.
It is still debatable on who actually made this game whether it was done by Ali Davidson who went to Gremlin (was not part of Ocean) or outsourcing this to Microids who had done the Track & Field clone Athlete (also uses the background as part of the sprite and a similar font).
Spectrum
Track & Field
At first had problems with the boundaries however... the Amstrad version helped with this. Also did a bit of math.
This version was actually released unfinished as it crashes after the final event, all down to a bug with the numbers (it attempts to load Event 7 that doesn't exist as there are only 6 events in the game, think it is the old 0 is 1 rather than 1 is 1 or vice versa.)
Since it's a bit light even with fonts and loading screens, some WIP and progress:
As posted in the comments section, have been working on the backgrounds on Top Gear since May. Still some work to be done, mainly palettes and ripping the last backgrounds.
![[Image: H9sG72Oz_o.png]](https://images2.imgbox.com/90/fa/H9sG72Oz_o.png)
Crazy Cars (Spectrum) - Ugh... Soooooooo close... I just don't know how to categorise the cars. In other versions, there are 4 playable cars that are also used for the traffic. In the Spectrum version however, the Mercedes is not playable and you can tell by no big sprites of it unlike the other cars (big sprites = player, smaller sprites = CPU). Also the shadow of the car as well.
Crazy Cars 2 (Spectrum) - 1 sprite ripped so far, that's all!
Lethal Crash Race (Arcade) - Started work on this obscure Video System arcade game (I think it uses the same engine as one of the F-1 Grand Prix games). This is going to take a good while and probably months/ a year once it's done but already made progress on the police car since it's the easiest to rip.
Pitstop (C64) - The rival car is more or less done but I need to find the tires for the player car, they change color when they get worn down. Pretty advanced for 1983 actually...
Pole Position (Spectrum) - Ripped the signs, started work on the car.
Rodeo (Amstrad) - Ripped the cheerleader, working on the bull and the cowboy.
In the meantime looked into that GBA RoboCop game, the ROM appears to be "compressed" in terms of the sprites but not the usual way. As in that for RoboCop and the enemies, each sprite seems to be made of pieces mixed with garbage and unless the format gets reverse engineered, it would literally be ripping one tile/a few tiles at a time and that will take a long time (it would be faster to capture). The bosses, tilesets and some misc stuff however aren't like that.
Also found a few Sharp X68000 games that I can rip but... they seem to be fan games and what would be considered indie due to the nature of the computer having more "doujin" than officially released games. While the X68K was known for its really good to close to arcade perfect arcade ports, it's not the only thing that the computer was known for. I'm just not sure whether to rip Arururu (platformer starring Arle from Puyo Puyo) or Gedou Densetsu (Fatal Fury parody)... I try to avoid fan games though but they are tempting...
All other sheets are more or less the same progress wise.
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Feel like the warmth around the site has gone...
Spectrum
Crazy Cars
Finally figured out how to organize the sheets. Outside of the road and the barriers, nearly everything has been ripped. Also working on the game that uses the same engine or at least the same programmer Fire & Forget as well.
Match Day / International Match Day
Have to have something for the World Cup. Both versions have the same sprites and outside of the loading screen, most of the graphics are the same too. The only reasons why International Match Day exists are to tie in with the 1986 World Cup but Ocean released it AFTER it ended, upgrade from 48k to 128k to show off the new Spectrum models (adding a much better version of the Match of the Day theme song and a crowd done by the AY chip) and as a take that to US Gold since this game was going to be World Cup Carnival. Yep. Also it is very strange that this is a Spectrum exclusive, Match Day was released on the Amstrad and the C64 as well along with its sequel but not this. Probably for the fact that barely anything was done on the update...
While doing this, I've managed to find a way of ripping the raw graphics for the loading screen using this tip. Had to have the width at 256px and still had to move a pixel up on half of the blocks. Considering both YY-CHR and TileGGD failed on this one with savestates err... I meant snapshots as well as not showing up on ZXSEC. The only Spectrum emulator that can view these loading screens raw is ZXSpin but the emulator to put it bluntly is broken. This also means that all my loading screen rips would have to have an update that's an ongoing process...
