0.154 [Guru]
WIP:
- 0.162: Luca Elia fixed Wyvern F-0 text color and wrong sprite flip x based on game footage.
- 0.154: Guru added 'Wyvern F-0' (Taito 1985). Fill in 1 dipswitch setting [Brian Troha].
- 17th April 2014: Luca Elia - The crazy-rare Wyvern F-0 vertical shooter by Taito is finally in MAME, Guru dumped the ROMs, the game is preserved. It was a long time coming. Much of the appeal, and rarity, of Wyvern F-0 comes from the dedicated cabinet it uses. The game boards produce two separate video outputs that are sent to two different screens housed in the cabinet. A half-silvered mirror is used to mix the images from the two screens in such a way as to produce a pseudo-3D effect. Backgrounds and enemies on the ground are displayed in the lower screen, while player ship and enemies in the air are displayed in the upper screen. These appear to be at different depths to the eyes of the player, thus giving the illusion of sprites in the air floating above the ground. To further enhance the effect, the cabinet also has two speakers. The sound of enemies on the ground is heard from the bottom speaker, while the sound of enemies in the air is heard from the top speaker. That said, it does appear to be possible to run the game on a standard cabinet with single monitor. As for the game, it's essentially an updated version of Namco's Xevious, including the distinctive target for bombing the ground, using the second button, with a few other elements also borrowed from classics of the era. For instance the third "loop" button from Capcom's 1942, used to quickly get out of troubles, is implemented here with an additional gauge at the bottom of the screen that gets replenished with time. Another not so common feature is the ability to control the vertical scroll speed by moving your ship towards the top (faster) or the bottom of the screen (slower). End-of-level bosses (one of the novel features of Xevious) are rather easy to defeat by bombing one to three weak spots or will simply fly away after a set time, in that case replacing the next level boss. Enemy shots can be intercepted by the player's, which I believe is rather unusual. Power-ups, e.g. a fire enhancing pod or a shield can be obtained by bombing ground targets, including a few hidden ones like in Xevious. Here are some shots from MAME, note that some sprites have wrong colors. Hardware-wise, this is typical mid-80's Taito hardware spread over 4 PCBs: a CPU board (Z80 + protected 68705P5 MCU), a sound PCB (Z80, 2 x YM2149, OKI MSM5232) plus a video board and a rom board with just common logic (no custom chips). Sprites are 32x32 and use 4 8x8 tiles with a look-up table in RAM holding the actual tile indexes. Plus a background and a text tilemap. The MCU, used for protection and not easily dumpable, is simulated only in the boot phase. I've spotted no obvious in-game issues in the limited playing I've done, and in some instances the values read from the MCU are indeed discarded by the game code. Alas, subtle or major issues under specific conditions are indeed possible. The music has a recognizable character to it thanks to the excellent 8-channel MSM5232 sound chip. The soundtracks can be found on the Taito Music Collection CD.
- 17th April 2014: Guru - As promised and true to my word, once payment was received for Wyvern F0 it would be dumped. Luckily this game is actually pretty good since not so many of the rare limit-release games were good games. It's a vertical shooter in the style of Namco's Xevious. You can see the emulation WIP here on Luca's site. Now it is part of emulation history.
- 2nd September 2010: ShimaPong - I played this game just one time a long time ago and wonderd that an objects in air 'float' like a hologram. This game uses 2 CRTs and half-mirror. One CRT displays ground objects and other displays air objects and there are merged via half-mirror. Hologram effect is done via this system without 3D-glass. It is easy implimented by existing parts but an object reflected on half-mirror has semi-transparent and the color is mixed (for example, 'red' object flies over the 'blue' sea has 'purple' color). Also this game uses MSM5232 sound chip. Fantastic sound is provided by it. But sound emulation may be incomplete like other games (fstory, equites). Don't worry, OST is already released and some hacker will attempt to use MAME sample system to play it! The contents of the game is... 'Xevious' like. Player fighter has anti-air and anti-ground shots (so used 2 buttons), plus 'loop' button. When you use 'loop', the fighter has invincibility and back-scrool but it uses an energy (it recoveries automatically by slow degrees). And 2 power-ups, 'J' (Little-J) appears when you destroy J-doom and provides wide-range shooting and speed-up. 'B' is the barrier.
- 1st September 2010: Guru - Yep that's right, Wyvern F0 and Bygone are now secured. Note that the 2 PCBs shown in the above pic cost (the Dumping Union) US$6000. I loaned Smitdogg the money (I'm not a charity, people) and my Japanese contact bought them for us. This was a serious effort because the Wyvern F0 was sold as a whole cab which weighs a million tons. The cab had to be carted 1000 kilometers across Japan, which itself cost about $300 in fuel and tolls. I've sold at least US$1500 in PCBs via Smitdogg on eBay to help recover some of the money but the DU is in serious financial debt because of these purchases which of course will affect future DU purchases.
Other Emulators:
* FB Alpha
Recommended Games (Terra Force):
Xevious
Vs. Super Xevious
Xevious (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Namco Classic Collection Vol.1 (Xevious)
Xevious 3D/G
Exerion
Juno First
B-Wings
Fire Battle
Scion
Tube Panic
Vulgus
Zaviga
Exed Exes
HAL21
Mirax
Splendor Blast
Splendor Blast II
Terra Cresta
Terra Cresta II (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Wyvern F-0
Alcon
Argus
Darwin 4078
Super Real Darwin
Gardia
Valtric
Bermuda Triangle
Gemini Wing
Legion - Spinner-87
Armed Formation
Armed-F (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Sidewinder (Arcadia)
Xenon (Arcadia)
Dangerous Seed
Galaxy Gunners
Cyber Core (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Final Blaster (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Override (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Acrobat Mission
Dogyuun
Flying Tiger
Grind Stormer
Soldier Blade (Tourvision PCE bootleg)
Super Spacefortress Macross
Macross Plus
Nostradamus
Ryu Jin
Samurai Aces
Sorcer Striker
Kingdom Grandprix
War of Aero - Project MEIOU
Wing Force
Arcadia
Eight Forces
R-Shark
Ultra X Weapons
Varia Metal
Air Attack
Hotdog Storm
Baryon - Future Assault
Shienryu
Giga Wing
Giga Wing 2
Giga Wing Generations
Dimahoo
Mission Craft
Psyvariar -Medium Unit-
Psyvariar -Revision-
Vasara
Vasara 2
X2222
G-Stream G2020
XII Stag
Chaos Field
Ibara
Ibara Kuro Black Label
Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara
Radirgy
Radirgy Noa
Karous
Illvelo
