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Under the Surface (part 14)

April 12, 2020 Haze Categories: General News. Comments Off on Under the Surface (part 14)

I’ve now set up a PayPal account linked to “hazemamewip@hotmail.com” so if anybody wants to contribute towards the purchase (and shipping to Sean / TeamEurope) of Plug and Play devices, then that address can be used. It will help enormously with sourcing additional units, plus any spares we might need for experiments (sometimes dumping is not straightforward as many of these don’t use regular ROMs, but ROM globs)

As these are donations, not payments for any specific guaranteed product or service, be sure to send them as gifts. Also don’t send email to that address, it won’t be checked. If you want to discuss sending a specific unit you already own instead, please tag on on Twitter.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1

The Excite Sports 48-in-1 covered in the previous part was distributed by TaiKee in Europe / the UK as “Interactive TV Games 48-in-1” with a box boasting exactly how many sports and arcade titles were contained within, and little screenshots of each of them on the box. I looked at the sports titles contained within it.

TaiKee also distributed “Interactive TV Games 49-in-1” in European territories. That’s right, a whole extra game.

Actually that’s not quite the case. The 49-in-1 is NOT based on VT1682 technology, instead it’s a SunPlus based device, and the selection of games is different. Sort of.

This unit is actually a relative of the Zone 40, which we’ll look at later. This is a different strand of game development for these Plug and Plays compared to the Zone 60 or newer Family Sports units and is a good example of how they followed different paths. As you’ll see this very much is a ‘sequel’ of sorts to the 48-in-1 VT1682 based unit, which as we’ll see when we look at the arcade titles later, actually seems to have some close lineage from some of the VT and NES based devices.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Interactive TV Games 49-in-1

That Golf game looks mighty familiar doesn’t it. Didn’t I just cover that in the previous part? It’s the one that rips all the assets from Neo Turf Masters, right?

Well yes, but remember those system details I gave out in that part. The VT1682 runs at 256×240 resolution, has 2 6502 based cores powering it (1 main, 1 audio) well the hardware here runs at 320×240, which is actually closer to the NeoGeo original. It also isn’t a 6502 based architecture at all, the SunPlus System on a Chip units use their own CPU architecture known as unSP. While on the surface this game looks like the one on the previous unit it’s actually a new port of the game using all the same stolen assets and gameplay design.

With the improved resolution things do look a bit nicer here, and if I’m quite honest I’ve played worse Golf games than this. Completely unlicensed copyright infringement on every level, and lacking in content, but the basis of something not entirely terrible is here. Still doesn’t have the speech or anything tho because it’s really just the VT1682 hardware game ported to a new platform.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Golf Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Golf Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Golf
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Golf Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Golf Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Golf

Bowling looks to have had the same treatment; this is using the same assets as the VT1682 version of the game, including stolen portraits, but there’s one important change made here. You can actually aim. That’s right, instead of just a bar moving left and right too quickly to even use, this version of the game allows you to use the directional arrows to select your position and the curl placed on the ball. This makes a world of difference and means this is almost a playable bowling game now. It’s still nothing compared to Wii Sports Bowling, and still doesn’t have any form of real motion control, but it’s more of a bowling game than a timing lottery.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Bowling Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Bowling Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Bowling

The Football game here (not Soccer, this is a PAL / UK unit) is not Place Kick Master as found in the 48-in-1 units, but instead a newer more polished looking game. It’s got the same ‘press button at the right time’ gameplay, but presentation is much better, and there are 3 game modes. This, while not remotely fun, is at least a respectable effort for what it is.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Football Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Football Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Football
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Football Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Football Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Football

You’re not getting away from Place Kick Master that easily tho. Tucked away in the Arcade menu is that very game, again updated a little for the SunPlus hardware, but really pointless to have on here when the better ‘Football’ game is already present. The menus haven’t even been redone properly for the new resolution, just borders added.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Place Kick Master Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Place Kick Master Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Place Kick Master
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Place Kick Master Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Place Kick Master Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Place Kick Master

Archery and Fencing which were ‘Sports’ games in the other unit are now moved to the Olympic menu (where, as you might have guessed, are newer ports of the simple Olympic style games) For Fencing you can clearly see the visible area was just extended to the right, so the neither the characters or status displays are centered.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Other Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Other Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Other
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Other Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Other Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Other

The state of the Fencing game makes more sense once you look at one of the other games in the Sports section however. Competitive Fencing is a bigger, bolder take on the same sport. This one almost feels out of place because if anything it’s a little too well made for such a unit. It’s still a simple game, but it’s well animated, attractively presented, has responsive controls and accomplishes what it aims to be.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Competitive Fencing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Competitive Fencing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Competitive Fencing
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Competitive Fencing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Competitive Fencing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Competitive Fencing

Boxing, is not the same game as in the Excite Sports unit. Actually none of the remaining ones are until I get to the Olympic ones. The presentation here is however quite ugly, like 3d models but stripped of most of their shading. One thing to make note of here, the character selection screen. There are positions for 4 boxers, only 2 are used. We’ll come back to this later.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Boxing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Boxing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Boxing
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Boxing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Boxing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Boxing

Ping Pong uses the same style of presentation as Boxing. We’re back to the ‘single button input’ gameplay that so many of these used here. It isn’t the same game as on the VT1682 based units, and the gameplay is smoother and more responsive, but you’re still just using a single button, pressing it at the correct time, which means any enjoyment from this one will be very short lived.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Ping Pong Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Ping Pong Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Ping Pong
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Ping Pong Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Ping Pong Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Ping Pong

The Tennis game is basically the same thing as the Ping Pong game, feels very similar to play, has a similar look to it.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Tennis Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Tennis Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Tennis
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Tennis Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Tennis Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Tennis

Beach Volleyball uses some pre-rendered graphics too, but they come off better. Gameplay is too simple tho, offering little challenge, which is a shame, this one had potential


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Beach Volley Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Beach Volley Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Beach Volley
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Beach Volley Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Beach Volley Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Beach Volley