Paris to Dakar
This game only exists as a Z80 savestate and no proper tape rips exist because Codemasters had denied Spectrum focused websites of preserving the games. It also doesn't help that the common ones floating about have no sound at all and possibly broken (only the 128k savestate has the sound/music and the closest to the correct version). This is why preservation is important because games will get lost and since this was a late commercial era Spectrum game, not many copies would have been made and due to the medium have a higher risk of non-working tapes. Besides EA bought the company and it's not like they are ever going to be re-releasing their games when they're working on the latest F1 game (with the exception of the Oliver Twins output due to their wise decision of allowing their games to be preserved and think they own the Dizzy stuff now).
Before anyone checks, there are tape rips of Paris-Dakar but that's a completely different game by Ziggurat as they are both inspired by the Paris-Dakar Rally or Dakar as it is known now.
Crazy Cars 2
Peter Beardsley's International Football
Still working on the loading screen for this one since it's actually harder to do than the players sheet. While the full colour one and the raw graphics are ripped, it has a palette cycle once the tape is loaded one that you couldn't recolor due to the way it is set up. Oh and it reveals a hidden credit covered up by the palette. What looks like DC... Possibly Dave Colledge who worked at Teque/Krisalis that developed the game?
(Did look into the Atari ST version and found the sprites but palette troubles and bitplane unsureness meant that it's on the backburner. As for why the ST, it's because a majority of games from launch to around 1990 but some after that focused on the ST as the lead platform and generally got an Amiga port, usually the latter was done fairly quickly with a lower frame rate, palette differences and usually with a better soundtrack.)
It's getting closer to the home stretch now...
Game Boy
Bubble Bobble Part 2
Ripping backgrounds by moonlight...
(Rounds 25, 27, 35, 37 and 39 have to do a bit extra work due to palette cycles on the warps. Rounds 61-80 have some animation regarding the flame.)
Amstrad
Space Racer
Just shows how bad my backlog is... Started ripping on August 1, then the rival was ripped nearly 2 months ago, only just finished off the player. Nearly 5 months for what it takes other rippers a day or two.
Was very close to having Titus Classiques done except that I'm a bit stumped. Not sure whether to have one game each (Classiques Volume 1 and Classiques Volume 2) or to have both Classique collections bundled together like with the Microsoft Arcade collections.
Anyway have decided to cut down on the loading screens once I've gone through both the backlog and the games on the site (not every game has a loading screen on computers). Simply put, I don't even know what's going on here anymore... Whose to say in the future that those along with title screens will get rejected for not being useful in a random comment (or hidden away in social media channels that not everyone uses) or even only allowing popular games because they generate easy views and comments. Then it gets a bit tribal when more than one ripper claimed to rip the popular game and the way that they want to rip arguing on what sheets to claim and the method to do it. I know a lot of games that I have ripped for the past 10 years or so aren't popular with some that don't even have a fan base but have done it just to show a part of gaming that's forgotten as time goes by and know that I'm not the only ripper who feels this way. When you feel demotivated because you wouldn't know what to do anymore.
Along those lines have ripped from Taito Variety Pack on the Game Boy quite a while ago:
Japanese version (finished June 11 2022)
![[Image: LTyZv73BD6Np.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/LTyZv73BD6Np.png)
Chinese version (ripped June 30 2022 and yes it was officially released with some background info)
![[Image: GuhjfuY3ollw.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/GuhjfuY3ollw.png)
The only reason why I haven't submitted is well... That's literally it from the game.
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Joined: Mar 2020
11-28-2022, 04:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-28-2022, 04:24 PM by Barack Obama.)
Yawackhary Wrote:Then it gets a bit tribal when more than one ripper claimed to rip the popular game and the way that they want to rip arguing on what sheets to claim and the method to do it. It's more like coincidence because we didn't expect each other ripping the same sheets. I mean, I saw a comment in the error thread and decided to do something about these broken sheets, but somehow conflicting submissions popped up and so I decided to back out to give the other ripper some room to do the stuff he wants to do.
