Android Android

The game development cycle can be a fascinating thing, especially for games that ultimately might not have been released.

We knew of a game called ‘Android’ by Nasco, because Chris Hardy has one, he uploaded a video here and apparently he was wanting to write a driver for his PCB before submitting it but had got stuck on something to do with the sprite attributes shortly after uploading that video.

When another copy of Android turned up we initially almost passed on buying it because of this, however a closer look at the version on offer showed it was rather different to the one that was in Chris’s hands so we ended up buying it (or rather Ryan Holtz / MooglyGuy ended up buying it – it cost a rather hefty $500, so as always donations are appreciated, we don’t have bottomless pockets and that was a fair chunk of money. Without funds things WILL get lost because sadly some people would rather put profit before preservation)

Anyway, as I had to check out the dump to make sure it was good, and don’t know what hardware the one Chris has runs on I looked at emulating it.

Searching the PCB board number turned up an obscure driver ‘himesiki.cpp’ in which ‘Himeshikibu’ a 1989 Japanese Hanafuda type game by ‘Hi-Soft’ was the only game present. Looking in the driver that was a 3 board stack, so I ruled out the chances of it actually being the same board as coincidence as this was only a 2 board stack.

I then spent a bit of time looking at the romset, and realised that ruling out that driver was a mistake, because everything was mapping to be exactly the same as the driver I’d found except for a there being one less set of sprites; presumably this is what the 3rd board provides and Android simply didn’t have it or need it.

I needed to fix up a few things such as the CPU banking, and tilemap scrolling, but essentially it was an easy drop-in. The build we picked up feels very much like a prototype, rough around the edges, unfinished in places.

For fun I did some side-by-side comparisons with the version Chris owns. What you can’t see in these screenshots, but can see in the videos is that his has more complete music too.

As you can see, the differences are very significant.

The font between the two versions is entirely changed, the one Chris has uses a thin font, the one we picked up has a chunky one.

The title screen is modified, the sprite graphic is changed, but most significantly the galaxy used in the background has been replaced with a smaller, cleaner more elegant looking one in the version Chris has.

The high score table is fully populated in the version Chris has, but not ours.

The stage introduction text is more detailed on the one Chris has

The ingame background is coloured on the one Chris has, it’s a starfield on the one we have.

The ingame sprites are completely different too, the player ship is changed as have all the enemies, the enemies on our board are various robots, the one Chris has uses eggs that turn into heads. The one Chris owns also has a shield powerup, and you can move all the way up the screen into the enemies, ours has no powerups and restricts you to half the screen.

Now.. all this clearly suggests that the board Chris has is a newer version, HOWEVER, the one we have also does some things that his one doesn’t. We for example have a level timer, when that timer expires any enemies you haven’t killed turn into a circular boss, you must shoot the left edge of that boss to stop the spinning so that you can attack it’s weak point. Upon starting a game our version also has a big dragon (it quickly retreats and reappears for you to kill after several stages) This dragon does not appear at all after coining up on the version Chris has (if it appears later is unknown)

I’d still say the one Chris has is newer, it’s a lot more polished, has a proper coin-up sound etc. but this definitely gives some insight into the development of the game, a game we’re not actually sure if was released at all.

For reference, here are some screenshots of the things in the MAME version that I can’t see in the one Chris owns.

It remains to be seen if the one Chris owns drops straight in the Himeshikibu like this one did, although if it does then I’ll cross my fingers and hope he submits it soon, as his reason for not submitting it before was that his driver was incomplete, but if it’s actually this PCB we already emulate then that problem is already resolved. It will definitely be interesting to do a more intensive comparison of the two versions if the other one does get submitted.

In the meantime, here is a video of me playing the one we have badly. It’s actually an interesting game, you have 2 gun types, one transforms the enemies between different forms, the other zaps them. If you zap an enemy in anything except their 3rd form they’ll respawn. Any enemies left when the timer runs out will form into the bigger ‘circular’ boss enemy, the more enemies left the more difficult that boss enemy. There’s also a bonus stage following similar rules, and the ‘dragon’ stage which seems less complex.

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