Anybody familiar with the MAME emulation of various Gaelco games will know that the big stumbling block for a many of them is the DALLAS DS5002FP security / suicide chip present on a lot of the PCBs.
In fact the only reason the game World Rally is emulated at all is because Gaelco directly provided the internal code of the security chip for that game (but no other games unfortunately)
The other working Gaelco sets are all unprotected versions, and even when we have both an unprotected and protected version of a game the protection is so well embedded that trying to simulate it is a nightmare.
We thought we’d actually got all the known unprotected versions of Gaelco games already, that was until system11 spotted an unprotected version of ‘Glass’ with an additional ‘Version 1994’ subtitle displayed on the title screen. Naturally he picked it up to investigate further.
The board has PROMAT stickers on the program roms, and the pictures of girls used ingame have been replaced with Anime drawings, no nudity. It looks very much like this version was created for the Korean market, presumably a year later than the original release when protecting it wasn’t considered such a high priority. The PCB lacks any of the components relating to the security.
As this version is completely unprotected it runs fine in MAME
Wow! I thought Glass would never be playable in MAME! It was my most wanted non-working game to get playable.
I’ve never seen footage of this game before, but it seems to me as if there might be an unemulated graphical effect applied to that that third picture. It’s obviously supposed to be a partly obscured version of the girlie pic, but the video at this point looks more glitchy than seems right. My guess: some of those supposedly unused tilemap bits are involved here.
There are videos of the original on YouTube
https://youtu.be/mgqcyGP3EWU?t=2m
it seems faithful enough to me, it flashes some random squares (more each round) until after the boss it shows the complete picture.
Looking at the reference video, I do think I see some sort of per-tile effect. It seems to be randomizing the brightness or hue of each tile until the end of the flashing sequence.
Of course, CRT flicker could be deceiving me, or the set in that video might not be implementing things quite the same way: not only are the pics obviously completely different, I don’t hear the same sound when the flashing ends.
That was a suprise.
Hallo there David!
Greedings from Greece!
Its a real Christmas present for all MAME funs,and especially for us who love some,still unplayable Gaelco games!
If i read correct,and if i understand clearly,this PCB,still won’t help for the emulation of the other ,big trouble,TH Strikes Back!
That’s means ,that the only hope again,is another “heavens gift”,an unprotected again PCB!
But if i remember well,this was also “impossible to be found”,so i hope and pray to be all lucky,and find a such PCB!
THANK YOU ,FOR THE PRESENT,
SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH!
nikos my present is waiting since mame releases Gals Panic II. Those girls must be unlocked.
Love the Smashing Pumpkins reference.
Hallo Hentai_Fun,what do you mean by that?
Are both games relative?
Will gals panic II be playable soon? (i think is already released but not playable yet)
That picture reveal effect with the flickering randomised squares is correct, that’s exactly how it looks.
I just noticed, they’ve censored it too – the girl announcing the stages strips slowly in the normal versions and stops after the first layer on this Korean set.
What I’d like to see is a way of untangling this so that normal uncensored non-anime boards can be desuicided. I’ve got a normal board with a working battery on it, never tried a Gaelco battery swap..
nikos you said well is already released but not playable yet because still protected.
Someone need to study better this game to get working.
But when? It seems will be never, at last this one only for play at onces.
Is nothing special to see this game show some silly porn pictures.
Well to tell the truth i need this game working to collect the kaneco games on Final Burn, that’s all.
animalbear > spamming requests for Gals Panic 2 won’t make it happen, it will just make devs more likely to ignore it.
Who is animalbear haze?
Hentai_Fun / Unknown / NeoGeoFan / Peach / Banana / Pinnaple / Soup / Orange / CrispX / AnimalBear / HyperScorpio / whatever username you decide to choose this week.. I don’t believe for a minute that tens of different people from the same regions of Portugal are asking for the same crappy Kaneko game.
some examples..
>> Hentai_Fun
>> Hentai_Fun@h**
>> 94.132.**.**
>> Nikos my present is waiting since mame releases Gals Panic II. Those girls must be unlocked.
>>Lewis King
>>crispx*******@**
>>94.132.**.**
>> Hey David, thank you so much for your hard work.
>> I’m really happy about your last game Mega Phoenix.
>> I wish can able to donate you for gals panic II, if was avaliable to use
>> AnimalBear
>>crispx*******@**
>> 94.132.**.**
>> Haze what about Gals Panic 2?
there are lots more from these IP ranges, I’d fill a page if I posted them all and every time GP2 was mentioend.
these appear to be related too.
>> Banana
>> Banana@****
>> 89.155.xx.xx
>> So very similliar to Gals Panic 2.
>> Sadly is not the same .c version. :(
>>Anonymous
>>lol@**
>> 89.155.**.**
>> Even Gals Panic 2 and for now…………
>> EI don´t see nothing from 2010-2011.
Haze, i don´t know what you are talking about, i’m not this user.
Hi Haze,
First: Thank you again for your work and efforts in mame.
Second: What is the emulation status of the following games in the past months/years ?
– Racin’ Force (KONAMI GX) problem with layer road.
– Danger Express (prototype ATARI G42) missing roms. Any posibility to donate for future purchase?
– Moto Frenzy and Space Lords (ATARI GX2) some progress in avoid the protection ?
– Area 51: Site 4 (ATARI MEDIA GX) game crash
– Locked’N Loaded / Gun Hard (DATA EAST ARM6) input gun controls.
– Cyber Sled, Solvalou (NAMCO SYSTEM 21) can not finish game crashes
and finally…… Automat (ROBOCOP BOOTLEG) no it´s a joke ;)
that you have happy upcoming holidays, I waiting for your annual report, sincerely
lordbazar77
https://www.youtube.com/user/lordbazar77
well, if you’re not the same person then you’re very unlucky, because said user with many posts from the same IP range has nagged us about the very same game so often nobody is remotely interested in touching it.
> Racin’ Force
that road thing is nasty, Charles was going to run some tests at some point but I don’t think anything came of it, trying to do it by pure guesswork isn’t especially easy, Kale’s recent work actually regresses it a bit too, but hopefully that can be worked out.
> Danger Express (prototype ATARI G42)
the roms did actually go public briefly, it seems very silly that we’re excluding it at this point but hey ho…
> Moto Frenzy and Space Lords
again sent to Charles who was going to make some data for Andreas to anaylse, nothing has happened afaik
> Area 51: Site 4
it’s more or less PC hardware, I guess when somebody starts picking up the PC drivers of this era you might see progress.
> Locked’N Loaded / Gun Hard
yeah, still no idea how those work, or the priorities on that hardware, even with reference videos of where priority and masking effects are used I haven’t been able to figure that out, so even if guns were hooked up it would look wrong!
> Cyber Sled, Solvalou
the Namco drivers are indeed a bit crashy, they’re showing their age, need a new full-time maintainer, maybe some safer but slower code would help in places.
> Automat
still remains one for a very cold wet day, there always seems to be something else more appealing to look at ;-)
Thank you for your fast reply.
As always following your work,
bz77