Creating this page, at the very start of 2024 makes me realise just how much wonderful things we’ve got done over the last few years.
For most years I’ve had some idea of what might happen over the course of the year, but for 2024 I really do not know what to expect. Most remaining tasks are incredibly difficult, but as always, this page will serve as a place to dump emulation screenshots and a some notes about progress that does happen.
Maybe the most surprising finding of 2024 was a version of Shamisen Brothers on dedicated hardware. The game was previously known only to exist on Namco’s System 10, and while that version has yet to be found, a CD for the dedicated hardware version did, and luckily it contained enough data (in the form of an update file) to be able to emulate it even without a dump of the BIOS ROM from the PCB, which is also yet to be found. It’s a rhythm game somewhat reminiscent of Namco’s own Taiko series.
In terms of the rarest thing to be emulated in 2024 SNK’s Tangram Q must be a contender. Puzzle games weren’t really a big thing in arcades, and you could argue that it took until Atari released their version of Tetris in 1988 for them to start to become more established. Tangram Q was from 1983 though, and sees you having to quickly select a match for the highlighted part of an image from the assortment of pieces available to you. It’s a simple concept, and the presentation is a little on the rough side but it’s a good example of an early attempt to bring something other than action games to the arcade. This one was mentioned in the media that came with the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection from Digital Eclipse, but was still considered a lost game at that time.
Gakken’s Compact Vision TV Boy is a rare Japanese console with similar hardware to the original TRS-80 Color Computer and the Dragon 32, but unlike those this one used cartridge media where the processor was an MCU inside the cartridges with the game ROM embedded into the same die. This made dumping much more difficult, which is why it has taken until now for it to be emulated.
Compact Vision TV Boy – Mr Bomb
Compact Vision TV Boy – Chitaikuu Daisakusen
Compact Vision TV Boy – Excite Invader
Compact Vision TV Boy – Shigaisen 200X-nen
Compact Vision TV Boy – Robotan Wars
Compact Vision TV Boy – Frogger
One of the first improvements of the year saw further work on one of the later additions from the end of 2023. Taito’s Poker Spirit might not be an all time classic, but it’s important to document these things nonetheless so proper palettes and improved sprite handling were more than welcome.
Medal games are a close relative of gambling games, in that they require no skill, have minimal gameplay and simply award tickets (which can usually be exchanged for cash) based simply on how much the machine wants to pay out. Sammy made a large number of these, and Gun Kids is one of the titles that saw support added in 2024.
Konami also had a huge number of medal / gambling type games. Wai Wai Jockey is a take on the classic horse racing formula, place bets on which of the predetermined racers you’ll think will come in first. It has cameos from a number of the Parodius cast however, so those trying to look for every bit of Konami media to feature them may appreciate it regardless of the lack of real gameplay.
Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial Oshiete Your Heart games were another line of novelty products, these having printers and offering printouts of characters to the player depending on the choices they make while playing.
While you’d be forgiven for thinking the screenshots of Takara Tomy’s Hi-Kara make it look a lot like Takara’s earlier e-kara plug and play system, and indeed, both run on XaviX based hardware, the physical products were quite different an incompatible with each other. Hi-kara appears to run on a newer XaviX type, with faster clock speed, but most significant from a buyer point of view is that it was a fully portable system, with a built in screen (that could also be connected to a TV)
2024 saw MAME add support for this evolution of the product line, albeit without microphone input, so it’s still marked as ‘Not Working’ just like e-kara, even if you can listen to all the songs.
Takara Tomy’s Hi-Kara, general presentation screens
Takara Tomy’s Hi-Kara, a user cartridge containing downloads from back in the day
Takara Tomy’s Hi-Kara, Volume 1 / J-Pop 1 cartridge
The Hi-kara unit even had some special cartridges released for it, such as a Pocket Monsters (Pokemon) cartridge, fully licensed by Nintendo.
