The Retrogaming Thread! [8-bit/16-bit/32-bit/64-bit]

Today, with the help of my father, we completed the assembly of a small sized arcade stick.

It's a small one, using only 24mm buttons (Seimitsu) and a Seimitsu LS-55-01 stick. The board is a Brook Pi Zero Easy. The case is a mini from Ultra Arcade Europe.

The buttons and stick were bought from Akishop in Japan 1 or 2 years ago.

Our issue was that the board (PCB) of the joystick had a direction not working. After testing, my father identified the faulty line and did a repair by bridging the faulty part by soldering a thin wire.

The art was done my myself.

View attachment 333961

For comparison, here it is next to my full sized one (Sanwa JLF + Sanwa 33mm buttons and Ultra Ulia enclosure).

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Wow, amazing job man!! It's so cool it was a "family project" and the final result looks awesome, great design!! Looks comfortable to play too!! :TU:
 
There's something i didn't found here and i wanted to talk about : it's chip mod for Snes and Megadrive.
About Megadrive, we already got the sega-cd to get cd sound, but there's, only for MD, a system to includes CD audio quality + cinematics (pretty rare) on several games.

As the Megadrive got a pretty weak sound chip, for some arcade game it's a big welcome, like Street Fighter II' and Super Street fighter 2.
There's 2 models : the MD+ (working on Everdrive, the cartridge to includes roms on a real hardware, so on a real > Megadrive) and the most common as it's for practically all consoles : the MSU-1 chip only version (most used for emulation, but sometimes it works on both Everdrive cartdrige)
Example with SSF2 MSU + Arcade colors :


About snes, as there's a lot more of chips you could've add on Snes hardware, it's MSU1 was a bit like "what if a Snes CD was out" but unfortunately there's very few that mod the gameplay and some only add presentation vids. But if the MSU system is fully exploited, it add ram to games and can, for example, giving a result like you can see in Killer Instinct vs Killer Instinct Snes Arcade Edition :

edited: (that's the only comparison i found, but there was a better vid comparing animations)


Also, on Street Fighter Alpha 2 snes, there's a freeze after the "Round 1 fight" : it's removed with that system for example. That's unfortunately the 2 graphical mode which have been used for gfx. There's also a way to add for example CD music to 32x games, but i didn't managed to do it (there was one for MKII : as on 32X the sounds are exactly the same as on megadrive, a real shame...)

Now, there's others type of roms let's say "improved" by adding a special chip to enhance the game, and a non exploited system on Snes : Fastrom the most common (it's easy to found a Fastrom pack ;) )
And SA1 chip : both have the same function : improving snes fluidity and capacity to run games, faster.

Here's a quote from Vitor Vilela , the main guy behind SNES FASTROM PROJECT :

"Project FastROM aims into optimizing the SNES games originally designed to run under SlowROM (2.68 MHz) to FastROM (3.58 MHz). FastROM allows the SNES CPU read data and opcodes from the ROM 33.58% faster compared to SlowROM.

Depending on the game, FastROM will make the game run about 10%-33% faster compared to the original SlowROM version. This depends on how frequent the game accesses the ROM chip, since the other componenets such as WRAM @ 2.68 MHz, PPU @ 3.58 MHz, DMA @ 2.68 MHz and SRAM @ 2.68 MHz will stay at the same speed."

So basically areas that would slow down due to lots of sprites or objects on the screen have those slowdowns eliminated or drastically reduced.

SA-1, on the other hand, is something like 10.xx MHZ and is MUCH faster than fastrom. I haven't learned how to do that yet though.

Well i saw some SA1 "Super Accelerators" mod on some roms i own but on only 3 games were patched (Super Mario World got an SA1 patched version) but there's only 34 games using that process officially, perhaps some games are most friendly moddable than some others, no idea...

Now we could imagine in a near future, compiling both MD+ MSU for graphisms, also on 32x (more colors, possibility of ports and remake) + CD will be a big killer machine, For info, there's already one converted game on 32X : Golden Axe 32X. Here's a comparison with the MD version :


And for Snes, same of course, the possibilities are big altogether with SA1, using of SuperFX2 for some games (There's a StarFox version SFX2 if you search well : faster) + CD audio and ram added.

It's not that old (2020 or 2021) but there's already emulation with HD mode 7 etc. and tons of filters, but it doesn't really add animations or change the game totally like what we're talking here.
 
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The Golden Axe games have a special place for me.. My obsession with BTA's started with Golden Axe 1 when I was a small kid, and so seeing that there is a 32X remastered version is great! The colors are indeed, more vivid (looks like a well done reshade and also I see other differences in quality)!

Great call @NeoRetro bro!! :BSCARF: I will have to look into the other games as well.. For now, I will post the one you mentioned, StarFox version SFX2! (looks smoother,and FPS more stable!) :TU:

 
The Golden Axe games have a special place for me.. My obsession with BTA's started with Golden Axe 1 when I was a small kid, and so seeing that there is a 32X remastered version is great! The colors are indeed, more vivid (looks like a well done reshade and also I see other differences in quality)!

Great call @NeoRetro bro!! :BSCARF: I will have to look into the other games as well.. For now, I will post the one you mentioned, StarFox version SFX2! (looks smoother,and FPS more stable!) :TU:

It's obviously faster (so funnier) and more fluid as FPS are more consequent : the game with SFX2 got more than one part of the stage in advance, like the boss is destroyed on the left side while the other is only coming in front of you.

Also i didn't really liked Killer Instinct snes as it looked a bit too cheap and / when you see the 3D image synthesis but with 3 animation frame while moving... Now it's restored thanks to the guys who created that improvement patch.
K.I. should have been since the start a SuperFX2 game like SF Alpha 2 and SMW 2 for having betters animations and more things on the screen.

>About Golden Axe 32X : the only difference with the arcade version if you check a comparison vid is the injured soldier on the debut. But all the rest is there, the stage with the giant eagle opening/closing his eye, similar colors tone, graphics and sound. Like 32X After Burner or Space Harrier.
 
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I was thinking about Donkey Kong's family tree, hahahaha, but this family tree makes little sense to me.
Found this on reddit (not sure if this is the original Nintendo explanation or a theory)..
I always figured that Diddy and Dixie were Chimps, while Donkey and Funky were gorilllas..
But, according to this, Kiddy (debut in DKC 3) is related to Dixie, however Kiddy Kong looks more like a gorilla than a chimp.
Also, it says that Diddy is the supposed (or rumoured) nephew of Donkey, but that would make them both gorillas.
So they're all gorillas? Hahahahah.. Maybe someone who is well versed in the DK Canon can give their explanation. šŸ’šŸ’
:LMAO: :LOL:
 
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