Darts sees a return to high quality presentation with cutscenes between actions and good use of transparency effects as we saw in the Football game. It’s still about stopping bars in the correct place, but the presentation value makes this feel like one of the better throwaway Darts games I’ve seen.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Darts

3 Point Shooter is your Basketball Hoop throw game, presentation is alright, but there’s not much you can do with this concept.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Point Shooter Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Point Shooter Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Point Shooter
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Point Shooter Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Point Shooter Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Point Shooter

In swimming you swim. Different strokes, different lengths of race, but in the end this is closer to one of the ‘Olympic’ sports games, but with better presentation values, closer to the Beach Volleyball game.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Swimming Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Swimming Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 3 Swimming

Curling is another with good presentation values. It actually seems like there’s a decent amount to do here, so this might be one of the better games on the compilation given enough time to play it properly.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Curling Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Curling Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Curling
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Curling Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Curling Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Curling

Happy Badminton doesn’t work properly, it locks up after starting a game, this makes me unhappy. I’m not actually sure what causes this lockup, I haven’t looked into it yet, but it’s surprising considering everything else runs as you’d expect. It isn’t a bad dump either as it does it in another compilation we’ll look at shortly.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Badminton Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Badminton

Baseball is loud, fast paced and in your face, immediately a thousand times better than the game on the 48-in-1 unit.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Baseball Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Baseball Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Baseball
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Baseball Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Baseball Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Baseball

Fishing is another simple one, no bait selection, no underwater view, just cast the line, wait a bit, then mash buttons if you get a bite, but don’t mash too much. It’s well presented but lacks the depth found in some games on other units and in standalone Plug & Plays.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Fishing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Fishing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Fishing
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Fishing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Fishing Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Fishing

So that’s the Sports part of the TaiKee “Interactive TV Games 49-in-1” covered, with some games that were considered Sports in previous units, but are now located in different places. Let’s quickly look at the ‘Olympic’ titles. These are really just direct ports of the VT1682 games with the visible area extended to the right. The status bars aren’t even centred, as we saw was also the case with Fencing above. The exception to this is High Jump, which inexplicably does have the status display centred, suggesting a tiny amount more effort was put into porting that one over. It’s interesting to see these ported across, but as I said with the VT1682 versions they’re very poor games compared to the ones found in Decathlon.


Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic
Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic Interactive TV Games 49-in-1 Olympic

I’ll cover the Arcade parts of this collection in another part as for now I’d rather keep focus on sports related material.

AtGame Reactor MD (SunPlus part)

The AtGames ‘Reactor MD’ is a very special abomination. It combines a MegaDrive on a Chip (which is one of the worst implementations of the MD/Genesis hardware I’ve ever seen) with a SunPlus based multigame in a case that is the same as those used for the Zone 60 etc. (but somehow of a lower build quality) and of course the Wii-clone controllers to match that case.

The MD part of this, which the system should boot to actually uses ‘enhanced’ modes not supported on a standard Genesis, so that currently does not run properly in MAME. However, selecting the bonus games option from the menu there switches the system to use the SunPlus part, which has an entirely different CPU die glob and ROM on the PCB (it’s actually a secondary PCB) This SunPlus part DOES run in MAME, and is closely related to the Zone 40 / Interactive TV Games 49-in-1, offering a bunch of the sports games, and also “Sword of Warrior” which might actually be the best thing on here but we’ll cover that later.

One of the first things you can see is this includes the Golf game, and yes, it’s the very same game with all the assets ripped from Neo Turf Masters that you can see above. This is AtGames quality, presenting a product with full licenses from Sega then still including bootleg SNK / Nazca content on the device. I’d say it was dragging Sega’s name through the dirt, but the Megadrive part of that already manages to make proper Megadrive ROMs look like dodgy bootlegs with nothing running at the correct speed and sound so bad you’ll want to turn it off, it’s almost a shame that even when we do start to emulate the MD part it will never be quite as bad the hardware here as getting it that wrong is a feat. This is a bad product.


Reactor MD Reactor MD Reactor MD

That aside, there are some interesting changes with the games found on this device. Remember I said Boxing only had 2 opponents to select from in the first unit I covered, well here there are actually 4, and the Virtual part is dropped from the title.


Reactor MD Reactor MD Reactor MD

I have a theory that ‘Virtual’ was dropped from the title at request of Sega, as it’s not the only game Virtual is dropped from the title with. Virtual Tennis just becomes Tennis, and this is maybe more noteworthy because Sega own the rights to the ‘Virtua Tennis’ game and ‘Virtual Tennis’ is very close to that. If that was the case it makes the inclusion of bootleg SNK content even more difficult to understand tho.


Reactor MD Reactor MD Reactor MD

There were some other changes too. Ping Pong became Table Tennis, and Football got a different roster of team flags.


Reactor MD Reactor MD Reactor MD Reactor MD

Some other titles changed too. Badminton became less Happy, but still doesn’t work (which is why I can be sure it’s not just a bad dump of one of the sets) while Dart gained an S and became Darts. Meanwhile Fencing became less competitive for unknown reasons and 3 Point Shooter is now just Basketball, but otherwise remains the same game. While it’s easy to speculate why the ‘Virtual’ games lost their ‘Virtual’ some of these make less sense. Why erase ‘Happy’ from all places in Badminton for example?


Reactor MD Reactor MD Reactor MD Reactor MD

Beyond that, there’s not much interesting to say about the Reactor MD. I keep mentioning the Zone 40, so I suppose it would make sense to look at that.

Zone 40

The Zone 40, or at least the dumped version of the Zone 40 is a US / NTSC console, while the 2 units featured here have been PAL / UK. It still contains the Turf Masters Rip-off for a start, although in terms of sports games the count is lower here than on the other unit with a fair few missing. The ‘Olympic’ games are just bundled in with ‘Arcade’ Virtual Tennis is just Tennis here, but Fencing is still Competitive Fencing, so this sits somewhere in the middle in terms of name changes.