Takara Tomy’s Hi-Kara, with Pokemon cartridge
Also for the Hi-Kara was a “Ciao Best Hit Cartridge” which was not sold at retail as a standalone cart, but instead provided as a bonus item with a manga.
Takara Tomy’s Hi-Kara, with Ciao Best Hit Cartridge
Of course support for some additional e-kara cartridges was also added, some with unique presentation of their own, such as the Misora Hibari PR-06 cart, which was a pack-in for certain e-kara units.
Cartridge PR-06 with e-Kara, as bundled with the Misora Hibari themed microphone
PR-01 is also quite an interesting cartridge, as it contains only a single song and shows ‘Not for Sale’ in the corner of the title screen. Presumably this was another pack-in cart bundled with a product, but it is unclear which product – maybe a magazine of some kind like the Ciao Best Hit cartridge on Hi-Kara. A PR-02 cartridge has been seen too, so maybe there are PR-03, PR-04 and PR-05 cartridges out there also.
Cartridge PR-01 with e-Kara, note the ‘Not for Sale’ text
Cartridge GS-1, Natsukashi no Meikyoku-shū (Akatonbo, Haru ga Kita, etc.) is another interesting one. It’s the only GS-x cartridge that has been seen, and looks very much like one of the Gold series (G-x) cartridges, and much like those works with both e-kara and Popira. With e-kara it seems like any other cartridge, but when used with Popira it offers a noticably easier selection of songs. In that configuration, some of the songs here only require a single button input and even the higher ranked ones still don’t really present a challenge. Furthermore it has a practice mode where you can’t even fail. This makes me think the cartridge was designed for a very specific market, maybe like the rehabilitation version of Taiko no Tatsujin.
Cartridge GS-1 with e-Kara
Cartridge GS-1 with Popira
Along similar lines, the eM14 cartridge for the Tomy Evio was dumped, and support added. This is the Disney Special cartridge, and has some custom theming when compared to all the other releases for the system. It isn’t yet playable without the violin controller emulated.
Tomy’s evio, with eM14 Disney cartridge
XaviX hardware was also used for Epoch’s Tokyo Friend Park 2, a mat-type plug and play based on the Japanese TV game show
Another XaviX game with a simple floor mat controller is Mini-Moni Stage! Dance Dapyon! which was also added in a working state.
Released the following year was a ‘Plus’ version of the Mini-Moni Stage! It shows 6 characters on the title screen instead of 4, but seems to feature the same selection of events. I’m not sure what else is changed.
Gin-gin Boarders was also easy to get up and running, the snowboard style controller just acts as a joystick. Despite the similar physical appearance and control scheme this is not the same game as either of the Radica Snowboarder units.
Poko Poko Hammer is another XaviX game with easy controls, just 3 buttons per player, which on original hardware you hit with a plastic hammer. It’s a whac-a-mole style game, with various mini-games.
Inputs were added to some other XaviX based games, bringing them to playable status. “Nihon Isshuu – Boku wa Plarail Untenshi” from Tomy, is one such title. It’s a plug and play train simulator for kids that takes influence from Taito’s Densha de Go! series, but with significantly simplified mechanics that mean you can’t really crash or fail.
There’s very little information online about Sudoku: Do You Sudkou? a 2005 Plug and Play released by SDW Games. It’s one of many Sudoku TV games from the period, with many of the more common ones being emulated in years prior. This runs on SunPlus hardware and has barebones presentation, booting straight to the game screen.
Senario’s Drum Super Star is a product that was released alongside their Guitar Star series, and uses the same basic engine but with simplified gameplay based around a drumkit rather than a guitar. This Plug and Play device isn’t exactly a great entry into the rhythm genre, but it seems less common than the guitar based offerings, so it’s good to now have it emulated too.
The ’16-bit TV Dance Pad with 15 songs / Dance Dance Party Mix’ is a product put out under the ill-advised brandname of DDR Game, with some sort of connection to a name that might be more familiar in the retro scene, Hyperkin. It’s a fairly basic product, but does contain original arrangements of some well known songs that haven’t been found in other units.
