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View topic - Sega 8-bit winter of dumps Part 1: Bobble Bogeul Bubble Boggle

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Sega 8-bit winter of dumps Part 1: Bobble Bogeul Bubble Boggle
Post Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:31 pm
Happy new year all !
Heading into 2012 already - can you believe this website will be 15 years old in March? Did the internet even exist 15 years ago? I was like seventy centimeters tall and drinking milk from small plastic bottles, trying to stick screwdrivers into cartridges. Not that anything has changed really...

I've set myself with the target of releasing as many remaining dumps as possible by our anniversary date in March so please do keep on harassing me on a regular basis.

Today we've got a delicately confusing set of releases, with four different same games! Taito's Bubble Bobble as it seems was very popular in Korea (so popular even some deluxe food product adverts are referring to it) and along with the rising trend of local game developments a bunch of clones appeared in this era. So what we have here are 4 clones of Bubble Bobble made in Korea. The naming is rather inconsistent (title screens do not often match cartridge labels, etc.) but here is what our experts came up with:



New Boggle Boggle 2 (뉴 보글 보글 2) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System
Developed by MBiTM (ROM data mentions 88-01-14) and published by Zemina in 1989, this seems to be the first game in our chronology of Master System clones. It happens to be also the roughest implementation of the game.



Super Bubble Bobble (슈퍼 바블 바블) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System
Also developed by MBiTM (ROM data mentions 89-01-14, making it a suspicious pattern) this version looks like a better iteration of the previous game.



Power Boggle Boggle (파워 보글 보글) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System
Presumably developed by Screen Software and published by YM Soft / Hana Engineering (which might be the same company), released in 1990.

And finally



Bobble Bobble for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Master System developed by Clover.
Developed by Clover and released in 1990. Note the name is "Bobble Bobble" unlike the original game.

How far can your curiosity push you to dig into all those clones of the same game? Their quality is rather uneven and of course do not match the official version developed by Taito for the Master System.

As I heard recently the official 'Final Bubble Bobble' / 'Bubble Bobble' for Master System was developed by the arcade teams at Taito as a semi-sequel to the original game, hence the subtitle "Final Bubble Bobble". Most other home console titles at the times were developed by dedicated porting teams.
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 3:56 pm
Nice! Will you post the ROMs here in the forum like you usually do?
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 4:05 pm
Even if he doesn't, I just updated my mirror with the 4 new roms, so you can get them from there.
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Temporary Transitional Attachment Fairy
Post Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 4:59 pm
This message will auto destruct itself someday.

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Post Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 11:54 am
My brother and I made a game as response: http://bubble.ktxsoftware.com
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 4:38 am
Might be of interest that this game writes garbage to port 3E (bios/work ram). Since the Mark III doesn't have this port and handles the work ram disabling with a cart line if you run this game on a non mark III it should probably crap itself.

It found a bug in my handling of Mark III emulation on RetroCopy which was still allowing some behaviour to leak through. Thanks for the dumps Bock.
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 11:42 am
RetroRalph wrote
Might be of interest that this game writes garbage to port 3E (bios/work ram). Since the Mark III doesn't have this port and handles the work ram disabling with a cart line if you run this game on a non mark III it should probably crap itself.

It found a bug in my handling of Mark III emulation on RetroCopy which was still allowing some behaviour to leak through. Thanks for the dumps Bock.

Good find!
But it is surprising because the Japanese Master System does have those features, and the vast majory of consoles out in Korea are Korean Master System which are based on the JSMS.
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2012 6:46 pm
On SMSAdvance with a Japanese Bios it writes:
0xE3, 0xEB, 0xCB, 0xEB, 0xAB

Which means it disables all external interfaces (card, cart, exp) and enables the Bios, disables the Bios, enables the Card slot, disables the card slot, enables the cartridge slot.

I see nothing wrong with it? (though I can't swear my emulation of that register is perfect)
If I disable the Bios it just writes 0xAB...

Did they use a special mapper?
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Post Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:56 pm
Last edited by RetroRalph on Tue Jan 17, 2012 12:26 am; edited 1 time in total
Bock wrote
RetroRalph wrote
Might be of interest that this game writes garbage to port 3E (bios/work ram). Since the Mark III doesn't have this port and handles the work ram disabling with a cart line if you run this game on a non mark III it should probably crap itself.

It found a bug in my handling of Mark III emulation on RetroCopy which was still allowing some behaviour to leak through. Thanks for the dumps Bock.

Good find!
But it is surprising because the Japanese Master System does have those features, and the vast majory of consoles out in Korea are Korean Master System which are based on the JSMS.


Are you sure the Japanese SMS actually has those features and they work? I would think to be compatible with the SG1000 it would still need to have cart based selection of ram disable instead of software based? Or perhaps it has both.

It's possible the clones in Korea are based more off the mark III than Jap SMS or there is some other hardware difference we are unaware of.
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 12:16 am
FluBBa wrote
On SMSAdvance with a Japanese Bios it writes:
0xE3, 0xEB, 0xCB, 0xEB, 0xAB

Which means it disables all external interfaces (card, cart, exp) and enables the Bios, disables the Bios, enables the Card slot, disables the card slot, enables the cartridge slot.

I see nothing wrong with it? (though I can't swear my emulation of that register is perfect)
If I disable the Bios it just writes 0xAB...

Did they use a special mapper?


Err perhaps I should have dug a little deeper into this one. :)

Ok it seems this game writes to port $20 (32) and $38 (56) which don't "exist" on a traditional SMS due to only some IO lines being mapped. I've seen this other times with Super Tetris which appears to write to the same ports as on the Game Gear (possible link play).

So if you handle the IO as if it's on a SMS (only 3 lines mapped) then you will get issues with this game writing to the bios/ram port. Provided of course the gam*boy has this port and it works.

Perhaps though the gam*boy has all of the lines mapped and a different IO chip? Anyone got one they can take the cover off? :) Tommy has been bugging me to add that system but I tell him until it has an actual hardware difference over the Mark III there is no point!
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 12:43 am
Also by "This game" I am talking about Power Boggle Boggle as this is the only one which wasn't working in RetroCopy according to Tommy. So perhaps the others are fine. Sorry I didn't clarify this earlier.
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 12:45 am
I'm pretty sure that JSMS have slot select and RAM disable working.
Korean SMS no reason it should be a different hardware IHMO and it has a Japanese BIOS image.
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:50 am
RetroRalph wrote
Perhaps though the gam*boy has all of the lines mapped and a different IO chip? Anyone got one they can take the cover off?

Is the Gam*Boy the same as the Korean Master System? If so, see here.

Notice that the Korean system does not have the 315-5297 I/O controller found in the Japanese SMS - instead it has the unusual chip next to the joypad sockets.
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:17 am
Wait, there's two models of the Korean Gam*Boy based on the JSMS. One has the FM Unit one doesn't. I'll try to make pictures.
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