Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
#289941 - 06/20/12 08:04 PM Attachment: angle.jpg 34 KB (1 downloads)
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#289943 - 06/20/12 08:20 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#289960 - 06/20/12 11:32 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: joey35car]
#290035 - 06/22/12 05:23 AM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293697 - 08/12/12 07:41 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: QtQ]
#293698 - 08/12/12 07:42 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293700 - 08/12/12 07:53 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: QtQ]
#293702 - 08/12/12 07:57 PM
The remaining Deco cassette games are all in the hands of Japanese collectors and game center operators and they generally don't share dumps for mame ever. So it's a matter of if/when we can convince them to let us dump them and release the images or if they ever show up on Yahoo Japan and we happen to see it and have enough money to win them.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293704 - 08/12/12 08:07 PM
That would be awesome if Manhattan is emulated later. I recall playing this a couple times at Lakewood Center Mall (Lakewood, CA) Electronic Corral. It might have been in 1981. I never knew what the game sounded like since the volume setting was set to a very quiet level or the nearby cabs were cranked to play at a loud level such as Asteroids, Bosconian, or Galaxian.
Very good videoclip and thanks for sharing it so other folks can see what the game looks like and plays like.
If you find any other working cabs of DECO cassette games not yet emulated and can make video clips of them later, thanks.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293833 - 08/14/12 09:03 PM
> The remaining Deco cassette games are all in the hands of > Japanese collectors and game center operators and they > generally don't share dumps for mame ever.
When I was involved with the Dumping Project, we communicated with a Japanese collector who had (IIRC) all but five or six of the cassettes. He *admitted* they were starting to fail but *still* refused to allow us to dump them just for backup purposes, to save the data, even though we promised that the dumps would never be made public. Sad beyond belief.
EDIT: BTW, did we ever get a dump of the "Flying Ball" and other DECO cassettes in the last batch that were sent to Al Kossow? If not, did we ever get those cassettes *back* from him? And, in an only tangentially related note, is the "Space Raiders" PCB still sitting on Frank Palazzolo's workbench or has that been forwarded on to someone with the time to look at it?
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: MrGoodwraith]
#293834 - 08/14/12 09:20 PM
> > The remaining Deco cassette games are all in the hands of > > Japanese collectors and game center operators and they > > generally don't share dumps for mame ever. > > When I was involved with the Dumping Project, we communicated with a Japanese > collector who had (IIRC) all but five or six of the cassettes. He *admitted* they > were starting to fail but *still* refused to allow us to dump them just for backup > purposes, to save the data, even though we promised that the dumps would never be > made public. Sad beyond belief. >
The situation has gotten both more ridiculous and more promising at the same time. Nothing I can talk about in public, of course, as it always is with Japanese people. Secrets are like their second oxygen. I've heard they actually have a single word now that means something along the lines of "hoard an item until you die and never let anyone see it".
> EDIT: BTW, did we ever get a dump of the "Flying Ball" and other DECO cassettes in > the last batch that were sent to Al Kossow? If not, did we ever get those cassettes > *back* from him? And, in an only tangentially related note, is the "Space Raiders" > PCB still sitting on Frank Palazzolo's workbench or has that been forwarded on to > someone with the time to look at it?
Al was in contact with Charles and was supposed to send him the Deco stuff but hasn't. I'm not sure there is anything there we still need though, never heard anything about Flying Ball and I'm never spoken to Frank. Maybe you can get the ball rolling on those.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293837 - 08/14/12 09:47 PM
> Al was in contact with Charles and was supposed to send > him the Deco stuff but hasn't. I'm not sure there is > anything there we still need though, never heard anything > about Flying Ball
We won a cassette that was labeled "Flying Ball"; that title doesn't correspond to any known DECO Cassette titles, but we speculated that it might have been a mistranslation or bad transliteration of some other known title. During about the final three or four months I was on the MAME Team, that cassette and I think two others were sent to Al, who had said he would dump them. He didn't dump them and never returned them.
> I'm never spoken to Frank.
