Joysticks, especially those that were available for 8-bit and 16-bit computers back in the day often had a tendency to look rather phallic, but maybe none so quite as much as the 2004 JAKKS Pacific Spider-Man Plug and Play game. For a toy aimed at kids the definitely doesn’t look like the most innocent of designs.

Anyway, with money from the 22 donations that have been received, I was able to pick up one of the GameKeyReady versions of this Spider-Man plug and play, as well as the game key to go with it. It runs on SunPlus hardware as expected, just like the other GameKeyReady units. Sean managed to dump the ROM with no issues.

The primary game in the unit is a multi-level platformer, it’s not too bad, there are certainly worse Spiderman games out there. You jump and swing about, collecting bags of money, beating up or webbing enemies until you get to a boss. It’s a shame it only seems to run / animate at 30fps, but it’s a nice little platform game if you like platform games.

The 2nd game in the unit is a fast-paced ‘Bank Panic’ style thing, where you must quickly web attack the enemy cards that pop up (those with the red edge) while making sure not to web any of the friendly faces (blue edge) because that results in immediate failure. This plays well and is a good test of reactions.

The 3rd game plays a bit like a Game & Watch title, you’re having to follow Venom at the top, making sure to throw web to block his projectiles, while also defending yourself from enemies that run in from the sides.

The 4th game is a pre-rendered 3D maze title, where you go around defusing bombs. It’s a very simple game really, and easy enough just to ignore the main view entirely and just use the mini-map. Probably the least fun thing on here.

The 5th and final game is a bit like upside down Missile Command, you must blast the rockets and bombs being fired at you using your web before they destroy the beam holding Spider-Man up.

So GameKey?

Yes, we have the GameKey, and yes, after seeing the Phallic joystick I thought Sean was having a bit of a joke when he dumped it and had ‘docock’ in the filename. Of course, I was meant to read that as Doc Ock, not Do Cock, but yeah, that happened.

Anyway, the GameKey is some more platforming action, much like the first game in the main unit, however this time round things are much more polished. The whole thing runs at a solid 60fps, so is buttery smooth. Sadly you can’t play the original levels with these improvements, but it does give you some new challenges and builds on what was already the best part of the main unit.

There are plenty more new JAKKS dumps to write about too, although the next batch to be covered were mostly aimed at younger audiences.

One thing I didn’t mention with the previous update is that for a lot of the HotGen developed JAKKS Pacific games there is an easy code to enter a debug / test menu. This is documented on The Cutting Room Floor where they show the screen from one of the later 2009 units. Either way, the method to access the test menu is the same “On the opening screen, hold Up and press A, then release Up and press Down to enter Debug Mode.”

Here is the screen from the Ms. Pac-Man GameKeyReady base unit that we used. It has a build string of “07 FEB 2005 A SKU F” this will be useful for comparing against other units as we know there are quite a few revisions.

2 GameKeys for this unit were also dumped, the first, containing New Rally X + Dig Dug and has a build string / date of “01 APR 2005 A SKU E” while the 2nd key, containing Pac-Man, Bosconian and Rally-X has a build string of “11 JUL 2005 A SKU I”



So yeah, 2 GameKeys, 5 more ports of classic Namco titles



There was a 3rd GameKey, which is the same as the Pacman, Bosconian, Rally-X one, but without Rally-X, so is kinda redundant. Rally-X was a bonus for buying a bundled version, if you bought a non-bundled version you didn’t get it.

Anyway looking at the games, first, Pac-Man, it feels good to play, and in my not fully educated opinion is a respectable port of the game.

Maybe subjective, but Bosconian feels more like a port, although is still enjoyable.




Rally X is more difficult than I remember it being, with very aggressive enemy AI, but it’s fast, smooth and very playable; maybe I’m just rusty. The original Rally-X arcade is actually one of the first arcade games I ever remember playing.




New Rally-X on the other hand is quite easy, and a fair bit slower (but still smooth) The sound emulation also doesn’t work as well. It’s quite strange, because Rally-X and New Rally-X feel like they’re 2 completely different ports, even if logically one would just expand on the other. The arcade New Rally-X was also easier, but the difference doesn’t seem quite as significant as it is here?




Dig Dug is probably my least favorite of these ports, but I’ve never really been a fan of the original. I love the sequel, but nobody really seems to care for it, however the original never really appealed to me. This has a slight scroll because the playfield otherwise wouldn’t fit on the screen, I find it to be distracting, although maybe the other options would have been worse for the actual game experience.

There you go anyway, 5 more ports of classic Namco games to a Plug and Play system, which is now emulated. One thing to keep in mind if you’re a MAME user, the GameKeys, which include these games, are part of the Software Lists, to be used with the Ms. Pac-Man base machine. This is because the GameKeys are like cartridges. If you’re using a proper version of MAME this isn’t a problem, but some distributions fail to include the vital ‘hash’ files needed for the Software Lists to work.

Again these were purchased with the help of the 20 donations that were made during the previous appeal. Sean Riddle handled the hardware side of things, I handled the emulation side of things.

Some of the better known JAKKS Pacific products were the ones based off popular arcade games, late home ports of classic 80s titles. These were some of the last times these games were ported, rather than simply emulated as is traditionally the case now.

That means the games have their own sets of quirks etc. due to either design choices to make the games more suitable for the target platform, or errors / lack of care in the porting.

With the now 20 donations from the previous donation drive, one of the things we picked up was the GameKeyReady Ms. Pacman 5-in-1 unit, and 2 GameKeys to go with it (one has arrived, the other has not yet)

Like all the JAKKS stuff so far this runs on SunPlus architecture. There are imperfections with the MAME emulation still, mostly noticeable with the sound, but otherwise all games in the collection play well.

With Ms. Pacman you can see how the game was squashed a little to fit on a horizontal screen.