Taito’s KiKi KaiKai was one of a handful of Taito games still using simulated protection. 2024 saw a change to that, with the original protection MCU finally being dumped, allowing the game to run the proper protection code. It’s been a long journey for this one, with the oldest emulation using the MCU from a bootleg, before that was replaced with simulation code, and now finally correct emulation! The protection on this one controls a lot of bits of game logic, such as the collisions, which have never been quite right until now.
A clone of Jaleco’s Hachoo was added, this one has Japanese text during the intro sequence, while the previous sets showed only the pictures. It is assumed this is the proper Japanese release of the game, with the previously supported sets being ones intended for export.
Alone Shettle Crew is a very rare game put out by New Digimatic of Italy, although it seems to have been developed in Japan and has hardware very similar to Nichibutsu’s Wiping. It’s possible the game was never released as along with the obvious typo in the game title there’s little information on it, and it doesn’t really seem to make use of the protection chip present on the PCB.
Another game that was known to arcade goers in Italy is Tehkan’s Au; a reference to the periodic symbol for gold. It is suggested this game never saw full release, at least in Japan, but it existed in several arcades in Europe. The game appears to be complete, but like many uncommon titles remembered from European arcades it’s unclear if the machines that were being played were simply unreturned location tests, or if Europe was just used as a dumping ground for games that weren’t seen as good enough to succeed in Japan in order to recoup at least some of the development and production costs.
A much rarer arcade game that saw support added in 2024 is Vampire from Entertainment Enterprises, Ltd. This 1983 game, developed by Brass International of Japan is so uncommon it isn’t clear if it saw a wide release at all, or simply failed location testing. The game also has an unfinished feel to it, which only leads to further speculation that it was never fully completed. Much like Au and Alone Shettle Crew above, this is another that was mostly seen in Europe, despite reportedly being a Japanese developed game.
A number of prototype games that were to be published by TCH showed up, of those, Power Ball is the most complete, and appears to be close to a finished build of the game. It runs on Wheels & Fire hardware, but uses the hardware in significantly different ways.
Another game that was in development for the hardware by Digital Dreams Multimedia (DDM) was Kong Ball. This seems to be a fully playable build of the game on original hardware, although the sound ROMs appear to have been removed from the PCB at some point, so it lacks sound entirely. In MAME the game still has severe graphical issues due to again rather different use of the hardware.
The 3rd game, Radical Enduro from Sator Videogames, is in a much earlier stage of development. While visually this is less glitchy on the PCB than it is in MAME at the time of writing, it isn’t really a functional game there either. After the title logos it goes straight to a course select screen and crashes when selecting most courses. It is unclear if any of these titles saw further development as they’re from around the time TCH exited the arcade videogame business.
Gambling games from otherwise little known manufacturers seem to be found every single year, and 2024 started off showing it was unlikely to be an exception. Open 5 Cards saw support added early in the year.
Fearless Pinocchio is a ticket redemption game from IGS presenting itself as a basic fighting title for kids. It’s a single player experience, with a joystick and just one button and no scoring system beyond highest combo. You fight a maximum of 3 opponents in quickfire bouts and are awarded tickets based on your performance and how many tickets the machine wants to pay at a given time. The emulation was improved to the point where it’s fully playable. The production values are surprisingly high for this type of game.
The same IGS hardware platform would also give us Super Kids. This one is a trackball based game where you must hit targets to proceed. Again it’s a ticket payout game, so you get only a very short amount of gameplay for your credit. Interestingly this has 3 different scenes but the player is not given the choice of them; that is instead set by the dipswitches which only the operator has access to.
The new IGS027A dumping techniques also paved the way for a number of IGS Video Slots and BET Mahjong games to be emulated, as they also used the same type of CPU, and the internal ROMs were dumped from a number of them.