"Space Raiders" is an exceedingly rare Universal title from 1982. We got into a bidding war for the PCB with that company in Japan that rents out rare old arcade boards. We basically asked them to stop bidding against us so that we could have the board long enough to dump it, and promised that we would then sell them the board for what we paid for it. Wonder of wonders, they complied, and the board was won, sent to Frank, and dumped, but Frank insisted that the game couldn't be emulated until the board was better understood. I told him that he needed to hurry with his analysis and that if we didn't get the board to the rental company, I was pretty sure we would never get a chance at any of the other unemulated games they owned boards for. But the PCB remained on his workbench, I left the Team, Frank became inactive, and unless I'm very much mistaken the MAME Team has ever since been on the rental company's shit list. It's probably never going to be possible to patch things up with them, but the PCB itself at least needs to be recovered (and maybe sent to Charles or someone?) so that the game can eventually be emulated properly.
Now that I'm strolling down memory lane about analysis of 80s PCBs, has anyone ever made any progress on figuring out those massive custom chips at the heart of Stern's "Great Guns" and "Mazer Blazer"?
> Maybe you can get the ball rolling on those.
I have not communicated with either Al or Frank in years and I doubt whether my email addresses for either of them are any good. I would appreciate it if someone in more recent contact with them could follow up.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: MrGoodwraith]
#293838 - 08/14/12 10:07 PM
Even if the relationship is patched up or if it was never screwed up I highly doubt they would have dumped and shared anything with us and their motivation for not bidding then would have been to get the board in their possession cheaper. There has been some work on the Mazer Blazer driver but it looks like some dumps are missing. Trevor might get access to a machine to dump the missing roms but they would have to be socketed roms. pals or mcus are a no go.
Well I hope we can get Space Raiders. It sounds like he wanted to work on the driver himself or else where's the dump. If the board can get sent to me I can dump it and send it to my friend in Japan to sell to that rental shop owner if you want but I don't know if it would do any good in regards to getting him on our team or whatever.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293841 - 08/14/12 10:33 PM
> Even if the relationship is patched up or if it was never > screwed up I highly doubt they would have dumped and > shared anything with us
Granted, you're probably right. But welshing on our agreement with them sure didn't improve our chances any.
> There has been some work on the Mazer Blazer driver but > it looks like some dumps are missing. Trevor might get > access to a machine to dump the missing roms but they > would have to be socketed roms. pals or mcus are a no go.
That's cool and I hope it works out, but IIRC "Mazer Blazer" and other Stern video games on similar boards had a huge (for the time -- 64-pin? 80-pin?) black custom chip that was involved in almost all of the game's functions. It was my impression that that chip would require reverse-engineering and/or trojaning.
> Well I hope we can get Space Raiders.
OK, looked it up, title is "Space Raider" (singular).
> It sounds like he wanted to work on the driver himself
Yes, that was his plan before he moved on to other things.
> or else where's the dump.
I vaguely recall that the board was in fact dumped, that the ROM images went into one of the "miscellaneous ROMs" folders on the FTP, and that Frank and/or other people gave them a preliminary look and couldn't do anything with them, but I might well be mistaken -- that was a very long time ago. I certainly don't have any idea what the name of the ROM file was, if it ever existed.
> If the board can get sent to me
Assuming that Frank still has the PCB and that it hasn't gotten lost or damaged, it should be sent to someone who will actually do something with it, but again, I would prefer that a person who is still on the Team be the one to poke Frank about it if at all possible.
> I can dump it and send it to my friend in Japan to sell > to that rental shop owner if you want but I don't know if > it would do any good in regards to getting him on our > team or whatever.
I don't know whether I can recover the details about what we ended up paying for the board, so I don't know whether we can offer the board to them for the actual price we paid. However, to be fair and to try to uphold the spirit of our deal -- whether they ever allow us to dump any of their stock or not --, we should at least give them first dibs on the board if we're ever done with it, and let them make us an offer if they still want it.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: MrGoodwraith]
#293843 - 08/14/12 11:02 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: R. Belmont]
#293847 - 08/14/12 11:27 PM
OK, that's cool, glad to hear and sorry if I missed the news. Still, if the board is no longer needed, it should be resold to cycle funds back into dumping efforts -- unless this has also already been done.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293850 - 08/15/12 01:10 AM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#293934 - 08/16/12 04:43 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Crazy Otto]
#293935 - 08/16/12 04:56 PM
> Al should have Fishing, Hamburger, DS Teljan and maybe some others (pro-golf?). > WTC4ever?(iirc) paid for them and they were sent to him from Japan. > > I only have 2 people on my bad trader list. The other being the ebayer I paid $500 to > for an Eeek! board.