Pole Position seems to be the weakest of the ports, the game difficulty is considerably less, and best I can tell you have no brake input. The system has 2 digital buttons, one is accelerate, the other is change gear (there’s also a 3rd on the front for the menu) there was however a special spinny joystick for the analog steering, which makes it a nice little addition anyway.




Galaga is Galaga, it feels like a solid port to me.




Xevious again seems to play well, the vertical area is cut off a little, and so maybe there are a few more shots coming from off-screen, but it doesn’t seem to impact playability, was a better choice than squashing the graphics or trying to implement a ‘smart’ scrolling, which never works well in a vertical scrolling game as it distorts bullet trajectory etc.




Mappy also feels like a solid port, stages and bonus levels intact, gameplay is challenging. There’s a slight vertical scroll to compensate for the playfield being larger than the screen, but it’s handled well.

You might say ‘why bother’ when it comes to emulating these, as you can just run the originals in MAME, but at least to me, part of the MAME journey is to document the paths each IP was taken on, and as these are official licensed ports, they’re part of that journey, and as they’re running on an entirely different architecture to the originals (the SunPlus ‘unsp’ core is certainly different to the ‘z80’ etc.) they’re interesting to study from that point of view too.

From an emulation point of view, MAME does need work, there’s an odd glitch where after saving the scores (because yes, all these on the GameKeyReady unit save scores to internal memory) a sound channel goes missing. Strangely Disney Friends suffers from a similar issue, but in that case ALL sound goes missing. Hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of it.

Thanks again to everybody who has been putting money forward, it’s really helping to source these and cover the unit costs and shipping costs for getting them where they need to go.

I mentioned Game Keys, and I’ll cover those in a future update.

Thanks to the 19 people who donated, we’ve managed to pick up a whole bunch of JAKKS TV stuff which is now en route to Sean. The first thing to arrive was one of the relatively easy dumping cases for Sean (already knew how he was going to handle it) so here is JAKKS Pacific Dragon Ball Z.

Note, there were no specific requests to be credited in the messages with the donations, if you donated and wish to be credited then let me know, otherwise I have to respect your right to privacy. Without specific requests I’m just going to list the number of people who donated :-)

The DragonBall Z Plug and Play is a 3-in-1

The game I was most curious about in it was the Pinball. This one actually led to an emulation fix, because it requires the raster interrupt to repeat, even without the triggers being rewritten; it is used to split the screen between the dot matrix display at the top and playfield + sprites at the bottom. Overall it’s a pinball game, it plays fast (60 fps) and while the flipped physics seem a bit weird it’s actually alright, it has tilt/nudge features, saves high scores, and you could play competitively for score on it with a friend I’m sure.

The second game, Kamehameha Assault, clearly takes influence from the NeoGeo title Battle Flip Shot, you bounce around a ball trying to hit targets, if you hit the target you steal it, but the CPU can steal back. You can also knock the CPU player off their feet by firing at them, including special attacks. I don’t think these units were linkable (although I could be wrong) so it’s VS CPU only, but overall, it manages to provide a challenging experience.

The third game, Buto-Retsuden, is a Vs. Fighting title, with a bit of a story too. I guess it wouldn’t be a DBZ game without a fighting mode.

Overall I think this one is a decent package, good variety in the games, and some level of challenge means there’s always a reason to come back to it, especially the Pinball part.

Thanks again to everybody who donated, and to Sean for taking care of the hardware side of things.

Here is a video of the Pinball game running in MAME.

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As MAME is the only choice for Gamate emulation on a PC, some MAME users and readers might be happy to know one of the rarest Gamate cartridges was dumped earlier today, and will be documented in the Software Lists for MAME 0.207.

The game, Fortress of Fierceness, has a part code / serial of C1050, and was relased, we believe, in 1991. Gamate emulation has been another side project between Peter Wilhelmsen and me, with Peter taking care of sourcing / buying / dumping the cartridges, and me doing the emulation of the system in MAME. This one took a long time to track down, but works well under emulation, and is actually a decent game all things considered.

It’s a maze shooter, run around, kill enemies so that the room unlocks and you can move on to the next screen, collect weapons, find a special key to open a specific door that lets you progress, find the hostage and free them. The levels have passwords etc. and overall it’s well executed. Not sure why this one is rare, easily one of the better games on the platform.

For those not aware of what the Gamate is, it was released as a competitor the the original GameBoy, although the hardware is different in almost every possible way.

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The Radica Baseball series is an interesting one, 3 very different looking games across 2 hardware platforms.

From what I’ve gathered online many consider the original release to be the best one, it has very simple gameplay and a serious look to it, while the sequel has a pre-rendered cartoon look, and the 3rd game is on inferior hardware.

The first game was also subject to a product recall due to the bat separating while in use, potentially causing damage to surroundings, or injury. It’s interesting to note that it’s one of the only motion control games that does not have the warning about using it too close to the TV etc. appearing on startup. Relatively early days for this kind of thing.

Anyway Sean managed to dump said original game in the series, it’s one that had been sitting around for a while after Peter picked it up. It runs, although I haven’t mapped the analog inputs yet. You can tell it’s an earlier piece of coding too because it fails to initialize the sound base register for example, just relying on the default location in memory, it also uses a darker than usual palette for the XaviX logo, which was already very dark, causing it to be near invisible the way I scale the palette. Hopefully the controls will be easy to map when I start looking at them.

The donation drive below has gone pretty well, we’ve managed to pick up a whole bunch of JAKKS units and have them sent to Sean for analysis. I’ve mostly picked ones I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to handle, but there are a few oddball ones in there too. If anybody still wants to send money this way I’m not going to say no, there are still plenty of items we could potentially pick up.

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There’s even an old TV advert for this one on YouTube

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