Zone 40 Zone 40 Zone 40

Maybe the only real thing that stands out as different in this unit is Football, which now carries the title of Soccer, probably due to this being a unit for the US market. There could be other differences in the games but I have not yet found them.


Zone 40 Zone 40

I was considering looking at some of the other VT1682 sports games here too, but due to covering the sports titles in this branch of the multigames one-by-one there’s already plenty here so I’ll do those another time.

This part I feel shows us a few things. First, that there are clear evolutions to some of these games, they were ported between different hardware types, and in some cases (for example Bowling) the gameplay was updated slightly too. Games were also redone entirely at various points, as we can see if we compare Fencing, and the port of it to this platform with the newer Competitive Fencing game. Once I start looking at the Arcade games in these collections in a bit more detail you’ll see the same there too.

The other takeaway from this part is also ‘revisions’. We’ve seen minor changes to what on the surface look like the same game across these units; one version of the Boxing game having twice as many characters, possible censorship of titles, regional differences too. All these things mean that even for these games, which are generally considered throwaway it’s worth comparing the versions found on different devices as there could easily be undumped versions out there too, and again we’ll see this with the arcade games, and some of the sports games on other units too.

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Under the Surface (part 13)

April 11, 2020 Haze Categories: General News. Comments Off on Under the Surface (part 13)

I’ve now set up a PayPal account linked to “hazemamewip@hotmail.com” so if anybody wants to contribute towards the purchase (and shipping to Sean / TeamEurope) of Plug and Play devices, then that address can be used. It will help enormously with sourcing additional units, plus any spares we might need for experiments (sometimes dumping is not straightforward as many of these don’t use regular ROMs, but ROM globs)

As these are donations, not payments for any specific guaranteed product or service, be sure to send them as gifts. Also don’t send email to that address, it won’t be checked. If you want to discuss sending a specific unit you already own instead, please tag on on Twitter.


Excite Bowling is a XaviX hardware game by Epoch. This one could prove to be useful for improving some aspects of the emulation, because unlike most Epoch XaviX titles which simply don’t have proper control hookups yet, this one takes a dislike to our XaviX timer emulation, and currently requires them to be disabled to boot. This might indicate that they’re being incorrectly enabled in some cases, although there are acknowledged issues with them anyway. It also has no controls, and also requires some bits in the input port to toggle not to hang too, it seems like the code for this one is surprisingly fragile compared to other Epoch games on XaviX hardware and fails easily if things aren’t correct. It’s another where there is unlockable content.


Excite Bowling Excite Bowling Excite Bowling
Excite Bowling Excite Bowling Excite Bowling
Excite Bowling Excite Bowling Excite Bowling
Excite Bowling Excite Bowling Excite Bowling

Excite Stadium DX is another XaviX hardware game by Epoch and sits in the same ‘no controls’ boat. This is the 2nd in the series (first is sourced but not dumped yet) With no controls you can allow the unit to run for 10 minutes until it appears to hang (which is when the system actually shuts down to save battery life, almost all XaviX games do this)


Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX
Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX
Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX
Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX Excite Stadium DX

Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness sees Epoch move to the enhanced Super Xavix hardware, and make full use of the interlace mode now available. This results in quite a flickery display however. The game also uses the Super Xavix bitmap modes for the upper part of the crowd, which due to incomplete emulation is not currently scaled correctly or scrolled (this bitmap layer can be higher resolution than the sprites etc.) Again no motion controls hooked up here yet, but the demo can be watched, and having Super XaviX games make use of the features but aren’t stalling for other reasons is going to be handy for improving emulation.


Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness
Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness
Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness
Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness Excite Sports Tennis x Fitness

Now let’s move away from some high quality Japanese games, and embark on one of the biggest nosedives of all time.

I briefly mentioned the “Excite Sports Wireless Interactive TV Game – 48-in-1” in the gambling part when pointing out it had a Poker game in it. This unit certainly should not be confused with the above XaviX title; this one appears to have been distributed by a company called ‘Excite’ in the US, hence the title. Amongst the selection of games included are a number marked as ‘Sports’

The video emulation isn’t quite right here, so some layers are offset, which is very noticeable in places; the fix doesn’t seem trivia as different scenes need different offsets, and the hardware documentation for this that does exist isn’t too helpful either as it suggests this is an unavoidable hardware flaw, and that you should adjust your offsets, but clearly when it happens is conditional on other things so you can’t globally adjust them.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Excite Sports 48 in 1

For anybody familiar with the NeoGeo game ‘Neo Turf Masters’ the most blatant case of copyright infringement will come from the Golf game in this unit.

Every asset in this game is ripped from Neo Turf Masters, although the iconic speech such as ‘On The Green’ is strangely absent, when it would have been little effort to add that too. The game has no perspective view, everything is done from an overhead display making the whole thing feel like some kind of severely stripped down handheld port of Neo Turf Masters (one character, one set of hole etc.) The VT1682 hardware on which this is based uses System on a Chip technology with a primary 6502 core for the main game, and a secondary, much higher clocked 6502 for audio. It outputs a resolution of 256×240 pixels. Why am I telling you this? well this isn’t the last time this game appears and the things noted here are important.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf Excite Sports 48 in 1 Golf

The Tennis game in it is a simple Tennis game, works on the basis of a single button press.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Tennis Excite Sports 48 in 1 Tennis Excite Sports 48 in 1 Tennis
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Tennis Excite Sports 48 in 1 Tennis Excite Sports 48 in 1 Tennis

The Baseball game again is a simple game, single button control, which feels like some kind of gambling game because the commentary will announce that you’re out the moment you’ve hit the ball, before showing any animations to show it being caught. NeoGeo fans will again recognize the graphics in the first scene on the intro although the rest of the art is completely unrelated, I’m not sure why this was used here. Either way this is terrible.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball

Table Tennis, you’ve guessed it, single button control etc. For some reason the version in Excite Sports renders your opponent on the table, not behind. I don’t know if this is a glitch in this specific unit or a glitch in the emulation because it renders correctly in another unit with the same game.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball Excite Sports 48 in 1 Baseball

