Eco Fighters is a shooter released by Capcom in 1993, it can be seen as a spiritual successor to Forgotten Worlds in that it’s a horizontal shooter with a rotatable character.
One little known fact about the game is that it supports Spinner as an input device, however this configuration was exceedingly rare in the wild and for a long time it was thought a special romset was needed in order for the spinners to function. As a result most people are used to playing the game with a Joystick which doesn’t give anywhere near as precise control, especially irritating to players of the game was the fact that the attract demos were clearly recorded with an analog device (a Spinner).
As it happens no special romset is required at all, an otherwise unused bit in the input ports specifies that the Spinners should be used, and by feeding the correct analog inputs with that bit set the game plays as it was meant to be played.
This discovery actually came to light as a result of 3rd party spinner kits that were being sold for use with the game, allowing it to operate with Forgotten World style controllers. While the official Capcom spinner kit for the game is very rare (and thought to possibly have only been used on location tests) the unofficial kits are actually fairly easy to get hold of, and to our surprise didn’t require any kind of modified romset to function.
These kits prompted me to take another look at the game code, with the new knowledge that when the spinner is plugged in it should change the display of the test menu to show ‘Rolling’ instead of the P2/P3 buttons. I was able to quickly located the bit controlling this, and from there the pieces fell into place. The problem before was that we were looking for a way to enable a test mode control type option for the Spinner (like Puzz Loop 2 has) but it seemed like if there ever was one it had been removed from the code leading me to conclude that the versions we had no longer supported a spinner, I’m glad to have been proven wrong over this!
I can only assume the spinner for the original is rare due to cost cutting at Capcom, anybody who has played this with a Joystick, or attempted to play Forgotten Worlds without the spinner (using a keyboard / joystick in MAME, or on some stupid multi-game arcade setup without the proper controls) will tell you that it’s not an enjoyable experience, many spots in the game rely on you being able to make fast and precise movements to snipe down enemies.
Here’s a quick video of the game running in MAME with spinners (best watched at 60fps to get a good idea of the smoothness of the movement)
Is it possible there spinners were so rare in the wild because operators perhaps thought they might be delicate and easily broken by the average person that can be rough with cab controls?
B2K24 – I wonder if perhaps it may have been released as a kit instead and it would just be re-used in a cabinet with a Joystick and buttons. It’d make for a cheap upgrade back in the day.
Further to my last comment – I am starting to think that perhaps indeed ONLY at the test location they may have had a spinner.
Take a look at the official flyer:
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5698
The instruction sheets shows a joystick – also on the SALES flyer it shows a dedicated cabinet, with JUST joysticks:
http://i.imgur.com/BBm6yiM.jpg
On cps2 inputs get hidden if there not there like in the recent dump of sfa3us. If you don’t trigger the last dipswitch it won’t show any dipswitches in the inputs.
Spinner kit gotta be on a prototype machine for testing only. How in the hell can anyone use a spinner to play this. All it does move up and down. Unless there is two spinners set up. :D
What I’m saying is too hard to play with two spinners.
Explain me better please, because i own two spinners and two joystick in my setup.
I will move with one hande the joystick and control the ship.
i will rotate with my right hand the spinner to control the direction of fire and that is ok.
how i’m supposed to shoot? primary and secondary shoot?
only think i can think of is the joystcij with button on the lever that i do not have.
the forgotten worlds control panel looked like this
http://www.mamedb.com/cpanels/forgottn.png
the joystick was to move the character, the spinner was used to rotate, if you pressed the spinner down it would fire.
eco fighters would have used similar.
in which version of mame this fix has been merged? do i find it in 0.168? cannot wait to test it. sad i do not have a pushable spinner, but i think i can still use a pedal no?
it’ll be in 0.169 released on the 30th.
you can use a paddle / mouse / whatever analog controller you want as long as MAME recognizes it as an analog input.
hooked up my spinner + joystick + pedal for shooting, i’m so happy with it. It plays so nice now, while it was extremely difficult before.