Fruit Paradise, and Ocean Paradise are 2 very similar video slots.
Crazy Bugs also uses an XA sub-CPU, the same type as Fearless Pinocchio
Back to more standard set-ups there is Jungle King 2002, which interestingly has 2 different graphical styles the operator can select from.
Chess Challenge 2 has an additional protection device in the form of an IGS025, although it is currently bypassed rather than emulated.
Triple Slot gives the player a choice of 3 different styles of game to play.
Triple Fever is a very similar game to Triple Slot, but uses a different payout system, and like Crazy Bugs has an XA sub-CPU
A number of Chinese gambling games also used this hardware type, with Chaoji Dou Dizhu being a card based one.
Mingxing San Que Yi is another game from IGS using an 027A CPU, this one is interesting because it uses the same video system as the PGM hardware. It’s a BET mahjong game, against 3 CPU opponents.
Emulation improvements allowed another Playstation based hardware game to become playable in 2024. Namco’s Kart Duel is definitely not an attractive looking game, but it runs smoothly and has a decent sense of speed. This is a Kart racers in the traditional sense, not the Mario Kart sense, and is closer to the real sport with short circuits and sharp turns rather than throwing a thousand powerups your way.
Laserdisc technology resulted in some of the worst arcade games released, but there are some of them you can’t describe an 80s arcade without mentioning. While easily one of the worst of the bunch from a gameplay perspective, Dragon’s Lair is a game many remember seeing when it first hit the arcades. The idea of being able to play something that looked like a cartoon meant the game got a free pass, even if it relies on nothing but learning by trial and error. MAME gained support for it in 2024, relying on techniques developed for the Domesday project. There are still some very ugly interlace problems however.
An odd use of Laserdisc technology from 1992, long after their popularity had faded was the Revelations quiz game. This oddity, put out by Nova Productions was a conversion of Atari’s Cops, converting it into a UK Pub Quiz machine with payouts. The Laserdisc is used to store everything you see onscreen, and it takes the form of a picture/music quiz; an unusual use of the tech for sure, and before you started seeing DVDs for the home market used for similar. The dumped set might be a prototype as the test mode is non-functional, resetting the machine if you attempt to change any settings (the same happened on the hardware the dump came from, so it isn’t an emulation issue)
Emulation Improvements
Some of the more complex systems in MAME still require attention, and their drivers revisiting. A good example of this has always been the Taito F3 hardware; one of the most complex pieces of 2D hardware that was available in the 90s, and one were Taito weren’t afraid to use every effect available to the developers in one place or another. 2024 saw some emulation improvements to the platform, removing unsightly hacks, and finding proper solutions to issues that had been even more grossly hacked around elsewhere. Games like Bubble Memories saw improvements such as the boss explosion effect now displaying correctly.
Bubble Memories – Boss explosion improvement
Some of the Taito F3 improvements are more difficult to show in screenshots, such as Riding Fight now properly updating the display every frame, giving smoother animation than before, where every other frame was skipped.
More Working Multigames
MAME has emulated a number of multi-game handhelds as well as Plug and Play TV devices with huge libraries of games over the past few years.
2024 was no exception to this, and another cheap multi-game handheld is the “Classic Max Pocket Mx-10 – 12 in 1” for which a device was found late in the year. It runs on VT168 type hardware from the same people who made the majority of the NES derived VTxx hardware. In this case the hardware isn’t a direct NES clone, although their later chips would re-integrate NES support along with the new features found here. What’s interesting about this unit is that the games, coded by Jungle Soft are designed to run on a vertical screen and were made specifically for this type of handheld device fitted with one. The discovery of this unit led to a number of significant improvements to MAME’s VT168 emulation resulting in all 12 in the unit being fully playable.
A sister unit to the MX-10 was the MX-11, this one has a horizontal screen and 12 different games. Some of these games were found on later units based on different hardware too, but those are not yet emulated. This one ended up using even more previously unemulated VT168 features, including relying on some poorly documented behavior of the maths unit (the ALU) which is integrated into the VT168 CPU. Work done on the driver led to them all being playable too.