Do you want to beat up Jeffrey or Stella, or maybe just turn the console off. Boxing gives you that choice of the first two, a swift right hook to the unit gives you the third option.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Boxing Excite Sports 48 in 1 Boxing Excite Sports 48 in 1 Boxing
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Boxing Excite Sports 48 in 1 Boxing Excite Sports 48 in 1 Boxing

Soccer 11, or Place Kick Master as the badly hacked up ‘The Ultimate 11’ logo tells you the game is called is a Penalty Kick simulator, except it again just feels like a gambling game, most of the time the keeper will save it, the game again just uses a single button and is completely unrewarding.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Soccer Excite Sports 48 in 1 Soccer Excite Sports 48 in 1 Soccer
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Soccer Excite Sports 48 in 1 Soccer Excite Sports 48 in 1 Soccer

Bowling, is single button bowling with a stolen Half Life portrait.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling

At this point the Excite Sports 48-in-1 sports games are becoming rather painful to play, so let’s wrap those up. There’s Billiard, a Pocket Gal clone with the worst ball physics ever. Archery, a ‘press the button at the right time’ game where the sound doesn’t work in MAME, and Fencing, which might be less terrible than some of the others, but could have probably gone in the ‘arcade’ section anyway.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling Excite Sports 48 in 1 Bowling

So that’s it, all the Sports games in this unit covered, we can come back and do the other Arcade games later, maybe..

Oh, there’s an Athletics section too. There’s also a Discus shooting game in Hunting, that looks very much like one of the Track and Field events, but I’m going to ignore that for now, we’ll come back to this compilation later.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics

These are all simple sports events, vastly inferior to those found in the Decathlon Plug and Play previously covered. Walk Race I couldn’t even figure out how to operate (possibly an emulation issue) I guess Discuss is amusing if you pretend you’re throwing custard pies.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics
Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics Excite Sports 48 in 1 Athletics

Anyway, I’ll call the end on this part for now. I should cover the non-sports games in this unit at some point, and there are still more sports units to look at, including some with these very same games, or slightly different versions of them. It’s difficult to know how to best cover these multi-game VT1682 units, as while the games are all ‘original’ software they’re extraordinarily bad. I feel they’re worth covering because they’re not just NES hacks, or things people might have seen in other emulators (as until recently none of the VT1682 stuff was dumped or emulated) but covering them in any detail is an endurance test.

Go to article.. »

Under the Surface (part 12)

April 10, 2020 Haze Categories: General News. Comments Off on Under the Surface (part 12)

I’ve now set up a PayPal account linked to “hazemamewip@hotmail.com” so if anybody wants to contribute towards the purchase (and shipping to Sean / TeamEurope) of Plug and Play devices, then that address can be used. It will help enormously with sourcing additional units, plus any spares we might need for experiments (sometimes dumping is not straightforward as many of these don’t use regular ROMs, but ROM globs)

As these are donations, not payments for any specific guaranteed product or service, be sure to send them as gifts. Also don’t send email to that address, it won’t be checked. If you want to discuss sending a specific unit you already own instead, please tag on on Twitter.


For this part I’m going to look at some of Senario’s “Big Box” games. The packaging for these all had a very specific look about them with designed to make them look like higher end products with fold open boxes showing the unit inside etc. The Senario Millionaire game previously covered when I looked at different Millionaire games, as well as the Big Bonus Slots, and the Poker / Deluxe Poker units which were covered when looking at gambling themed games were all part of this range, but there were several more; enough to give them their own coverage here.

From sports in the previous part to sports trivia, here. Senario’s Sports Trivia Professional Edition to be exact. I’m not aware of any versions without the Professional Edition subtitle.

Here we have a trivia game themed around a sports match, with different periods, and where each team gets to select the next ‘play’ (basically if they want a Trivia question or a random Mini-game) I don’t know a huge amount about American sports, so this one sails wide of the mark for me, but it no doubt had a very specific target audience like many of these Senario ‘Big Box’ games.

There are 8 mini-games here, all very simple, surprisingly the Basketball one appears to use sprites stolen from Data East’s Street Hoop; this is unusual because otherwise these SunPlus based Senario games usually avoided such risky infringement. (the same cannot be said of the Senario famiclone units which just screamed ‘sue us’)


Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional
Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional
Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional
Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional
Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional Sports Trivia Professional

Interestingly the hidden test mode (hold Pause on startup to access menu) calls it ABC Sports, maybe this was meant to carry a license at one point? The checksum here is done if you hit some of the player controls after boot, sadly it just prints the checksum of the ROM rather than verifying it, but it’s at least potentially handy for checking for alt revisions without having to dump the ROM.

Sports Trivia Professional

Senario’s Cosmo Girl is based off a very similar codebase to Sports Trivia Professional and features the same type of test mode. This is important, because as discussed later there seems to be a bug in this game causing it to hang in various situations, so I’d be interested to know if the checksum display is the same on all units, or if there are other revisions, or even the possibility of this one having suffered from bitrot issues. Again hold Pause on cold boot to access this menu then hammer some Player 1 buttons until it does the test.


Cosmo Girl

Anyway, onto the game. Cosmo Girl features a similar structure. Some of the game is following instructions onscreen, it’ll ask you to do certain things (tell a secret etc.) and you’re simply expected to do them. There are also various pop culture quiz questions and a handful of simple mini-games.

There appear to be 8 mini games as with Sports Trivia, although one of them appears to be bugged. The Fashion Disaster game presents itself as a slot machine type thing, where you must match colours. It rolls once, you choose which pieces to hold and which spin again. Chances are on the first spin there will always be a pair, so logically you would always hold that pair, however, if you decide not to do that, and the second roll comes up and after the 2nd roll there are no pairs (which should be a ‘lose’ condition) the game code ends up crashing. I have a feeling this is a game bug, because the chance of causing it if trying to play properly is low, however if you’re playing carelessly (not holding on purpose for example) then it can trigger with relative easy given enough plays. I can’t rule out there being an issue with the ROM in the dumped unit, which is why if anybody owns one I’d be curious to know if the checksum screen reports the same value.


Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl
Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl
Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl
Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl Cosmo Girl

If you enjoy your quiz games with a slice of casual sexism, then The Apprentice is the game for you. This one is a licensed produced, based off the US TV Show of the same name. Should have based it off the UK show and used Alan Sugar instead.

The game structure here is simple, and the presentation basic, although there’s enough here to make it worthwhile. Note, the driver is a little broken due to a regression in MAME 0.220, this is fixed for 0.221.


The Apprentice The Apprentice The Apprentice
The Apprentice The Apprentice The Apprentice
The Apprentice The Apprentice The Apprentice

The Perfect Mate turns that sexism up a level, but it’s a game designs to match ‘ideal partners’ based on responses, so maybe there’s some method behind the madness here? This is a strange one, also very simple in structure with no real winners or losers. A party distraction, nothing more, nothing less.


The Perfect Mate The Perfect Mate The Perfect Mate
The Perfect Mate The Perfect Mate The Perfect Mate
The Perfect Mate The Perfect Mate The Perfect Mate

Senario’s Win Lose or Draw is surprisingly not a SunPlus based machine, instead opting for the NES / VT based technology, but throwing in some extra RAM for the bitmap layer. Currently the drawing pad and LCD display for what you’re meant to draw are not hooked up, so while you can progress through the stages of the game there’s nothing to do. This one relies entirely on the players doing what they’re told and the game acting as a simple controller, presentation mechanism, timer & scorekeeper rather than players using pen and paper. For now this is NOT WORKING.


Win Lose or Draw Win Lose or Draw Win Lose or Draw
Win Lose or Draw Win Lose or Draw Win Lose or Draw

That’s 4 ‘Big Box’ Senario games anyway, you can see what the goal was here, games designed for multiple players in a ‘party’ environment, automating what might otherwise have been aspects of card games / board games. They’re a bit of fun, nothing revolutionary, and in the age of smartphones etc. mostly obsolete as there are free apps to cover the majority of what is on offer here. The questions on offer do make these interesting enough to study from a historial point of view, showing what was maybe in some cases considered more acceptable 15 years ago than it is today. Also, for better or worse, when one of the games features the person who would go on to be the United States President it has a place in the history books.

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Under the Surface (part 11)

April 10, 2020 Haze Categories: General News. Comments Off on Under the Surface (part 11)

I’ve now set up a PayPal account linked to “hazemamewip@hotmail.com” so if anybody wants to contribute towards the purchase (and shipping to Sean / TeamEurope) of Plug and Play devices, then that address can be used. It will help enormously with sourcing additional units, plus any spares we might need for experiments (sometimes dumping is not straightforward as many of these don’t use regular ROMs, but ROM globs)

As these are donations, not payments for any specific guaranteed product or service, be sure to send them as gifts. Also don’t send email to that address, it won’t be checked. If you want to discuss sending a specific unit you already own instead, please tag on on Twitter.


Sports.. I’ve already covered plenty of sports games on these Plug and Play units, but that’s because there were an awful lot of them – the popularity of these units coincided with the period when motion controls were popular (with things like the Xavixport paving the way for the Wii) so naturally there are a lot of sports games as sports games tend to be the first application of motion controls most people think of when trying to develop something, plus they’re generally cheap and easy to create.

XaviX was mostly used in Japan for Japanese Plug and Play units, there were some games using the tech outside of Japan, but it was less popular outside of Japan than SunPlus, Elan or other low cost solutions.

Sometimes XaviX games did get localized for other regions, and in the case of Real Ping Pong what we have is a Korean localized version of Epoch’s Excite Ping Pong. This one was put out by SonoKong. There was also a Korean localized version of Popira (videos can be found on YouTube) but that one isn’t dumped.

As with Excite Ping Pong the controls are not yet hooked up here (I do really need to sit down and study the input code on a lot of these XaviX games) but the demo mode will play. The ‘For Real Gamer!’ tagline is a nice touch.


Excite Ping Pong (Korea) Excite Ping Pong (Korea) Excite Ping Pong (Korea)
Excite Ping Pong (Korea) Excite Ping Pong (Korea) Excite Ping Pong (Korea)

Maybe I should have included this one with the last bunch of VT games, but this ‘Super Ping Pong’ game, put out by ABL (just shows ‘Ping Pong’ and ‘Table Tennis’ on the box) is another take on the same thing, this time on the enhanced NES hardware. Again currently no controls and long pauses between scenes while it writes stuff to the I/O ports (unemulated external DAC sample playback?) This was put out by several other manufacturers, including DreamGear, with different box titles, the ROM may or may not be the same.


Super Ping Pong (Korea) Super Ping Pong (Korea) Super Ping Pong (Korea)

Another ABL product, this one on SunPlus hardware is KickBoxing. This one required you to strap motion sensors to all 4 limbs (which ends up being a lot of batteries) Again controls need figuring out, this might be another where the motion sensors send virtual button presses depending on the action / strength rather than sending raw data. The real hardware here unfortunately seems to eat through batteries quickly, making it expensive to use in the long run. It’s not surprising some later motion games went for camera based approaches instead.


ABL Kick Boxing ABL Kick Boxing ABL Kick Boxing
ABL Kick Boxing ABL Kick Boxing ABL Kick Boxing

One thing of note with the Kickboxing game is that a bit in the IO ports will change the title screen to show the Coleco license, meaning it’s very likely the ROM here is the same as used in Coleco’s Kickboxing product, with that IO port bit possibly being the PAL/NTSC flag, as Coleco distributed the game in the US, with ABL distributing it in other territories.


ABL Kick Boxing

ABL also put out Wireless Tennis, another SunPlus game, this was a standalone unit. The controls aren’t hooked up on this one, but we’ll come back to this game and that point later.


