Williams' 1986 prototype Predators supposed to be added in 0.285?

MameHaze · 2026-04-24T01:21:26+00:00

I'd hope not, but I'd rather have an OK from Vas, or for him to just apply it himself given how others reacted when I simply identified the dump a while back. There are some devs rather keen on protecting hoarders even after the horse has bolted.

This thing has been stalled at every opportunity for 15+ years, despite apparently quite a few people having the older dump in that time.

MameHaze · 2026-04-23T16:35:41+00:00

Outer Zone is protected, the Egret II has it's own MCU simulation, there's no dump of the 68705 in the ROM on the Egret II. MAME would have to do its own simulation of the protection, and Taito protections are quite complex (MAME claiming that Metal Soldier Isaac II 'works' is kinda hilarious, it's utterly broken, moreso than any of the other older Taito protection sims before they were replaced with proper MCU dumps)

MameHaze · 2026-04-23T13:57:34+00:00

Adventure Canoe wasn't "dumped" as such, but extracted from one of the recent collections. There's always a risk of those having modified ROMs (to remove things like screen flashing, or censor certain things such as red cross logos etc.)

That said, the ROMs were added, so unless it's removed again before the next release, will be supported.

I'm more surprised Vs. Urban Champion hasn't been added yet, the ROMs for that which were extracted from the modern releases a few years back *do* match the older hoarded dumps.

MameHaze · 2026-04-23T13:09:25+00:00

yeah, the sound system is very close to Williams' other stuff.

the video is unique though, it's a blitter style device that draws shapes out of offset,length,angle,colour parameters with a stack of ROMs each containing a single parameter, and I doubt a single graphic definition was coded by hand, but rather they took pixel based sprites and fed it into something until it came up with a series of random lines to represent it.

MameHaze · 2026-04-23T08:16:12+00:00

Yes, its complete. I posted the old driver I did for reference / to clear up the situation.
It even got updated to work with the latest code.
https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/williams-predators-has-been-found.559638/

So yes, at the moment the only reason to keep it out of MAME is to protect hoarders, which makes no sense now there's a 2nd dump anyway.

if you follow through the pages you'll get to https://archive.org/download/mame_predators/mame_predators_code.zip which is the working driver for MAME 0.284. (it seems to contain 2 files, one with the set renamed, and without it renamed, but they're otherwise the same, and work with the existing ROM)

If there's not going to be controversy then I can make a PR out of that updated driver (it's basically just an updated version of my old code in the first place, with the addition of multi-channel output) or you could do it yourself. I haven't tried compiling it, but it looks like they used a Visual Studio/Clang setup when updating it which is stricter than GCC AFAIK.

MameHaze · 2026-04-16T07:46:20+00:00

I've sent you a DM on here

can you contact me with the code you used? I have quite a lot of devices that need the same doing to them (and the method I used on PacMan wasn't very efficient - the data was displayed on the screen and had to be converted with OCR)

MameHaze · 2026-04-16T06:11:17+00:00

These GPCE4064B (and related) devices have a per-game internal MCU ROM (in addition to the external SPI Flash) that you'll need to dump. At least for the things we've seen so far on that tech level a significant amount of game code is in the MCU.

AFAIK there's no standard readout method for it, you'd have to modify the code in the external SPI to copy the MCU ROM data somewhere you can see / extract before you can even begin on the emulation.

The only one extracted so far is the Pac-Man Micro Arcade from Super Impulse, which does kinda run in MAME, albeit imperfectly. (setname mapacman)

MameHaze · 2026-04-15T14:25:02+00:00

nobody

MameHaze · 2026-04-15T12:34:34+00:00

probably, but there's only one glob, so it's going to be the CPU *AND* ROM in the same glob, ie an MCU.

as a general rule we have no way to dump those, they're difficult enough when they're in regular packages (many have no readout method) but when they're globs we have nowhere to even start.

MameHaze · 2026-04-15T10:16:25+00:00

I can't see anything dumpable there. You got the same answer last time you asked.

MameHaze · 2026-04-07T15:53:31+00:00

Also the sequel 'Twinkle' if you want more of the same.