Those titles were all recently added when the ball got rolling for dumping tapes and dongles , so I suspect Al had his hand in helping there. Your test above seems to suggest Al is a bad trader? I wouldn't think that is the case.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Tafoid]
#293936 - 08/16/12 05:11 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Tafoid]
#293945 - 08/16/12 07:09 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Crazy Otto]
#293951 - 08/16/12 08:47 PM
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: MrGoodwraith]
#294215 - 08/22/12 04:18 AM
> > I have not communicated with either Al or Frank in years and I doubt whether my email > addresses for either of them are any good. I would appreciate it if someone in more > recent contact with them could follow up.
I've PM'd Smitdogg my most recent contact info for them. Hopefully it's better than yours, though my contact with them has certainly not been extensive.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: ranger_lennier]
#294217 - 08/22/12 04:35 AM
Thanks for the effort but I don't want to get involved in these situations. Someone who knows them and/or was involved in the deals getting the games should do it. I've never talked to them and had nothing to do with the deals.
Re: Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
[Re: Smitdogg]
#294219 - 08/22/12 05:54 AM
> Thanks for the effort but I don't want to get involved in these situations. Someone > who knows them and/or was involved in the deals getting the games should do it. I've > never talked to them and had nothing to do with the deals.
Yeah, I understand. I wasn't really involved in these either, but if anyone was, PM me and I'll be glad to send the same information.
Tornadoboy loaned us the US version (Angler Dangler). The Japanese version was never updated because it didn't sell well in Japan but the US version had many updates and bug fixes. This one is revision 5 so quite a bit of updates vs. Fishing.
Please excuse me if I'm remarkably pleased with myself today!
It's a personal grail of mine too, although I never really expected to ever get within a 1000 miles of having an actual cassette, and now that it's dumped I'm hoping to use the data to repair or substitute the tape and get an actual Angler Dangler machine together.
I'm hoping to be able to convert a Burgertime security dongle but if anyone happens to have a spare Fishing or Angler Dangler dongle they want to sell, please PM me. I'm also looking for a maquee or at least a decent pic of one.
BTW I noticed how buggy Fishing is, it easily gets confused and loses your place on the playfield when you cast very far out and often messes up the time remaining, I'm anxious to see how much improvement is in the new version. I also noticed that if you manage to reel in your line all the way without catching a fish (tough to do) it'll continue down past the fisherman, over the shore and completely crash the game when it goes off the bottom of the screen!
That would have been a fun trick to piss off arcade operators, especially given how long it takes to reboot DECO machines!
> Tornadoboy loaned us the US version (Angler Dangler). The Japanese version was never > updated because it didn't sell well in Japan but the US version had many updates and > bug fixes. This one is revision 5 so quite a bit of updates vs. Fishing.
>Please excuse me if I'm remarkably pleased with myself today!
Congrats and thanks too for [loaning cassette] allowing the game to be emulated.
>and now that it's dumped I'm hoping to use the data to repair or substitute the tape and >get an actual Angler Dangler machine together. I'm hoping to be able to convert a >Burgertime security dongle but if anyone happens to have a spare Fishing or Angler >Dangler dongle they want to sell, please PM me. I'm also looking for a maquee or at >least a decent pic of one.
Good luck on this part. I don't recall if something like that has ever been documented/posted on forums about converting a dongle to play a different DECO cassette game. Charles should be ideal person to talk to about getting Angler Dangler to be playable on a real cab.
>BTW I noticed how buggy Fishing is, it easily gets confused and loses your place on the >playfield when you cast very far out and often messes up the time remaining, I'm >anxious to see how much improvement is in the new version.