ABL Tennis ABL Tennis ABL Tennis

Senario put out “My Sports Challenge” which is a 5-in-1 Sports unit. This one used a very unusual type of ROM, a 24MByte ROM with multiple Chip Select/Enable lines, meaning that in reality the ROM package contains a 16Mbyte and an 8Mbyte chip. It took Sean some work to figure out how to dump this one even if it wasn’t a ‘glob ROM’


My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge

“My Sports Challenge” contains a Tennis game. That Tennis game is Wireless Tennis. The difference here is that this one is playable. The inputs hooked up easily, and the motion input acts as a virtual button. I don’t know if this means that the standalone unit actually uses a real motion control, hence why it seemed more difficult to hook up, or if it just reads the same inputs in a different way, but it’s noteworthy that the game received both a standalone release, and also appeared in this multigame unit.

My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge

Other games in the My Sports Challenge include a Bowling game.


My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge
My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge
My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge

There’s also a Golf game in here, again tho this depends on when you swing the club, not how hard you swing it as none of these My Sports Challenge games employ real motion controls (on the plus side that makes them easier to use under emulation)


My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge
My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge

Baseball is included too, although there’s no outfield control, you’re simply responsible for hitting and bowling.


My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge
My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge

The 5th and final game in My Sports Challenge is Boxing. This one is interesting because it seems to be loosely based on the ABL Kick Boxing game previously features, you can see that the characters here are the same, even if the visuals have been completely redrawn and the game modes on offer aren’t quite the same. There’s clearly a connection between the two games tho. This one does offer a 2 player mode as the title screen of ‘Boxing Duo’ would suggest.


My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge
My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge My Sports Challenge

That might have been the final game in the regular My Sports Challenge unit, but that is not where the story ends. One thing I’ve noticed with these Plug and Play units is that there were sometimes exclusive units to certain stores / retailers. Sometimes the difference was purely in the package / controller design, but sometimes it was also the software, and My Sports Challenge is one example of that. QVC distributed a version of this game with 6 games instead of 5. It isn’t simply a case of one game being added either; the QVC unit drops the above Boxing game entirely to make room for 2 new games. (This is a shame, because the Boxing game was one of the better ones0


My Sports Challenge QVC My Sports Challenge QVC My Sports Challenge QVC

Anyway, Basketball, time your shots from a variety of angles to get the ball in the hoop.


My Sports Basketball My Sports Basketball My Sports Basketball
My Sports Basketball My Sports Basketball My Sports Basketball

Soccer, or Beach Soccer as the title screen calls it is the weakest of the games in this collection I feel. It has 2 modes, Penalty Kick and Free Kick. While the free kick one is interesting in that you have to select where you kick the ball, the direction and the power it just makes you wish the unit had real motion controls, and most combinations result in either an air shot, or one that just bobbles along the ground. There’s a selection of 3 stadiums too, but I had to check the screenshots just to make sure they were actually different as the majority of the screen is just sand in all cases. Overall this QVC version feels like a weaker product as one decent game has been swapped out for 1 very average one, and a poor one.


My Sports Soccer My Sports Soccer My Sports Soccer
My Sports Soccer My Sports Soccer My Sports Soccer

Does the ‘My Sports Challenge’ story end there? Don’t be silly. Senario also put out ‘wireless Sports Plus’ which is also known on the title screen as ‘My Sports Challenge Plus’ which is a 20-in-1 unit.


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

This 20-in-1 unit contains Golf, Baseball, and Bowling from the My Sports Challenge unit. Same games, full intact. It does not have Boxing nor does it have Tennis.

Basketball from the QVC unit is present but now called ‘Around the World’ This is supplemented with 2 additional games, ‘Shot Clock’ and ‘H.O.R.S.E’ which use the Basketball engine, lack a title screens, and have a slightly different set of rules. Lazy.


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus
My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

Baseball also gets 2 extra games based on the Baseball engine, one focusing on hitting Homeruns, the other on bowling. Again, very lazy.


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus
My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

Golf games a ‘Driving Range’ game. This is basically just Golf without any course or aiming and without real motion controls it’s entirely pointless. Lazy


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

Beach Soccer from the QVC unit isn’t here in complete form at all, but the Penalty Kick part of it is under the title of Goal Keeper. This was the least interesting part of an already poor game in the first place!


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

So yes, compared to the regular My Sports Challenge releases this lacks some of the better content, then makes the numbers up by adding minor variations of those games, and in one case even omits the full version. It does have some redeeming feature however. Putting Green could easily have just been the putting part of the Golf game with nothing new, but is actually a Mini-Golf game.


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus
My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

Disc Golf is somewhere between Golf and Mini-Golf, but with flying discs, it seems like a strange thing to have here and plays like an oversimplified golf game which also ends up being annoying because you don’t have any real indication of how far things will travel, but here it is.


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

There’s a very simple Darts game, with annoyingly inverted board colours


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

By now I’m sure you’re getting the idea. The remaining games are all very simple. There’s Curling, a Penalty shoot game for Ice Hockey, Lawn Darts, Bag Toss, Horseshoes, all of which have very similar mechanics, stop the bar in a Y position, stop the bar in an X position so I’ll wrap this one up there.


My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus
My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus My Sports Challenge Plus

This is not the last we’ll see of some of these games, but I think this is a good place to leave it for now. A mix of sports games have been covered, some playable in MAME, others still without controls at this point. We’ve also seen the evolution of certain games across different units, an example of a retailer specific version of a game, and a less common localization; good value for one part if I do say so myself.

