Taito do Brazil (the Brazilian Taito division) seem to have been something of an oddity. While no official Japanese release of Taito games contained any strings relating to the Brazil they would import games, modify them, and occasional write their own using what hardware they had available. Effectively they worked completely independently of the rest of Taito.
Some of their output appears to be little more than bootleg quality (hacked strings) while other work is more interesting. I don’t know how much Taito actually knew about when it came to their Brazlian operations, but I suspect not much.
Previously a game called “Galactica – Batalha Espacial” was emulated, this was a remake of Galaxian on Space Invaders hardware. Attempting to go one better it appears they also remade Galaga and released it on Galaxian hardware (technically Moon Cresta, but they’re so close it doesn’t matter) For whatever reason they decided to call their creation ‘Fantastic’
So far I’ve managed to get it into test mode. The rom has a slight block scramble to it, making things annoying.
Given that the board also has issues (See YouTube video) I’m having to cross my fingers that the ROMs are actually good although I see no obvious signs to indicate otherwise just yet, however I’m not convinced the PROM is a good dump because using a standard Moon Cresta / Galaxian decode you get a bunch of pastel colours.
Note, I don’t actually see any Taito strings in the ROM or graphics, but they could be non-ascii encoded.
*edit* got it ingame, bit glitchy tho, and unplayable, probably the rom descramble isn’t quite right
*edit2* fixed some of the rom scrambling, enemy formations are now correct. gfx banking is wrong, sound is wrong, star scrolling is wrong, bullets are wrong but you can now move about and shoot things. I think some of the wiremods on the board make it act more like a Galaga board than a Moon Cresta / Galaxian one.
thanks to Augusto Garcia, Silvio Finotti & Marcello Mancini for sourcing + dumping this one.
Ahh, scrambled, so that’s why the z80 jumped to never-neverland for me. Also hmm this reminds me of the .br version of space invaders part2, maybe scrambled too and not a bad dump as I first thought… I’ll have a look at that.
..and it was ;p
I don’t know.. that’s a pretty odd encryption from an ’80s hardware’ perspective, although I doubt you’d have a xor that long if it was actually corrupt.
Strange
GRANDMASTER DAVID!!!
wonderful work
I’m bursting with joy
I want to thank you and to all
a lot of emotion
a lot of emotion
thanks
Hi David,
Great work! I own a FANTASTIC working board, so, if you need some more info or to read the Roms/proms please let me know. I’ll be glad to help.
BTW, the actual Roms you are using were not dumped from my board. The were “resting” in an old Apple ii disk
Ah, man– the palette on those screenshots reminds me of CGA.
Wonderful work David, Thanks for everything you do :)
Man, thanks a lot for this wonderful job….
We owe you a lot….
Aaaah, ive been looking for this game for a long time, because ive played it on holidays in greek many years ago and didnt remember the name of it. Thank you!!
Hello Haze, first of all congratulations for the work! I was trying to get it to work in MAME but had no time enough for that, but I was very happy to hear of your progress! Well, after many years I got this card, these days it is very hard to see it here, but in the 80s was all that was in place, even in bakeries! My card is working, but it has some bugs due to hardware problems, but nothing that I can not fix. Regarding the colors, but as someone mentioned appear to be the EGA palette, a detail butterflies are yellow in color and NO VERTICAL SCROLL, the layer of the enemies is a horizontal scrolling and the stars move along! (routine very early, did not use dual layer for video). I will try to re-read EPROM and PROM and delivery to the Marcello and the same will pass you. Great job and thanks for the credits!
You’ve clearly never been in Brazil i see.
The only thing ‘fantastic’ there is the level of poverty, corruption, violence and mayhem.
Haze Hello, first congratulations on adaptation, I’m having little time to be able to adapt Fantastic for MAME, but I’m glad that got a huge advance. My Fantastic has some problems but nothing that I can not fix. I will try to reread the PROM and EPROM then send to the Marcello and he forwards them. This game is very curious, was all that was in place, even in bakeries! but suddenly with the disappearance of Arcades this game was very rare, was very fortunate to be able to find such a board today. Congratulations to you and everyone involved! Note: the butterflies are in yellow, the color pattern is similar to EGA unless I’m mistaken and there is no vertical scroll, just so there is a horizontal scroll sectorized (when enemies are attacking formation), the curious thing is that both the stars and the enemies that move horizontal scroll, it was a simple that the engineer Taito of Brazil implemented, because the truth should have worked on dual layer, one for sprites and one for background, well, things of a past where information and resources were a lot of difficult things!
lol,
That’s YOUR opinion.
