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October 29, 2004

MAME 0.88u1 source update!

Sooner than we thought, but Haze seems to be at it this time... Several new games and a great deal of progress into several drivers. From the "what's new":

New Games supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:
-------------------------------------------------------------

Twin Brats [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
incorrect sound banking

B.C. Story [David Haywood]

Clutch Hitter [Charles MacDonald, Nicola Salmoria, David Haywood]
incomplete sound emulation, some gfx problems

D. D. Crew [Charles MacDonald, Nicola Salmoria, David Haywood]
incomplete sound emulation, still some serious gfx problems in places

Ping Pong Masters '93 [David Haywood]
sound not yet emulated

New Clones supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:
--------------------------------------------------------------

Flash Point (Japan, Original) [Charles MacDonald, Nicola Salmoria]

Senkyu (set 2) [Fabrice Arzeno]


New Non-Working games / clones supported
----------------------------------------

several system18 sets

Source, is here. Enjoy!

October 26, 2004

MAME 0.88 is here!

Pretty busy time of year for poor little employees like me (at least until late November) so don't expect too many updates before some certain tasks are done... :(

Anyways... On with the news! (better late than never) MAME 0.88 is out and the biggest story of all seems to be this:

0.88 (includes 0.87u5 whatsnew.txt details)

General Improvements
--------------------

Emulation of Sega FD1094 encrypted 68k CPUs, this will allow for significant progress
in the emulation of the remaining encrypted Sega games. Note that we require working
CPUs to extract encryption data from in order to emulate the encrypted titles, see
http://cgfm2.emuviews.com/ for more details. As a result of this code several of the
encrypted games will now boot (astorm, ddcrew, wb3a, wb3b, tetris, ddux, sonicbom etc.)
[Charles MacDonald - extracting data from CPUs,
Nicola Salmoria - decryption code]

Source, Binaries, MAME 32 are: Here and Here. Enjoy!

Whacker

October 18, 2004

MAME 0.87u4 source update !

As fast as you can say "Weekend" this one pops in! Haze has released part 4 of the source updates of MAME 0.87. This one adds some new games which are:

New Games supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:
-------------------------------------------------------------

Puzzle Club (Yun Sung) [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
Pop Bingo [David Haywood]

New Clones supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:
--------------------------------------------------------------

Explosive Breaker (parent of bakubrkr) [David Haywood]
Street Fighter 2 EX (USA) [Brian Troha]
Top Racer (bootleg, set 2) [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

New Non-Working games / clones supported
----------------------------------------

Funny Strip [David Haywood]
unemulated protection?

Ping Pong Masters '93
Twin Brats
Twins
Mighty Warriors
these four drivers are still being worked on

The latest diff update is available here.

Whacker

October 15, 2004

Greek Law 3037/2002 on trial !

Probably the worst law ever written, brings a whole country in front of the EU highest court on Thursday.

"The way the law is drafted means that it is theoretically illegal to play with your GameBoy at home or even to play snakes on your mobile phone,"

spokesman Jonathan Todd told reporters.

There's a relief here among the members of gameland once this site has been against this terrible law (3037/2002) and even got a petition online counting over 31000 votes against it, from gamers worldwide.

Read the exclusive article here on MSNBC website, while you can post your thoughts here on our forum (in Greek only).

Whacker

October 13, 2004

MAME 0.87u3

Haze has another source update online this time with a lot of changes that Aaron Giles implemented into the core. From the what's new file:

New Games supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:
-------------------------------------------------------------

QB-3 (prototype) [Aaron Giles]
some gfx problems
Space Raiders [Frank Palazzolo]
some gfx problems, things need verifying against board

New Clones supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:
--------------------------------------------------------------

War of the Worlds (color) [Aaron Giles]
Operation Thunderbolt (US, older) [Fabrice Arzeno]
Killer Instinct (proto v4.7) [Aaron Giles]
Killer Instinct 2 (v1.0) [Aaron Giles]
Farmer Rebelion (clone of ikki) [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
Atlant Olimpic (bootleg of trackfld) [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]
Ginga NinkyouDen (set 2) [Mash]
'99: The Last War (Kyugo) [Mash]
Tron (set 3) and (set 4) [Mash]

New Non-Working games / clones supported
----------------------------------------

Oriental Legend Super
unemulated protection
Killer Instinct 2 (v1.4k, upgrade kit) [Aaron Giles]
Beat the Champ [R.Belmont]
SCSI / CD-ROM emulation problems

The latest diff update is here. Click n' run... err, download.

Whacker

October 8, 2004

MAME 0.87u2 and the 1st Greek MAME Driver!

George Anastasiades has mailed me two weeks ago with a couple of freshly dumped roms. The first one was a rather weird Ms Pac-Man clone (it utilized the program rom into a 27128 chip) - but nothing really different from the original game. The second one was a Nibbler Olympia (1983) bootleg. The PCBs were dumped by a friend (Andrew Hannay) from England.

I have made a driver for MAME which I submitted to Gridle and Nibblero finally made it to the 0.87u2 which is released a couple of days ago. It's nothing important, but it's cool to have your name posted on the "what's new" :

New Clones supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:
--------------------------------------------------------------

Sega Space Attack (set 3) [Mash]
Pengo (set 4) [Mash]
Eagle (set 3) [chaneman]
Crazy climber 2 (Japan Harder) [chaneman]
Nibbler (Olympia) [Costa Sgantzos]

Get yourselves here and download the latest diff update.

About the downtime

After 6 years this server finally got it's power supply replaced. It took 3 days to get one and mail it to a friend who replaced it. Hopefully we'll be on air for another 6 years without a glitch...

Whacker

October 5, 2004

PcSX2 turns 3 years old!

Some things still impress me after all these years. The best part is that when you think a task is impossible, it's just the time that some certain chap pops in and says: "Hey look, I have emulated this!"

PcSX2 is an emulator that emulates (slowly right now) the PS2 hardware. You shouldn't expect something fancy, nor playable up to this point, but you SHOULD expect some impressive screenshots right now (even @ 1 fps)...

Impressive Screenshots and news, regarding the progress of this great PS2 emulator, right here at the official webpage.

Thanks to Shadow for the news :)

Whacker

October 4, 2004

Memorabilia...

Time: 1998, Mid October. It's the month I have decided to move along from my previous domain which was active from September 1996, and evolve the idea of the "emulation community" in Greece (we were at least 4 persons visiting this page back then, I wasn't alone anymore!). :P
So, I have renamed it from "whacker's arcade page" to "Gameland". It was a better name to use after all.

At the time being, if you were regular to #mamegames you'd definitely talk to John Den Hartdog (a.k.a.: Delite), Dave from Davesclassics, that crazy Turk pal of mine Atila from Retrogames and even Lord13. Many of you may remember those days, most of you may not (if you were younger than 15 years old, back in 1998).

It's been a great and pleasant trip so far, I must confess. It's been full of surprises, laughs, thrills and a feeling that you can always remain a child, for a long time...

...Almost like, "forever".

Whacker

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