In the end, I don't see a problem here, MFG is a very talented ripper and also doing a great job for this game.
Yawackhary Wrote:I know a lot of games that I have ripped for the past 10 years or so aren't popular with some that don't even have a fan base but have done it just to show a part of gaming that's forgotten as time goes by and know that I'm not the only ripper who feels this way. Yup, same. Dual Orb II is a game that nobody knows because it has a broken encounter system and a ridiculous difficulty with a lot of grinding. And even though I had to use cheats to progress, I find it charming and therefore decided to rip from it. I would be actual cool with other SNES rippers doing the popular games so I can do more stuff from less popular ones. But it is how it is and these crappy ancient sheets within the big games make the entire SNES section look bad, so naturally something has to be done if no one else wants to do it.
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(11-28-2022, 04:20 PM)Barack Obama Wrote: It's more like coincidence because we didn't expect each other ripping the same sheets. I mean, I saw a comment in the error thread and decided to do something about these broken sheets, but somehow conflicting submissions popped up and so I decided to back out to give the other ripper some room to do the stuff he wants to do.
In the end, I don't see a problem here, MFG is a very talented ripper and also doing a great job for this game. Yup. In some cases, it's a pity that the background I wanted to rip was already done but ultimately, the primary priority is to get correct rips over who wins the fight. There also is the fact that we have different ripping methods such as how Barack Obama uses ZSNES and export the backgrounds, palette and graphics with vSNES while I use Mesen-S primarily for backgrounds while an export of the ROM's graphics for tilesets and sprites (the latter which is important for Super FX sprites, for that matter, since it can be hard to get the original frames and in some other cases, the source graphics can never be gotten through pure gameplay).
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Oh... It's a misunderstanding and didn't at all mean to cause grief or make anyone upset. In all honesty, am pretty bad when it comes to speech and just happened to be annoyed at the time. To put it lightly, didn't want to cause drama over wording that wasn't clarified properly.
It was more of a general point like what I've seen in the past and a concern for the future rather than the case of Yoshi's Island. What I was referring to in particular when venting is something along the lines of the Sonic rips and customs. Not just the Tokyo Toy Show customs where people are arguing in the comments but also either the re-rips didn't settle well for people or edit wars between sheets, some rippers being protective of their sheets and the grief that Paraemon gets from the rips because of something. Seems to be if Sonic's involved, drama just happens no matter what. Seen it happen with Cuphead and Friday Night Funk'n. I don't really recall any from the early days, the earliest replacements that annoyed people was when SuperJustinBros started doing mass scale re-rips of various games yet in a vast majority of cases, the re-rips are welcomed. Even in the case of the Sonic rips, I actually did want the Chaotix stuff to be replaced because they were embarrassing, the final version was unrippable at the time, credited people who you shouldn't really associate with, completely gone off the series and... loved the re-rips that were done to the point where I'll welcome any of my older stuff to be re-ripped. Also didn't want the Sonic Xtreme rips but that's (breathes out) another story...
In terms of Yoshi's Island, you both did (along with Murphmario) an excellent job and shouldn't be discouraged at all. It's more of say I don't know the right words... maybe a lack of planning until it's too late or a case of bad timing rather than a "fight". I can understand MarioFanGamer's passion of the game and only wanting the best out there.
Anyway now that's over, something a bit more uplifting. A WIP sheet of Operation Wolf on the Amstrad CPC done on my newer computer, the only rip that I've done for a bit.
What's missing is the pig, the grenade and have to check the enemies from Stages 2-6 because some that look like recolors aren't and some are. This version is cutdown as it is missing a bit (the boss and hostage at the end of Stage 2, "The Enemy is Behind You!" stages, the plane going up at the end of Stage 6, some enemy placements, the bikini girl and the cutscenes unless you have a custom trainer that ports the arcade intro to the CPC) Actually it resembles more of how the game appears in bootlegged arcade versions or how it was in MAME before the protection microcontroller was emulated.
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