Rare Software for Rare Machines
MAME emulated the Bandai RX-78 Gundam machine in recent years, but that does’t mean at the very moment the machine was emulated all the software for it had been located and preserved. There’s been a trickle of new dumps for the platform since then.
One of the new dumps is Cannon Ball, which is Hudson’s predecessor to Pang. While it would be Mitchell who saw success with the formula, this entry from Hudson shouldn’t be overlooked. Versions of Cannon Ball appeared on a number of platforms, including the ZX Spectrum, but this is the first time the RX-78 version has been emulated.
Hudson Soft’s Cannon Ball for the RX-78 Gundam
The GameKing 3 is another system where MAME is the primary emulator, and 2 more cartridges were dumped for it too. Diamond, which is a Boulderdash type game, and Hemic Battle which is a crosshair shooter.
Diamond for the GameKing 3
Hemic Battle for the GameKing 3
2030 GameKing 3
Arcade bootlegs of Home System Games
Sometimes bootleggers would get creative, and instead of bootlegging an existing arcade game they would hack a home release to use a credits system and put it on a bootleg arcade PCB. Often these bootlegs compromise the original games in unwanted ways, especially when it comes to control schemes (reducing everything to use 2 or 3 buttons) but they can still be interesting to study.
One such bootleg is of Wild Guns, originally a SNES release, this Asian-made arcade bootleg adapts it to run on a clone PCB and allows you to increase the number of credits available to you by inserting a coin.
Arcade bootleg of SNES Wild Guns
Closer to Working
The Super A’Can was a 16-bit Taiwanese console, designed to compete with systems such as the Super Nintendo but reaching the market too late, and without the developer support to make any meaningful impact.
As a system it is rather complex, with a flexible tilemap and sprite system amongst other things. 2024 saw improvements to the emulation of the platform in MAME to the point where all games can boot, and be played to some degree
Super A’Can boot logo
Amongst the games on the platform there was a Chinese RPG called The Son of Evil ~ Xie E Zhi Zi
Namco’s System 23 also saw some significant progress, allowing many more of the titles to boot, and/or present much improved graphics. Crisis Zone for example can now run through the attract demo with minimal issues, although isn’t yet playable.
Seeds of Progress
Once again a lot of the work done in MAME is in preparation for future progress; support for ROM dumps from systems that aren’t fully emulated yet or incremental progress that improves the emulation of systems, but doesn’t yet bring them up to a playable state. Sometimes this kind of work results in having something to show, other times it’s very much behind the scenes progress with the systems still offering no meaningful display.
Plug and Play systems were mentioned earlier, and have been an area MAME has been making strides in covering over the last few years, but these often come with complex challenges at every step from the ROM data being dumped, which is often buried under ‘glob top’ type devices to emulating the custom controls they often have.
Gun Gun Revolution was dumped in 2024, but it is not yet understood how the lightgun type controls should hook up to this XaviX hardware based game.
Tomy’s Shooting King is in the same boat, it’s a XaviX based lightgun shooter that plays similar to something like Point Blank.
While much more on the lower budget end of the scale, several VTG interactive titles were also dumped, and lack proper controls in the emulation. Virtual Tennis is one such title.
The same can be said for Virtual Baseball; you can navigate the menus, but the motion controls are not fully understood yet.
The GameU+ 50-in-1 was a surprise, as while the games are awful low-resolution shovelware the tech being used is one of the newer types of SunPlus chip, likely related to the GPL16250 which was used for far more ambitious TV games. Unlike some other units, which use such as CPU, but bypass the native video system, these do make use of the built-in video, although only output a resolution of 160×128 pixels. There are still a number of bugs, and some games don’t work at all at the time of writing because of problems in the emulation of the newer SunPlus platforms, so this one ends up in the ‘for the future’ section here.
