The supply of not-so-original Korean ‘originals’ has dried up in recent years but when system11 spotted the board for a game called ‘Come Back Toto’ for sale he couldn’t resist buying it.
The game, which attempts to pass itself off as an original 1996 title by ‘SoftClub’ is actually a reskin of Toaplan’s Snow Bros. He dumped it, I emulated it, there was some basic line swapping on all the roms, and a stupid ‘protection’ check (wanted a fixed value returned from a port Snow Bros doesn’t use) but overall getting it working wasn’t much of a challenge. Here are some side-by-side screenshots with Snow Bros.
As you can see all the sprites have been redrawn, the theme changed (you throw little ‘punch’ icons instead of snow), the levels redesigned, and (not visible from the screenshots) the music remixed a little, but it’s the same game running for the most part the same code (with numerous patches and bits added)
I do love it when these things turn up :-)