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April 13, 2015 Haze Categories: General News. 21 Comments on Little SemiCom in Dragonworld

system11 recently picked up another SemiCom title, this time it’s Ma Cheon Ru, a tile matching game which seems to be heavily inspired by IGS’ Dragon World series (the overall feel of the game is quite close to Dragon World 2)

It’s actually a bit of a mashup of your regular tile matching games and a selection on minigames because after each round you’re presented with one of a number of bonus features, including timed stamping of envelopes, punching a guy in the face and a shooting gallery of sorts.

The actual protection data for the game hasn’t been read out yet, but by hacking it up to use data from the XESS (Semicom 3-in-1) game I was able to get something which appears playable, obviously I want to extract the real data for this game before marking it as working tho (that’s the next task, working with system11 to do that)


Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru
Ma Cheon Ru Ma Cheon Ru

21 Comments

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From what I can see in the TAFA database, the english title of this game can be Arirang :
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5907

Anyway, thank you Haze from your work on this rare Semicom game.

Google Translate offers “skyscraper” as the English translation of the hangul (마천루) as well as the hanja (摩天摟) forms of the title.

The version pictured on the flyer still appears to have the Korean descriptions below the mini-games, so either it was poorly localized, or the name shown was just an ‘in development’ name, later changed.

Also, we’ve discovered (thanks to system11) that the Minigame I thought was broken (controls don’t appear to respond) is just the same way on the PCB, you actually have to rotate the joysticks in a circular motion at exactly the right speed, practically impossible on a keyboard (not much easier on the sticks)

@Haze 2 questions…
1 – Will be expected a release of Do Donpachi Campaign Version? (only 100 ever made)
2 – Cave games are slow in several times… will be impleted BGFX in the future?
Or maybe don´t need it at all.

Thank You.

That is one of the QTE moves in God of War, isn’t it?

Hello!!!
The handheld achievements of mess, could give mess and mame a new popularity, new users, celebration.
But nobody publicize it and it’s usage is not so easy. The artwork for the games are not well publicized (couldn’t you. add it to the ROM zip file?) . It’s a shame that mess is trashing this opportunity.
Thank you

Hello!!!
The handheld emulation achievements of mess, could give mess and mame a new popularity, new users, celebration.
But nobody publicize it and it’s usage is not so easy. The artwork for the games are not well publicized (couldn’t you. add it to the ROM zip file?) . It’s a shame that mess is trashing this opportunity.
Thank you

Ma Cheon Ru
http://www.grb.or.kr/download/GameImage/1999/9902-전자13.jpg

As described in the KMRB manual, Background images are pictures of Shin Yunbok.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Yun-bok

Haze, I’ve been following your work for years, still trying to understand how to emulate the simplest of systems.

Sorry for the question, but do you still plan to release the 2014 summary article ? I’ve already read the previous ones a couple of times, very interesting readings.

Thanks for all your work!

> 1 – Will be expected a release of Do Donpachi Campaign Version? (only 100 ever made)
100? I thought it was 1, and it was given away as a prize, and that even Cave doesn’t have it anymore, it may as well not exist.

> 2 – Cave games are slow in several times… will be impleted BGFX in the future?
BGFX has nothing to do with Cave, the driver is also already heavily optimized and won’t get faster.

> Sorry for the question, but do you still plan to release the 2014 summary article ? I
Yes, sorry, was getting back into the swing of things then ended up being hit by hardware issues, prompted me into an actual upgrade tho (3Ghz Core2Duo to 4Ghz i7-4790K is a MUCH bigger leap than it sounds btw, compile times down from over an hour to about 5 minutes, single core performance in MAME 2.5-3x higher, very nice indeed, might improve my efficiency somewhat)

> The handheld emulation achievements of mess, could give mess and mame a new popularity
Yes, I agree, I think we should start hashing ‘best known’ artworks, it’s not unprecedented to hash ‘best known’ things when the source is analog, we do it for laserdiscs even if we don’t do it for samples. There’s a risk of them getting lost or incorrectly paired otherwise, fruit machines will need similar somewhere down the line. Unfortunately the devs working on them aren’t really promoting them well either.

>That is one of the QTE moves in God of War, isn’t it?
quite possibly, I think the main issue is the way it’s coded in the game is so bad it’s hard to pull off. Pulling off similar half circles in Vs. fighter games isn’t an issue even on keyboard.

But nobody publicize it and it’s usage is not so easy. The artwork for the games are not well publicized (couldn’t you. add it to the ROM zip file?) . It’s a shame that mess is trashing this opportunity.

I’ve been pushing this line of thinking but the devs involved (primarily hap) think it’s all a funny joke that nobody will ever be able to enjoy that work.

Interesting side note, this game has the exact same colour overload problem as some other Semicom titles on that hardware and similar, Su Ho Sung for example – so certain colour fades don’t work at least on any of my monitors (the trisync refuses to even put a picture up) – in fact one of the minigames just turns almost entirely black.

“Yes, I agree, I think we should start hashing ‘best known’ artworks, it’s not unprecedented to hash ‘best known’ things when the source is analog, we do it for laserdiscs even if we don’t do it for samples. There’s a risk of them getting lost or incorrectly paired otherwise…”

Exactly! And also… wait, huh? Why DON’T we do it for samples? Those have been around nearly as long as MAME itself and arguably even more important than artwork depending on perspective – so shouldn’t that be a thing too?

Arbee: “but the devs involved (primarily hap) think it’s all a funny joke that nobody will ever be able to enjoy that work.”
Please prove this with a quote of mine to continue discussion, or i will simply interpret it as vile slander deserving to be ignored. :)

For people that are not Arbee: I’ve been spending many hours to create MESS internal artwork for led-games to make them enjoyable to play (check merlin or simon for good examples!).

The VFD games dumped by kevtris are being converted to MESS artwork as well, but obviously (copyrights etc) we can’t include them in MESS by default. The primary download URL is public, look for it in the discussion thread at bannister.org. Redistribution is in progress, eg. antoPISA will put them on his site.

Thanks Haze.
So tell to system16 website to fix it.

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=803

Do Donpachi Campaign Version – 1997
“Notes : Reportedly only 100 ever made and given out as prizes to high score contest winners.”

A very big “thank you” to Couriersud achievements!!!!!!!!
He has emulated the discrete (non cpu) Breakout from Atari (1976).
Now MAME emulate three discrete systems (Pong, Pong Doubles, Breakout). I’m right?

It’s not as dice emulator (approximately 20 games) but it’s a very good start!!!!!!

GO GO GOOOOOOOO!!!! :-)

Breakout doesn’t appear to work yet.

I think the progress couriersud is making is amazing! Hopefully he can keep it up and, as the list of emulated devices gets bigger, maybe it will become easier / quicker for him to add new games.

Also I just saw pics of hap’s recent work on handhelds and they definitely make me want to try them out. I agree with everyone who says we need to find a way to publicize his work more. It will definitely attract lots of people who were young in the 80’s.

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