0.74u2 [Luca Elia]
0.69u3 [Testdriver]
WIP:
- 0.163: System11 changed YM3812 sound clock speed to 3MHz and stereo audio to mono. Luca Elia fixed Player 2 colors and samples played from second rom in Spark Man.
- 0.149u1: Brian Troha added DIP locations to Star Fighter sets. Correct default settings as per manuals.
- 0.147u2: Luca Elia fixed Spark Man - Game now playable. Emulated the protection. Fixed gfx1/2 and samples rom loading. Fixed rom names.
- 14th October 2012: Luca Elia - I'm definitely on a SunA de-protection spree. The victim this time is Spark Man a platformer/shooter inspired by titles such as Rolling Thunder, Green Beret and Sly Spy. Effectively an improved, slicker and more polished sequel to SunA's own Rough Ranger. You may have seen this news coming given the two previous posts and the fact that sparkman was the last non-working game in the SunA8 driver. The protections are in fact comparable to those in Star Fighter (yet a good deal less nasty than those found in Brick Zone): different encryption of data and opcodes, address line scrambling, sound latch and RAM writes disable, ROM bank latching, mirroring, NMI disable and an additional one bit protection I've patched out (for now). The usual drill really. Where this game posed an unexpected challenge was in its use of two sprite "chips". I'm using the latter term loosely, as the sprites/tilemaps functionality appears to be implemented with several components scattered around the RAMs/ROMs for the respective "chip". This makes for a more complicated sprite RAM/chip banking. Also the samples have been doubled, with an additional bit used to select the relevant ROM by the sound CPU. Big thanks to Stefan Lindberg for providing a video of the real thing running (from the other set in MAME). It has proven invaluable for getting the emulation right and it sped up the process by an order of magnitude. Also, check out his amazing PCB pics.
- 0.147: Changed description to 'Spark Man (v2.0, set 1)' and clone (v 2.0, set 2) to 'Spark Man (v2.0, set 2)'.
- 0.136: Stefan Lindberg added clone Spark Man (v 2.0, set 2). Not working. Angelo Salese added a bunch of new protection handlers for Spark Man. Changed parent description to 'Spark Man (v 2.0, set 1)'.
- 0.135u4: Angelo Salese refactored the protection in Spark Man, implemented thrash protection that's used after the title screen and fixed sprite bank bit.
- 0.93: Changed Custom sound to Samples.
- 0.88: Changed Z80 CPU1/2 clock speeds to 6MHz.
- 0.87u2: Added Custom sound. Changed AY-3-8910 clock speed to 1.5MHz.
- 0.74u2: Added 'Spark Man (v 2.0)' (SunA 1989).
- 0.69u3: Luca Elia added (Testdriver) Spark Man (v 2.0). To get past the roms test screen put a watchpoint at ca40. When hit, clear ca41. Most of the garbage you'll see is probably due to imperfect graphics emulation (e.g. gfx banking) than protection.
- 4th June 2003: Luca Elia decrypted Spark Man and added it to the Suna8 driver but it doesn't work because of unemulated protection.
LEVELS: 9
Other Emulators:
* FB Alpha
Recommended Games (Action):
Elevator Action
Elevator Action Returns
Action Fighter
Quartet
Rolling Thunder
Rolling Thunder 2
Bionic Commando
Bullet
Super Ranger
Crack Down
Crack Down (Mega-Tech)
Secret Agent
S.P.Y. - Special Project Y
Spark Man
The Cliffhanger - Edward Randy
The Super Spy
ThunderJaws
Power Blade (PlayChoice-10)
The Outfoxies
Biomechanical Toy
Confidential Mission
Ninja Assault
Lupin The Third - The Shooting
Lupin The Third - The Typing
Demon Front
Dolphin Blue
