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DU: Unbelievable news
#367419 - 07/01/17 09:51 PM
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In un fucking believable news, Haze just discovered that what we thought was a boring rom chip version of Lucky Poker (Deco Cassette) that Brian Troha picked up the other day is actually Explorer and he has it working.
![](http://smitdogg.mameworld.info/pics/ex/explorer_1.png)
![](http://smitdogg.mameworld.info/pics/ex/explore_3.png)
![](http://smitdogg.mameworld.info/pics/ex/explore_4.png)
![](http://smitdogg.mameworld.info/pics/ex/explore_5.png)
![](http://smitdogg.mameworld.info/pics/ex/explore_6.png)
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: Smitdogg]
#367421 - 07/01/17 10:02 PM
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> In un fucking believable news, Haze just discovered that what we thought was a boring > rom chip version of Lucky Poker (Deco Cassette) that Brian Troha picked up the other > day is actually Explorer and he has it working.
specifically it's the rom overlay board for Explorer containing 40KB of additional game data that the game requires.
The Explorer cassette was dumped by Al back in the day when the driver was first created, but he didn't have the ROM board and until now it's remained completely elusive thus why the game has been in a non-working state for all these years.
Treasure Island is the only other game using this setup (and Treasure Island was dumped back in the day)
Explorer makes fuller use of the hardware, populating all 10 sockets on the rom board, while Treasure Island only made use of 4, which is why some work was needed in the driver too to support the extra banking.
here's a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcR4H56ryS0
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: Haze]
#367422 - 07/01/17 10:32 PM
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Gotta love the word serendipity for this one !
Seeing those old DECO cassete systems preserved feels really good
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: DarkMoe]
#367427 - 07/01/17 11:12 PM
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Looks like pretty impressive use of the DECO hardware! Glad to see it saved, I know it's been a source of frustration to MAME for quite some time.
There's really not much left of known DECO cassette games that are completely undumped, is there? Which is truly fantastic given how vulnerable to deterioration the media is they're recorded on.
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: Tornadoboy]
#367428 - 07/01/17 11:19 PM
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> Looks like pretty impressive use of the DECO hardware! Glad to see it saved, I know > it's been a source of frustration to MAME for quite some time. > > There's really not much left of known DECO cassette games that are completely > undumped, is there? Which is truly fantastic given how vulnerable to deterioration > the media is they're recorded on.
there are probably quite a lot of revisions still undumped, it seemed Data East liked trying out ideas on the platform, modifying the games over time etc. There are videos from some games that certainly seem to show undumped versions (eg Manhattan, the videos show colour changes but the set we have doesn't touch any registers at all during the times they're seen so the videos must be of a newer version, maybe the US release, maybe a newer Japan one)
also since I just decrypted a Treasure Island set which turned out to use a region code nothing else in the driver used so far there are probably a bunch more sets of that unknown region too.
beyond that, there are still a number of gaps, and none of the Japanese Mahjong games that had their own numbering system are dumped at all.
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: Haze]
#367430 - 07/02/17 12:46 AM
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great find, cool game Haze.
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gregf |
Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: Smitdogg]
#367436 - 07/02/17 04:55 AM
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>that Brian Troha picked up the other day is actually Explorer.
Looking forward for BrianT doing another Guru-like pcb info and adding it to the Deco cassette source file. That pcb hardware definitely needs documenting since it is one of the few cassette games where the pcb and roms are required for a game like Explorer to run.
btw: Notice how flyer describes different hardware arrangements: conventional or cassette. I wonder if a pcb version can still be found later, but it seems they would have been spotted by now. Makes me want to guess that maybe Data East eventually decided to market games as cassette only rather than market both conventional and cassette hardware versions.
![](//www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/userfiles/366762-poker.jpg)
> Haze has it working.
Another blog worthy chapter entry worth reading.
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/2017/07/01/lucky-poker-this-isnt-just-plain-lucky-it-certainly-is/
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: Smitdogg]
#367459 - 07/02/17 10:04 AM
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Has Atari's vector game Star Wars from 1983 been inspired from this one?
Regards, RetroLover
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: RetroLover]
#367466 - 07/02/17 12:59 PM
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> Has Atari's vector game Star Wars from 1983 been inspired from this one? >
I would think that Star Wars from 1983, was inspired by the same movie... kappa
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: RetroLover]
#367476 - 07/02/17 07:11 PM
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There were games all the way back in the 70s that were close enough to the format to speculate influence like that like with Tunnel Hunt.
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: Smitdogg]
#367484 - 07/02/17 10:57 PM
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R. Belmont |
Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Re: DU: Unbelievable news
[Re: RetroLover]
#367577 - 07/06/17 05:42 PM
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> Has Atari's vector game Star Wars from 1983 been inspired from this one?
Given the dates this is almost certainly an attempt to do Atari's Tempest in a raster-monitor format.
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