I was born and live in Brasil. Of course we have a lot of problems (point me a country which don’t have!!), but we surely have lots of FANTASTIC things also.
Yeah, every country has their issues, but let’s concentrate on the arcades for now.
Even European countries like Italy, the UK and further afield like Korea, Russia and Australia had crazy arcade scenes, with games being imported and hacked by local operators claiming to be official parts of the distribution chain but almost certainly working outside of any license they might have had. They also had their own smaller industries which are absolutely fascinating.
I think that’s part of the charm, the fact that there was so little regulation in these places compared to Japan. Brazil definitely has some interesting history to contribute to emulation, both arcade and console. Console side you’ve got the likes of TecToy selling / producing / porting Sega based hardware, for the arcades it’s interesting to see how it appears to be the only region in which Capcom’s Slipstream was actually released (maybe because they still considered it a viable marked, not saturated with 3D racers at that point?)
With these games (Galactica and Fantastic) you see manufacturers working with the limited resources they had to rewrite more modern versions of games using older hardware!
If the world was ‘perfect’ with ‘perfect’ copyright & trademark enforcement, and no chance of being able to get away with something like this without having a team of lawyers on your back a lot of what when on wouldn’t have happened. The rogue like nature of some of this material is it’s appeal, and the economic and political climates of the places involved, plus their determination to have an arcade scene are what made it possible.
I’ve done pieces on the Korean games before, which had similar going on, but on a far larger scale and despite the cheap hacky nature of a large portion of their output I honestly think we’d be in a worse position without them.
It’s easy to overlook the smaller local industries and just stick with mainstream manufacturers and games when looking into arcades but doing so is a real mistake.
“Yeah, every country has their issues, but let’s concentrate on the arcades for now.”
Vou falar em português, porque tenho ORGULHO de ser Brasileiro e quero dizer que você David esta fazendo um trabalho maravilhoso resgatando/emulando os jogos que foram feitos para jogar somente no Brasil.
Quero te agradecer por você ter nos proporcionado essa alegria de poder ver de novo a Galactica e a Fantastic
Abraços e estarei sempre a disposição para o que precisar saber
Obrigado
looking at some of the other ‘Brasil’ dumps I was sent they’re sadly just bitrot to hell, bad graphics and the like
eg one has corrupt pixels in the text (and resets when starting a game)
http://i40.tinypic.com/jr8ht0.png
The other has corrupt graphics associated with the big sprites
http://i40.tinypic.com/amb7dt.png
and likewise has bitrot in the program roms causing corruption from level 2 onwards.
It seems like we’re lucky that Fantastic was a good dump…
“It seems like we’re lucky that Fantastic was a good dump…”
Dear David
Fantastic of the roms were read directly from boardset
The other roms not (because they were in diskets apples)
The Kong was my game (third) that I liked,love
Sorry, I noticed that the roms were with different names, does not it?
Example: Crazy Kong ll 0-3, was “c” and below with “k” Kong Krazy ll 4-7 and Krazy Kong ll 8-9
If you do not mind I’ll leave the link to you download the roms
I thank you and I hope to work
thank you
http://www.4shared.com/rar/WdEhUWv5/Kong-KongAM_e_Crazy_Kong.html?
‘Crazy Kong II.rar’ and ‘Kong AM.rar’ are the two I posted pictures of above, which are bad dumps.
I haven’t tried ‘Kong.rar’ yet
there was also ‘Gorilla’ which also looks bad to me, it doesn’t boot and there are some questionable changes which look like bitrot.
“I haven’t tried ‘Kong.rar’ yet”
I hope very much to working KONG!
I have an idea ..
Do the roms have been translated wrong?
I mean: Does time pass for Floppy names do not mix?
+ Kong + Crazy Kong and it was done?
I don’t think there are any naming / translation problems. I already worked out that Crazy Kong and Krazy Kong went together ;-)
The problem is the data, it’s wrong, either because the floppies are bad, or because the roms were not read correctly (or were bad)
I will look at the last ‘Kong’ set later, but I’m not optimistic.
“there was also ‘Gorilla’ which also looks bad to me, it doesn’t boot and there are some questionable changes which look like bitrot.”
The space invaders part II also seems bad and does not start the game (even the PCB did not start)
You know what I did?
Includes only the rom number 2 (the TAITO OF BRAZIL) on the set of roms ll part of SPACE INVADERS TAITO original JAPAN
The result?