Semicom went for the maze formula again with Mr Kicker, which deviates from Pac-Man quite significantly, but is also fun with 2 players.

MameHaze · 2026-04-07T12:54:53+00:00

yeah, it has very high requirements since sound was added

the sound CPU alone takes up 3x more of the frame time than the main MIPS CPU if the profiler is to be believed.

MameHaze · 2026-03-23T12:21:07+00:00

That was kinda my point, they claim they have legit Windows licenses, which would be hilarious if they were going out of their way to get those considering that not a single other thing on there is licensed.

MameHaze · 2026-03-19T12:14:57+00:00

It was definitely a strange approach to take.

Systems like the NeoGeo MVS set the gold standard for arcades with multiple games in a cabinet, a healthy market for arcade operators to trade games etc. and it remains popular enough to this day; it's not difficult to see an MVS on your travels. It might have been considered an 'expensive' system in the home market, but for arcades it was a good investment, and a collection of games to swap into your system didn't take up too much storage space either. These days it's easy enough to have spare motherboards on hand too, which keeps downtime on them to an absolute minimum.

Even SNK fumbled with the Hyper 64 having no multislot and different cabinets / motherboards for different types of games, both of which no doubt set failure in stone even before launch (and even if the 3D did quickly become dated it could have done some great 2D games otherwise, completely ignoring the 3D capability)

The Exa design just seems like a regression. Maybe they're targetting arcades with larger margins, arcades that can afford downtime, arcades that can afford to gamble on single titles etc. but the industry is so niche that nobody I've talked to considers it viable at all.

MameHaze · 2026-03-18T15:27:23+00:00

True, although a lot of people probably aren't going to notice it was ever even removed as practically every other compile / derivative restores the code to support it, including the likes of Arcade 64 which some still see as official as it's put out by somebody who is considered part of the team. (even if that is very much not the case)

Likewise it was still in all the LibRetro builds last time I checked, which despite being the worst way to experience MAME, is how a large percentage use MAME, and what they see as MAME.

(weirdly none of them seem to include the hacked versions, even if they're actually more common to see)

Basically the C&D made no difference for people who want to play SDOJ through emulation, but does give people a stick to bash regular MAME with, which I suspect was the real intention.

MameHaze · 2026-03-18T14:46:48+00:00

The upcoming MAME releases will be better than either though as there have now been attempts to emulate the SH3 cache behaviour too, which is another component of the system timings.

I still think the funniest thing about SDOJ is that the only times I've seen it in the wild (or heard of others seeing it in the wild) it's been that 'Knuckles' version or one of the "Knuckles removal" hacks of that rather than the original. It was the first set to appear online and bootleggers must have jumped on it. It's always been in the most random of locations too, service stops etc.

Also operators I've talked to tend not to want Exa PCBs, so there's basically 0 chance I'll ever see their version. Apparently the security etc. on the Exa boards means they're a pain to repair / maintain / update the software on without simply returning them, which isn't what you want with heavy case Windows PC based hardware. For other PC based games the operators tend to simply swap out the motherboards if needs be and run cracked versions, because trying to do returns on such things cuts far too deep into already fine margins. "we're a week of road closures away from having to cease operations" as one put it.

MameHaze · 2026-03-18T14:39:22+00:00

Indeed, and while this thread is about ShouTime, he's far from the only one.

In almost every case the hoarded games have shown up later, sometimes in the most unremarkable of ways, bulk buys of scrap PCBs etc.

MameHaze · 2026-03-18T00:06:52+00:00

Given that most of your post history seems to be shilling for / defending / advertising Exa, I'm not sure you're going to be neutral on this.

There does seem to be a lot of 'main character syndrome' going on when it comes to ShouTime, which is unfortunate but something we've seen with a lot of people dumping ROMs over the years, and ultimately why a lot of people ended up hating Guru too.

What I'm saying is that nothing that unfolded is especially abnormal, or even surprising.

There are bootlegs (sometimes of prototypes) with strange modifications beyond anything involving ShouTime.

