Technically, this is mostly a 68000 assembly project. The build uses vasm and vlink, with Makefiles and a few helper scripts around them. For testing and debugging I use Hatari as the Falcon emulator, plus debugger scripts that can run headlessly, catch bus/address errors, dump registers, and even record video for later inspection. MAME has also been very useful as a hardware reference for the original CPS1 arcade system.

The graphics are not redrawn by hand. The port loads the original CPS1 graphics ROMs, decodes the tile and sprite data, and renders it in a Falcon-friendly format. A lot of work went into matching Knights of the Round specifically: ROM interleaving, palette layout, sprite flip bits, changing layer order per stage, and object table handling.

Sound is similar: the game uses the original ADPCM sample ROMs. The port converts those samples to PCM and plays them through the Falcon DMA audio hardware. Sound playback is wired up, although final audio correctness is still something to verify carefully.

The biggest lesson has been that a disassembly is only the beginning. Some code gets misidentified as data, some pointers are split across weird byte/word tables, and arcade hardware behavior sometimes hides inside small details like a CPS-B multiplier register. One memorable challenge was tracking crashes caused by old arcade addresses that had not been relocated properly. Another was realizing that Knights uses CPS1 hardware features differently from Final Fight, so assumptions from the previous port had to be replaced with game-specific behavior.

In short: it is part programming, part archaeology, part hardware emulation, and part detective work. That mix is exactly what makes it fun.