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f-GcDkf7jg
Yes, I think the Space Invaders ROM is bad, or has been corrupt at some point. Hap ‘fixed’ it in the MAME code, but his changes really don’t look like decryption to me, more like patches to a bad rom which has had it’s bits flipped in places somehow.
The problem with mixing and matching roms is that you lose some unique parts of the hacks, and I don’t want to have to do that. Note, none of the 2 Kong sets I tried actually had anything translated in the games anyway, good dumps of them would probably match the existing bootlegs apart from the copyright hack showing ‘BRASIL’
well
Anyway, it was maddening to review the “Brasil 1982”
The tears filled my eyes
Sorry, I do not get out of the arcades as a kid and review these images touched me
30 years later …
much, thank you
Kong.rar seems interesting, I don’t know if it’s good due to the poor quality of the other dumps, but it has absolutely nothing in common with any of the other Donkey Kong or Crazy Kong sets, the code is completely different in every way.
http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/userfiles/273319-018.jpg
“Kong.rar seems interesting”
Good!
The kong was exactly the one I played (more than crazy kong)
I look forward to working,see in play
Look at her image in the link above
What was the difference between Kong and Krazy Kong?
“The tears filled my eyes”
lol, gotta love google translations.
“What was the difference between Kong and Krazy Kong?”
Technically no difference
The taito Brazil’s only considered “CRAZY” in the second version
“Crazy Kong ll”
Ok ‘Kong’ (unlike Crazy Kong) is actually some kind of rewrite of Donkey Kong on Galaxian hardware, similar to how Fantastic is a rewrite of Galaga.
It’s missing a fair number of features of the original, has less animation etc. There is no dumped prom, so colours are bad, and there is one rom I don’t know what is, but basically it runs with a similar setup to Fantastic, but without the rom scramble
http://i41.tinypic.com/2rz6wcm.png
http://i40.tinypic.com/dm9sfo.png
http://i44.tinypic.com/9i5l77.png
http://i44.tinypic.com/2mpygd0.png
fwiw there is no ‘how high can you climb’ screen
there is a ‘tournament’ dipswitch which makes holes in the platform in the first level (and more enemies)
jumping animation / motion is rather rough
barrels pause and vanish when displaying the score for jumping over them (it’s a sprite swap)
ladders in the 2nd round (pie factor) act in a different way
barrels don’t bounce if they fall off an edge (and actually seem to vanish entirely if they fall off a higher one?)
no hammer near the top of first stage
no fire graphic above the barrel…
http://i43.tinypic.com/sl5k09.png
http://i44.tinypic.com/2s7ch93.png
http://i43.tinypic.com/14ikazb.png
http://i42.tinypic.com/bi89s4.png
you climb ladders very fast (need to because barrel on last ladder always take ladder)
hitting the side of the screen *always* kills you
you can’t pick up the hammer on anything except the first level?
and obviously, the whole thing is translated…
“It’s missing a fair number of features of the original, has less animation etc. There is no dumped prom, so colours are bad, and there is one rom I don’t know what is, but basically it runs with a similar setup to Fantastic, but without the rom scramble”
Sorry, David
I am a huge anxiety ..
The problems presented by the DUMP, are obstacles to the game work at all?
I know it is very cumbersome to deal with these roms and again I say thank you very much and admire your work (I’m studying programming because of it)
Sorry to ask, is that I’m very curious about all these achievements
thank you
no.. these are not problems of the dump, they are differences in the game.
Kong was coded from nothing, it uses 0 code from Donkey Kong, 0 code from Crazy Kong, it is a unique game, and for this reason it has it’s own bugs, and plays differently.
It is like Galaga and Fantastic, they are different games, programmed from 0..
This is a genuine original creation of Brazil ;-)
I have completed 1 round of the game (All 4 levels) and it is playable. There is currently no sound, and 1 rom I don’t understand the purpose of, but the game is playable.
Without a PROM from the board the colours will always be wrong tho, and it would help if somebody owns the board to tell me what extra hardware it has compared to a normal galaxian / moon cresta board, the extra ROM (13) might be sound related.
” and for this reason it has it’s own bugs, and plays differently.”
Yes,I certify that your information!
When I play the “crazy kong” original, do not feel the nostalgia of yesteryear
For example: kong TAITO OF BRAZIL the “little fire” disappears when the game is fairly played!