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Under the Surface (part 10)

April 9, 2020 Haze Categories: General News. Comments Off on Under the Surface (part 10)

I’ve now set up a PayPal account linked to “hazemamewip@hotmail.com” so if anybody wants to contribute towards the purchase (and shipping to Sean / TeamEurope) of Plug and Play devices, then that address can be used. It will help enormously with sourcing additional units, plus any spares we might need for experiments (sometimes dumping is not straightforward as many of these don’t use regular ROMs, but ROM globs)

As these are donations, not payments for any specific guaranteed product or service, be sure to send them as gifts. Also don’t send email to that address, it won’t be checked. If you want to discuss sending a specific unit you already own instead, please tag on on Twitter.


Time for a bit of a miscellaneous update.

The Game It! Disney Classic Pals unit put out by PDP (makers of the VG Caplet / VG Pocket devices) and developed by Jungletac has a selection of games that feel very familiar to anybody who has played the Zone 60, Zone 100, or Lexibook 120-in-1 units. That’s because the games contained within really are just the same as some of the ‘arcade’ games in those units but with a fresh lick of Disney paint (or maybe the other way around, I’m not sure which came first in some cases)

It feels strange to see these generic titles with Disney characters in, but if studying these devices has shown me one thing it’s that Disney would provide a license to literally anybody without caring about the quality of the product, or even how legitimate it was otherwise as long as they were being paid for the characters. It feels a long way from the Genesis / Megadrive days when a Disney license on a game usually meant it was a quality product (some exceptions aside, although I don’t even hate Fantasia) There’s nothing really wrong with what’s on offer here, but there’s nothing that feels special either, we’re not even treated to any Disney music.


Game It Disney Classic Pals Game It Disney Classic Pals Game It Disney Classic Pals
Game It Disney Classic Pals Game It Disney Classic Pals Game It Disney Classic Pals

Here are some side-by-side shots of the games, Disney version on the left, a version taken from one of the more generic SunPlus based Plug and Play units on the right. Some have slightly more changes than others, the screen layout on the Puzzloop clone being different for example, but it’s also possible they’re simply based on a different, or undumped version of the games.


Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game
Game It Disney Classic Pals Generic Sunplus xx-in-1 Game

Tomica Carnavi Drive is a XaviX based ‘driving simulator’ from Tomy. It has stages featuring a range of driving conditions, from city to rally, rain and snow. Currently the controls aren’t hooked up, and like most XaviX games that were release in Japan this is a very Japanese experience.


Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive
Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive
Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive

Train simulators were big in Japan too, so it’s not really surprising that Tomy also put out a Plug and Play one, again on XaviX hardware. This one is Plarail themed. “Nihon Isshuu – Boku wa Plarail Untenshi” is the title, and again no controls currently mapped.


Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive
Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive
Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive
Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive Tomica Carnavi Drive

Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger – Magimat de Dance & Battle is a Japanese XaviX game based on the Power Rangers franchise, or more specifically the Japanese version of it. This is one is controlled with a floor mat, similar to a DDR pad, and as such the controls were much easier to hook up. This one actually uses SuperXaviX technology, but from what I can see only uses the new video features for the XaviX logo on startup (uses bitmap mode) otherwise it looks like it was probably developed for the earlier hardware type and switched over at the last minute. This can be played.


Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle
Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle
Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle
Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle Mahou Taiketsu Magiranger - Magimat de Dance and Battle

I’ll call it there for this part as while I haven’t had a great deal to write about any of these items they’re all worthy of some attention at least. The Japanese ones, especially the simulators represent a type of game that gained far more popularity in Japan than elsewhere, and the Disney one is a curious use of a license.

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Under the Surface (part 9)

April 9, 2020 Haze Categories: General News. Comments Off on Under the Surface (part 9)

I’ve now set up a PayPal account linked to “hazemamewip@hotmail.com” so if anybody wants to contribute towards the purchase (and shipping to Sean / TeamEurope) of Plug and Play devices, then that address can be used. It will help enormously with sourcing additional units, plus any spares we might need for experiments (sometimes dumping is not straightforward as many of these don’t use regular ROMs, but ROM globs)

As these are donations, not payments for any specific guaranteed product or service, be sure to send them as gifts. Also don’t send email to that address, it won’t be checked. If you want to discuss sending a specific unit you already own instead, please tag on on Twitter.


Gambling games form the basis of a genre that has brought much ire from MAME communities, and even in MAME’s early history were a controversial subject with them excluded entirely for what at the time seemed like an eternity, but in reality was only a short part of MAME’s early life. A decent chunk of people still seem to wish they weren’t emulated, and actively try to get them ripped out of the project again, however other fields, including this work I’m doing on Plug and Play games seem to have now become to focus of some of that anger instead. I guess some of this is because people think we’re working on these things instead of what they want to see (the reality is if I wasn’t working on these things I probably wouldn’t be working on anything, I tend to work on what I enjoy figuring out, and what I consider to be at most risk of being lost to time)

So anyway, what I’m looking at in this part is the combination of both of those things; gambling themed Plug and Play games. I can almost feel the fire burning.

One of the arguments against gambling games in emulation is that they’re pointless; when there’s no money to win and no money to lose there is no reason to play them as they offer no entertainment value otherwise. That point of view seems at odds with a wider one because quite often on both computers, consoles and here in the form of Plug and Play games we see titles which are recreations of the slot machine formula for home use. I’m sure anybody from the UK of age remembers growing up with things like Codemasters’ Fruit Machine Simulator or Dizzy Dice, which had wasn’t Codemasters and had nothing to do with their oval shaped adventurer. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about I’m sure both of these can be played in the MAME ZX Spectrum driver just fine)

I already covered Golden Nugget Casino in another part, when looking at Majesco stuff, so let’s skip that one and move straight on to something more Japanese.

Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV is a Japanese Plug and Play put out by Takara, Sammy and Dreams Come True using SSD’s XaviX platform. It takes cartridges, 4 are dumped, we know of one other that definitely exists, but the highest cartridge we have was numbered ’07’ and two of them were marked ’01’ but are both different software, so I’m not sure exactly how many cartridges were produced.