Interesting that your cassette is revision 5, but that is a good thing since it documents that earlier versions existed although it is a guess if any of those earlier revisions made it into arcades/businesses back in 1980s.
I've got "wanted - DECO parts" amongst other things in my signature on KLOV and someone PM'd offering it, a Pro Bowling dongle and deck, so naturally I grabbed them.
I may PM him to tell him that it was something that needed dumping for MAME but I don't want to make him feel like I'm trying to rub it in as he probably didn't know how rare it was. Though frankly its value outside of a MAME dump was limited since the recording was in such terrible shape and it was going to be useless without an expert extracting the data from it, which fortunately [removed name] was successful at doing, but I guess it took him 10 tries to get a viable extraction. Now the trick will be figuring out how to restore the tape or at least another way to input the data to the motherboard, again I have some ideas, but it's going to be a challenge though.
This games is/was one of my few remaining "grails" of MAME emulation I've been waiting for, second only to Bouncer (obviously) and ahead of Ms. Gorf, Vertigo, and NY Warriors amongst others.
Mod note: Our friend in Japan doesn't want his name written here or anywhere else, I guess he forgot to tell you.
>few remaining "grails" of MAME emulation I've been waiting for, second only to Bouncer >(obviously) and ahead of Ms. Gorf, Vertigo, and NY Warriors amongst others.
That's a remaining wish list there. Maybe Ms. Gorf might be possible. The others such as Vertigo and NY Warriors maybe....and I'll say finding a Bouncer pcb is a lottery odds longshot, but sometimes things happen such as the recent Sega Last Survivor being an example.
> > few remaining "grails" of MAME emulation I've been waiting for, second only to > Bouncer > >(obviously) and ahead of Ms. Gorf, Vertigo, and NY Warriors amongst others. > > That's a remaining wish list there. Maybe Ms. Gorf might be possible. The others > such as Vertigo and NY Warriors maybe....and I'll say finding a Bouncer pcb is a > lottery odds longshot, but sometimes things happen such as the recent Sega Last > Survivor being an example.
I've heard through the grapevine that the code for Ms. Gorf has been safely backed up from the 8" floppies, the issue is aside from being uncompiled it was never really a finished game, though it had one level that was playable (the one always shown in pics). The original programmer (Jamie I think is her name) has floated the idea of someday finishing it but who knows if that will ever happen as no doubt it would be quite a project, but here's hoping. Bouncer is the holiest of holy grails out there as far as lost games but I've got to admit the prospects are looking pretty grim, but again, never say never. There's supposedly at least one surviving and complete Vertigo cab in the hands of a former Exidy employee but it's said he's totally disinterested in selling it, dumping the ROMs or even discussing its existance. NY Warriors I've never been quite sure if it actually made it to being a coin op, although I've seen pictures on the back of the PC version's box that claim to be screen shots from the arcade release, but there's a decent chance it was as it would have been an Arcadia Amiga conversion like Leaderboard Golf, Side Winder, Xenon etc all of which use a modified Amiga 400 motherboard for its arcade hardware.
But hey, Angler Dangler is now another one that's finally off the endangered/possibly extinct species list after being there for years, so there's always hope for others.
> I've heard through the grapevine that the code for Ms. Gorf has been safely backed up > from the 8" floppies, the issue is aside from being uncompiled it was never really a > finished game, though it had one level that was playable (the one always shown in > pics). The original programmer (Jamie I think is her name) has floated the idea of > someday finishing it but who knows if that will ever happen as no doubt it would be > quite a project, but here's hoping.
Encouraging news if that's the case. Is any info about this publicly available? I know Al Kossow said he had backed up some of the disks, but didn't specifically mention Ms. Gorf at that particular time. I guess I did figure there was more than one level playable, but it would still be cool to play that level. Any reason not to release what's available now? Maybe they're still figuring out how to compile the code? If Jamie does eventually finish it, that would be awesome, but before it sounded like she stayed pretty busy.
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Deco Cassette update: I guess what it all comes down to is that the..angle of my dangle is inversely proportional to the heat of my meat.
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