0.169 [Ryan Holtz, Coolmod, Smitdogg, The Dumping Union, Luca Elia]
< Japan >
WIP:
- 0.169: Ryan Holtz, Coolmod, Smitdogg, The Dumping Union and Luca Elia added 'Captain Flag (Japan)' (Jaleco 1993).
- 28th December 2015: Luca Elia - Jaleco produced a number of electro-mechanical games over the years, games where the cabinet itself is key to the enjoyment of the experience. I'm thinking about Arm Champs and Arm Champs II, arm wrestling simulations that sported an actual hydraulic arm (flyer). Or the World PK Soccer series (flyer) where you can kick a soccer ball mock-up. The funniest I've emulated though is Scud Hammer. In that crazy thing you play a rock-paper-scissors game with the most cliched of Japanese characters. When you win, a puppet head springs out of the cab, and you have to hit it with a plastic hammer as hard as you can. Nice to blow off steam at the end of a stressful day! In MAME that is simulated via an analog port (e.g. mouse position) that reports the effect of the hit on the accelerometer. One of the problems with such games from a MAME/preservation perspective is that, for a start, they're much more difficult to get hold of for dumping. And even then, you usually have to acquire the whole cab together with the PCB. As you can imagine, this poses some non-trivial issues of logistics and price. Indeed, a few of these games are still undumped, such as the original Arm Champs. When recently one such game, Captain Flag (full cab and all) was spotted by Coolmod (a member of The Dumping Union), we knew we didn't want to pass on it. It's a pirate themed redemption game released in 1993. It features a cool electro-mechanical torso, with the screen as "face", and moving arms. They hold a red and a white flag and mimic the player's vertical movements on two joysticks. A video of the cabinet in action can be found online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC2WgZ6NY10). Coolmod, with the help of a friend, took it upon himself to get this beauty dumped and documented. This required moving the cab (a two-day job) and involved a 350-mile trek to get the PCBs (two full boards and a sub-board). Smitdogg also helped with the dumping and Ryan with the funding. Manual and schematics were included. I worked on the emulation, since the hardware (minus the cab specifics) is the same as Arm Champs and Scud Hammer, emulated in cischeat driver (that I wrote). One of the hurdles of course was the need to simulate, at least to some degree, the mechanical parts of the cabinet. Even when they're merely cosmetic and not involved with the player inputs, as in this case, the software will still hang and complain loudly if the actuators or sensors do not respond according to their specs! Jaleco games are usually of high quality and as you can see this is no exception with nicely drawn cartoony graphics and smooth animation. It's a polished game albeit, as most redemption games, quite repetitive and short. See video of the current WIP emulation in MAME (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfpFelSrk5w). Note that the flags at the sides are not part of the screen, but a simulation of the mechanical arms, done with MAME's Artwork system, to provide a visual feedback of the cabinet state to the player (eventually actual images extracted from photos of the cabinet should replace this crude approximation). If you're wondering what the heck is happening in that video... the game is in Japanese and rather difficult to play if you don't understand the language: the player has to quickly react to the phrases uttered in an excited and confusing way by your opponent (don't expect fair play from a pirate!). The buccaneer challenges you, to raise or lower one flag or the other. Or sometimes to *not* perform said action. Fortunately there aren't many variations, and even us gaikokujin can beat the game with some effort. This cheat-sheet should come handy: akka -> red, shiro -> white, agete / ageru -> lift up, sagete / sageru -> lower, agenaide -> don't lift up and sagenaide -> don't lower. Thanks to Ryan Holtz, Coolmod, Smitdogg and The Dumping Union.
- 5th December 2015: Smitdogg - We just picked up a Captain Flag cabinet. I'm hoping for full cab simulation with HD pics using the artwork system.
Recommended Games:
Scud Hammer