This is a well designed product, if even accepts special coins via the a slot to simulate the full experience. It’s currently marked as NOT WORKING because one of the cartridges has no inputs and the others haven’t been extensively tested as the things are entirely in Japanese (it isn’t verified if saving works etc.) however a lot of what is on offer here does seem fully playable, just needs some extra testing and verification.

Without a cartridge you get the build in game, which has 2 slot machines available from the off, and one unlockable through some unknown conditions. Like most Japanese XaviX titles there is structure to the gameplay here. Here are some screens of the base game.


Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV
Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV

The cartridges contain varying numbers of machines and unlockables. Aladdin TV seems to be one of the first cartridges released, and contains a single machine available from the start, and a single unlockable shown with a row of question marks in the menu. I haven’t managed to unlock it, so can’t tell you what it is.


Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV

For some reason inputs don’t respond on this one ‘Ginginmaru TV’, but do on all the others. I’m not sure why this is, the ports are being read, but then the game fails to act on them. This is unusual for XaviX systems, especially as these are digital controls, not some fancy analog setup so I’m currently unsure what is causing this.


Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV

The Salaryman Kintaro cartridge for it contains a ‘whack a mole’ style extra game using the 3 reel stop buttons.


Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV

While this one ‘Moju-o TV’ has you weaving between rocks as the bonus game


Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV

Senario’s Big Bonus Slots brings home the video slot machine action for a US audience instead, offering 5 machines and a whole bunch of lucky bonus games for your entertainment. The machines all play basically the same, but with an increased credit value for each, meaning that your virtual $1000 will only get you 2 maximum bet spins on the most expensive machine. There are multiple save slots and your bank amount is kept, so you can build up money on one machine to spend it on another. No unlockables here. Main negative of this one is really the music which sounds like somebody took a keyboard, hit some random keys and called it music and this won’t be the only time I feel that way about some of Senario’s music.


Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots
Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots
Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots
Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots
Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots
Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots Big Bonus Slots

Jara-Ja Land is another Japanese XaviX hardware game from Takara. This one is themed around Japanese redemption titles, and it is fair to say the presentation is through the roof here. You expect these Plug and Play units to generally be cheap throw-away affairs, but the level of detail to some of them defies that, animations here are just superb. This one currently doesn’t have controls hooked up (I think it’s some kind of analog dial input) but you can run the attract mode for 15 minutes until the machine decides to soft power-off due to inactivity.

Of note, this one prompted me to fix the reel rendering, which the previously covered Gachinko Contest! Slot machine TV saw benefit from too, it’s a mid-screen palette change effect.

This one would actually go on to be in an arcade cabinet a year or so later, distributed by Atlus. I’d assume the arcade version still runs on XaviX hardware as SSD is still credited, but we don’t have a dump from that one, and the code would almost certainly be different (as things like idle power-off make no sense for an arcade unit)


Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land
Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land
Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land
Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land Jara-Ja Land

The Vs Maxx Texas Hold’em TV Poker 6 Player poker units were likely amongst Senario’s flagship products. These big box affairs were SunPlus based games were each player also had an LCD panel to show their cards and make selections. Emulation them required simulation of those additional controllers, complete with internal artwork in order for the unit to be considered functional. Obviously trying to play it when you can easily see the cards dealt to the other player (because everything is now one screen) doesn’t make much sense, but the functionality is there. The standard version is shown below. Music here is slightly better than Big Bonus Slots and at least sounds a bit like a tune, but is still one of the weaker aspects.

From an emulation point of view this was unusual in that it uses the SunPlus ‘Bitmap’ mode instead of being tile based, and as such has a bunch of extra RAM in the device too for storing the bitmap graphics. This actually makes the insides of the unit look more scary than it really is as there are extra globs for the RAM.


Vs Maxx Poker Vs Maxx Poker Vs Maxx Poker
Vs Maxx Poker Vs Maxx Poker Vs Maxx Poker

Play Vision would distribute the UK version of this, but the ingame graphics still only credit Senario. The only real change is that the $ values are replaced with £ values, still, regional variations are good to have confirmed and emulated. I don’t know if there were European versions with different currency symbols again.


Vs Maxx Poker Vs Maxx Poker

A deluxe version of the game, which to my knowledge didn’t get a UK release, adds extra modes, including Blackjack. It’s functional, although I should find out if any of the text was changed on the LCD panel as now sometimes the buttons have additional purposes.


Vs Maxx Poker Deluxe Vs Maxx Poker Deluxe Vs Maxx Poker Deluxe
Vs Maxx Poker Deluxe Vs Maxx Poker Deluxe Vs Maxx Poker Deluxe

Plenty of gambling themed games were included in the multi-games. For example in the VT1682 based ‘Excite Sports 48-in-1’ there is a Poker game under the ‘Brain’ menu. What’s interesting about this is there are some versions of this unit, still with 48 games and almost identical packaging, that do not have the Poker game, but instead substitute it for a different game in another menu. I guess this was due to laws regulating the sale of gambling themed games in certain states / regions. The version without it in this case, is not dumped. The UK version, sold by TaiKee as ‘Interactive TV Games 48-in-1’ has the same selection, including the Poker game. I should probably cover these units in more detail in a later part.


Excite Sports 48 in 1 Excite Sports 48 in 1 Excite Sports 48 in 1

Excalibur and Techno Source also had a bunch of units that could be considered Gambling themed. Some of the Excalibur units look very similar in form factor to the Strip Poker game that was covered in a previous part, but none of them have been dumped yet. The Strip Poker was SunPlus, but based on screenshots I’m expecting most of the Excalibur gamblers to be either NES / VT based (most likely) or Elan at a push. Techno Source units are often single glob, and currently can’t be dumped, but I don’t know if any of the gambling themed ones have been looked at.

This has actually ended up being a relatively short part, when in reality, if all games of this nature were dumped, it would be one of the longer parts. I believe plenty of the other units have been sourced by the same GameHistory.org contributors who sent some other NES / VT based units, although in this case as they haven’t been my primary area of focus (outside of the SunPlus ones) I’m not 100% sure on what has / hasn’t been acquired.

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