The FANTASTIC is much more difficult to play and the color differences are that the “bees” are yellow (fantastic) the remainder is equal in the GALAGA
I think the Fantastic PROM COLOR is a “complement” to play with other colors PROM (probably the same as galaxiam)
“It is like Galaga and Fantastic, they are different games, programmed from 0..
This is a genuine original creation of Brazil ;-)”
admirable, admirable
At that time the resources were scarce and labor very costly programming
GALACTICA in color was originally
However as it was expensive to record a prom, they decided to put “plastics” colored to give the color
“Without a PROM from the board the colours will always be wrong tho, and it would help if somebody owns the board to tell me what extra hardware it has compared to a normal galaxian / moon cresta board, the extra ROM (13) might be sound related.”
In the absence of PROM COLOR that belonged to KONG – TAITO OF BRAZIL
We may use the COLORS PROMS of “crasy KONG”?
“fwiw there is no ‘how high can you climb’ screen
there is a ‘tournament’ dipswitch which makes holes in the platform in the first level (and more enemies)
jumping animation / motion is rather rough
barrels pause and vanish when displaying the score for jumping over them (it’s a sprite swap)
ladders in the 2nd round (pie factor) act in a different way
barrels don’t bounce if they fall off an edge (and actually seem to vanish entirely if they fall off a higher one?)
no hammer near the top of first stage
no fire graphic above the barrel…you climb ladders very fast (need to because barrel on last ladder always take ladder)
hitting the side of the screen *always* kills you
you can’t pick up the hammer on anything except the first level?”
Yes, yes!!
This is the real game KONG!
Congratulations
I can’t really just use the PROMs of Crazy Kong or Donkey Kong because they’re using a different setup for proms. (Donkey Kong + Crazy Kong use multiple proms + colour maps whereas Galaxian style hardware just has a single PROM in normal cases)
It might be possible to create some approximate colours in the driver if you can remember how they should be. Were they close to Crazy Kong, or closer to Donkey Kong?
Remember Crazy Kong, Crazy Kong PT2 and Donkey Kong all have different colours…
http://i43.tinypic.com/2v0mp04.png
http://i42.tinypic.com/28s9g05.png
Galactic Empire is (unsurprisingly) just a bootleg/hack of IREM’s UniWarS
“It might be possible to create some approximate colours in the driver if you can remember how they should be. Were they close to Crazy Kong, or closer to Donkey Kong?”
Yes, for example: GALACTICA colors have been added, modified and recorded based on color of prom SPACE INVADERS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F89DjyJ68Vw
The colors of the Brazilian KONG I remember the GORILLA be red
“Galactic Empire is (unsurprisingly) just a bootleg/hack of IREM’s UniWarS”
You The BEST!!
Sensational!
It’s epic!
thank you
“Yes, I think the Space Invaders ROM is bad, or has been corrupt at some point. Hap ‘fixed’ it in the MAME code, but his changes really don’t look like decryption to me, more like patches to a bad rom which has had it’s bits flipped in places somehow.
The problem with mixing and matching roms is that you lose some unique parts of the hacks, and I don’t want to have to do that.”
David, I’m playing game SPACE INVADERS the Brazilian version in PCB original.
Everything’s normal, that is, it’s all working
Graphics, sounds, and continuing steps.
This “patch” I did putting the rom number two, was not perfect?
tnks
It’s the type of thing bootleggers did all the time, but if there were any patches in the original rom 2 (minor changes to difficulty, game logic etc.) then they would be lost by using the regular rom 2.
Maybe they’re just changes you’d not notice anyway tho.
Kong will be supported in the next MAME update (with bad colours and no sound) The MAME/MESS GIT mirror is currently offline tho due to a server crash, with no current backups.
“Kong will be supported in the next MAME update (with bad colours and no sound)”
I’m anxious to see again kong
Wonderful news, without you we could never this feat.
The Fantastic game have any predictions?
I am without words to thank you again
Thank you, your work will be revered by us forever
hugs
a inda mi lembro dela novinha em folha chegou de caminhão no fleperama.srsrsr
So I’m trying to understand.
The stars on scroll left + right with the aliens on real hardware? (This happens in MAME, I wasn’t sure if it was a bug)
Does Kong have stars? I’m guessing not, but the current driver does.
The Taito do Brasil ‘Piranha’ is exactly the same as ‘Funky Fish’ apart from having the same rom corruption / encryption as Space Invaders Pt. 2
I’m wondering if the guy who did the dumps modified them this way on purpose to stop other people using his resources? It really doesn’t look like a natural encryption.