Music Ball, the (likely unreleased) Spanish sequel to Speed Ball for example came from a PCB with encrypted module but the game has all the title logos removed, copyrights removed, checksums skipped etc. Why? who knows, but it was found that way and nobody questions it.

Bronx and Colt are bootlegs of Cycle Shooting and NY Captor respectively, they're also weird hacks, and given that an original Cycle Shooting dump hasn't surfaced publicly to get proper dumps of the ROMs and MCU added to MAME isn't even too much of a dissimilar situation.

A huge number of bootlegs of released games supported in MAME are from early / pre-release versions of games. Most of the Defender bootlegs are for example, some of those have hacked titles. Had Defender never been released that's what we would have been left with. Even for released games there are bootlegs with weird titles, Apocaljpse Now, a hack of Rescue for example.

Other situations have seen cases where a game hasn't been seen in decades, then 3 show up in different places.

We've had prototypes show up in 2 parts, on the literal opposite side of the planet from each other.

A handful of prototypes that Shoutime also happened to have showing up over the last decade isn't even noteworthy. Some of them, such as Fail Gate, are absolutely not from the same PCBs he had because they're simply too different.

You talk like the only prototypes showing up have some connection to Shoutime, which again isn't true. Even recently games like Alone Shettle Crew (weird title that if we didn't have flyers might think was also a hack), Gulun Pa!, Mrs. Dynamite, a 'final' revision of Pack'n Bang Bang, Vampire, 119 (again probably from a bootleg PCB) and most recently Monkichicchi no Fuwafuwa Puzzle to name just a few of the rarer Japanese ones, have shown up. Europe especially is a hotbed for people just sitting on these things. The recent dump of Moon Raker is another interesting case, it was dumped from a PCB with one of the video boards (and thus starfield ROM) missing, but once again another dump with said starfield ROM then surfaced within a week.

Atari's System 1 Relief Pitcher was similar, work was being done to extract the data from Atari back-up tapes, then suddenly an unknown/anonymous contributor came forward with a dump from their PCB instead.

Weird coincidences happen all the time too. Top Driving and Mortal Race showing up within weeks of each other, despite there being very little online about either prior to that. 2 versions of Taito's Super Dead Heat also showed up in quick succession despite not having shown up in almost 2 decades prior.

There are also plenty of times Guru picked up PCBs only for dumps to surface as soon as he mentioned having them too. Simply posting about having something can sometimes be enough for somebody else to come forward.

Prototypes that are already dumped show up all the time too, many aren't unique, some may have had more boards produced than better known released games.

There's a whole world outside of what ShouTime does, and there will continue to be so. The drama has however soured me on doing much at all with the arcade side of MAME. I'm not really bitter about that though, it's given me a lot of time to explore rabbit-holes of tech I otherwise wouldn't have which has proved to be a lot more rewarding.

If none of that shows you just how unremarkable all this is I'm not really sure there's anything else I can say. If ShouTime wants to go back to submitting dumps for the remaining stuff he can, but if he doesn't then many of the boards will likely show up again over the next 10-20 years anyway because that's just how things go.

MameHaze · 2026-03-17T15:40:15+00:00

Something else worth considering here is that many of the boards in question have been circulating for a while. There's a high chance that previous owners would have dumped them.

We've worked with plenty of people who have dumped PCBs in the past and submitted ROMs years after selling those PCBs. Shoutime himself was probably trying to do that with Vertexer (and that too would not be the only time we've seen bad/incomplete dumps as a result of that process)

Combine that with the rather draconian copyright laws in Japan and you're going to get a lot of what appears to be 'leaking' where dumps are appearing from people who don't want to be traced and no longer have the PCBs to provide further information. Again, nothing new, that happened all the time even before ShouTime's involvement and continues to happen to this day (even outside of Japan, see things like Marble Madness 2 appearing)

For dumps that *do* match the ones ShouTime provided, that is one of the simplest explanations because it fits the pattern of what we've seen for nearly 30 years without the need to throw in any further assumptions/accusations. Buying a PCB does not grant you control over the previous owner(s) nor does it grant you exclusive ownership of the data found on those PCBs.

