Four new releases today, including proper clarification on the various dumps of Olympic Gold.

First we have Super Battletank for the Game Gear, an original title based on so-called "Operation Desert Storm". Unlike EA's attempt at cashing-in from an ongoing murder party with 'Desert Strike', Super Battletank is absolutely awful to play, with not an element to save it from gameplay misery.

Heavy weight Champ for the Gear Gear, Japanese version (ヘビーウェイト チャンプ), decent boxing game. Apparently this version was only released in Japan. Notice the spelling "Heavy weight" with a space, which was corrected for the exported Master System.

Star Wars for the Game Gear, European dump, which is only a minor header change from the US dump.

Last we have Taiwanese/Pirate dump of Olympic Gold for the Game Gear, which is simply an hack over the original version of game to permit running it on unlicensed cartridges.

Here's a run down of all correct Olympic Gold dumps, now all verified and confirmed. All other are bad dumps AFAIK.

Code:

It is still possible that we find out that some dumps got released in other countries (eg: the supposedly Korean dump), but all those CRC32 at least are correct variations of the game, one being an unlicensed modification. I have included all five dumps on the download page.

Two - almost similar - releases today.

- First is Olympic Gold for the Master System, European version, confirmed from European, English, French, German, Spanish and Australian cartridges. Although this was dumped a LONG time ago, confirming various versions including the Game Gear ones - soon to be all released - took quite a bit of time. I'm now done with them and very happy to be over with this game.

- Second is Olympic Gold for the Master System, Korean cartridge, which unlike what's expected doesn't contain any Korean text and include all the regular European languages. So the exact difference between this and the regular European dump is unknown so far. Thanks for Raccoon Lad for providing the Korean cartridge for this game!

The only reason I'm not releasing the various Game Gear dumps right now is that I don't have them handy but I will shortly.

Two Japanese dumps today.

First we have a variation of Aerial Assault for the Game Gear (エアリアルアサルト). The code only include a minor change related to the game initialization process, and I believe is related to Game Gear with or without BIOS (someone in the forum will probably analyze this in more depth).

Second we have Garou Densetsu Special for the Game Gear (餓狼伝説スペシャル), Japanese version of Fatal Fury Special, as ported by Takara from its original NeoGeo version. Graphics were scaled in a way that looking close at them they appear awful, but in the end the original animation key frames are respected with good detail.

See you soon for more dumps!

Good folks at Sonic Retro have uncovered the ROM image for Sonic's Edusoft, an educational software for the Master System that we have been discussing last year. It was aimed at kid, so hopefully nobody should be in trouble to play the game :)



We have a discussion thread running here.

Note that due a programming error, the game is not compatible with all Master System BIOS configurations and not will all emulators/settings. We may release a patch for it to function on all BIOS. In the meanwhile there is a fix for meka here. Follow the discussion thread for infos on how to get it running with various emulators.

Yet another baseball game, and I think this was the last unreleased one!
Pro Yakyuu GG League for the Game Gear (プロ野球 GG League), first version from 1993 of the game that was later updated in a '94 version. As with other baseball games using a similar engine, the cartridge embed a small 128-byte EEPROM to store save data (team configuration, etc.).
Thanks to Yuki and BFC for helping with this one!

More Game Gear catching up!

Today we have Tatakae! Pro Yakyuu Twin League for the Game Gear (闘え! プロ野球ツインリーグ), another baseball game, a popular genre in Japan with quite many titles for the Game Gear.

Some more in line:

Joe Montana Football for the Game Gear, in its export (US/European) version. The already available dump being confirmed as coming from a Japanese cartridge.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the Game Gear is a 1-byte fix of the existing, old incorrect dump. And Madden 96 for the Game Gear a 27-bytes fix of the existing, old incorrect dump. Both reconfirmed from original cartridges, and it is rather obvious when analyzing the byte pattern that the old ones are incorrect/altered dumps and not legit variations.

To people maintaining ROM databases and working with the meka.nam file: please refer to the latest meka.nam from SVN which is more up to date than the version in latest MEKA release.