Fud VD is just a bootleg of Dribbling with the manufacturer info changed (Model Brasil instead of Model Racing)
http://i40.tinypic.com/aaakqp.png
http://i44.tinypic.com/16atcu8.png
Polaris ‘II’ is just Polaris translated
http://i40.tinypic.com/11mcdix.png
http://i39.tinypic.com/343qjpu.png
btw Fantastic should be ‘working’ in the next update, bullets are now drawn and missing sprites have been found.
It’s very similar to ‘ZigZag’ (the copy of Dig Dug on Galaxian hardware, not the bootleg on Dig Dug hardware)
ZigZag is another one which after looking at the code appears to have been coded from scratch, so I’m guessing it’s related to this and Kong.
Haze is our hero!!
Thanks
David!!!
Parabens!! Congratulations!!
Você é o MAIOR..THE BEST!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXD8nTa2CDY&feature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DDb23dNOhA&feature=youtu.be
Recordar é viver!!
Thanks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5irZ_42x_vM&feature=youtu.be
POLARISBR
Thanks
there’s clearly something wrong with your cloud and bg circuits, but other than that, yes ;-)
“there’s clearly something wrong with your cloud and bg circuits”
The rom I had here has 15k
7 split by
I used 1k rest as “color prom”
I did something wrong ..
it’s 14kb, you get 7 2kb roms, + 4 bytes extra which seem to be junk.
ROM_START( polarisbr ) /* aka Polaris II on flyers? */
ROM_REGION( 0x10000, “maincpu”, 0 )
ROM_LOAD( “1”, 0x0000, 0x0800, CRC(17015f52) SHA1(8beb4d927c08420f9990fac787a81d4bd6dd419c) )
ROM_LOAD( “2”, 0x0800, 0x0800, CRC(9a5c8cb2) SHA1(7a8c5d74f8b431072d9476d3ef65a3fe1d639813) )
ROM_LOAD( “3”, 0x1000, 0x0800, CRC(60118368) SHA1(e1189fd88b943fcf77a5c41c519cccdb8196910c) )
ROM_LOAD( “4”, 0x1800, 0x0800, CRC(65694948) SHA1(de92a7f3e3ef732b573254baa60df60f8e068a5d) )
ROM_LOAD( “5”, 0x4000, 0x0800, CRC(6cb21b31) SHA1(f9d435a3aa905f124cb87c139b047e1585d0997b) )
ROM_LOAD( “6”, 0x4800, 0x0800, CRC(3df77bac) SHA1(b3275c34b8d42df83df2c404c5b7d220aae651fa) )
ROM_LOAD( “7”, 0x5000, 0x0800, CRC(0d811b92) SHA1(09af62997e1e0da0525ab4f6ced775d3673d8f35) )
ROM_REGION( 0x0400, “proms”, 0 ) /* background color map */
ROM_LOAD( “ps08.1b”, 0x0000, 0x0400, CRC(164aa05d) SHA1(41c699ce45c76a60c71294f25d8df6c6e6c1280a) ) /* NEC B406 or compatible BPROM (82S137) */
ROM_REGION( 0x0100, “user1”, 0 ) /* cloud graphics */
ROM_LOAD( “ps07.2c”, 0x0000, 0x0100, CRC(2953253b) SHA1(2fb851bc9652ca4e51d473b484ede6dab05f1b51) ) /* MB7052 or compatible BPROM (82S129) */
ROM_END
the 2 roms in proms and user1 (used for bg/cloud gen) weren’t included, so I’ve used the existing ones from MAME.
“the 2 roms in proms and user1 (used for bg/cloud gen) weren’t included, so I’ve used the existing ones from MAME.”
Excellent!
I’m your number 1 ADMIRER of his work
thank you
I’d love to see some more comments about the history of Taito Brazil and just how connected they were to Taito Japan.
I’ve been told by people that Abba Kogan, son of the Taito founder (and well known racing car driver) was very actively involved with setting up and running Taito Brazil. He seems to have run several of the remote Taito operations including those in New Zealand. I sat in an interview a few years ago with an ex-Taito New Zealand programmer who said they had a couple of people here at Taito New Zealand (Christchurch) dedicated to programming games specifically for Taito Brazil (at Abba’s direct request) – specifically getting new games to run on older (galaxians?) hardware – Donkey Kong etc. They even sent patches via teletype links between NZ and Brazil.
http://forum.jogos.uol.com.br/a-historia-da-taito-taito-do-brasil_t_1470536