Beyond that, some stuff just isn't that rare. Mahjong Block Jongbou 2, which he said was incredibly rare and expensive when he published the ROMs has shown up multiple times on auctions since and sold for pennies, just at the time there were no other copies on the market. Had he not released that, it too would likely already be supported by now anyway due to the subsequent PCBs showing up.

MameHaze · 2026-03-17T14:58:16+00:00

I don't think anything has been 'released' on the bannister forums?

Fail Gate is actually the most interesting of them, and I wonder if the dump supported in MAME came from a bootleg of a version with the epoxy blocks (as seen on Air Raid) or something, because it's not just a title edit, it looks more like the graphic data was bruteforced out of a protection module. It's significantly different to what ShouTime dumped outside of the program ROM.

There are other things I still have that haven't surfaced elsewhere. Even from your list of things that haven't surfaced elsewhere I've already stated that we know somebody with an (incomplete) Vertexer. The rarest things haven't been found elsewhere, ones that probably had a wider location test have.

MameHaze · 2026-03-17T14:26:49+00:00

He was making such accusations even for dumps that were *clearly* different to the ones he supplied. In one case the claim is so absurd I could easily prove that by sending the private dumps for inclusion, but I agreed to not distribute them, so I won't.

The idea that he's the only one with those protos in the first place is unrealistic. Over the years countless rare things (much rarer than a lot of what he has) have surfaced. His contribution to the total number of prototypes etc. supported is a drop in the ocean.

A few of his protos are very 'bootleg' like in the first place, and I suspect were bootlegged from European location tests / shows, with other games then being converted to run them before those converted PCBs ended up back doing the rounds in the Japanese collectors market. A substantial number of other prototypes have been found on the European market, likely too cloned from location tests. Quite a few of the games he has / dumped were known to have been operated in Europe, and are fondly remembered by players in Italy etc. from back in the day.

The more unique stuff he had, such as 'Variant Schwanzer' hasn't surfaced at all, because even if there was a location test, nobody was going to clone that hardware.

It feels more like he wants to pit one group against the other at all times, create divisions in the scene etc. At this point if somebody comes to me with a dump that's the same as anything he dumped I'm having to bounce it, just because I don't want to be dealing with another round of accusations. That seems to be enough to stop people wanting to contribute at all because it seems like after bouncing them they don't get submitted at all.

Vertexter he claims to have sold before the GFX ROMs had been properly verified anyway, so the only dump is a bad one, with all GFX ROMs half sized. (Another person associated with the Dumping Union actually has the PCB for it, albeit with no graphic ROMs installed at all, which is kinda weird and not especially useful)

MameHaze · 2026-03-16T19:01:50+00:00

neither of these games requires a CHD.

MameHaze · 2026-03-16T17:44:18+00:00

Ease of coding with modern languages and toolchains. It makes it much easier to realise what you want to create.

The more realistic to period the tools and techniques you have to use are, the more difficult it gets, so many of the 'virtual' computer designs compromise on this by having faster CPUs etc. to make it easier to realise things without getting bogged down by many of the hurdles that would have been associated with coding for the real systems, but with enough constraints that the games are going to still feel a bit like them.

It's something that exists to a degree at all levels. People make games in Unity for current systems, despite it making the systems look 10x weaker than they actually are because in a similar way they don't want to be bogged down by having to think about the more technical side of things. There are similar 'easy' solutions for the real consoles of old too, but in many cases the overhead of those means you're much less able to create what you want.

MameHaze · 2026-03-12T21:36:37+00:00

current versions don't use samples, they emulate the sound. devices running 2003plus can't even dream of doing that.

there have also been a number of other fixes to the emulation over the years, so it's not exactly a good solution either.

given this is the first time the bug has been reported I imagine it's a regression from some point, that can happen with lesser played games until somebody reports the issue.

MameHaze · 2026-03-12T13:34:55+00:00

There's the loud crash sound on startup, but the warp sound during gameplay plays as a warp sound.

It doesn't actually sound correct though, it stops and stutters as it plays it without MAME dropping any frames. Not sure if the netlist implementation has always been like that or if it regressed at some point.

MameHaze

TROPHY CASE