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Sega 8-bit summer continues with two new releases today!

Let's start with the yet adorable FA Tetris (에프에이 테트리스) for the Samsung Gam*Boy / Sega Mark III, an original Tetris clone developped in Korea in 1989. Originally released for MSX, the already obscure release was adapted to the local Sega Master System system. Despite being only a Tetris clone (a competent one, that is) this game breathes love from the developer and has an overal healthly "garage" feeling to it.

As a side note I recommend to our readers who haven't done so already to check out Derboo's excellent article A History of Korean Gaming which covers this era of Korean gaming development.

To follow on our recently established tradition of focusing on games solely based on animals, we have Flicky [v1] (フリッキー) for the SG-1000, an updated build of the classic arcade game port on the SG-1000.

As reverse engineered by our private ROM investigator Paul Baker, the v1 build is essentially a bug fix update of the game code. The original v0 had a bug where sound wouldn't be properly cut off on pause, and it was possible to play with both controllers. Updated v1 has a workaround against the sound bug and removes the possibility to play with both controllers (was it a bad thing, really?). It's uncertain whether the builds have other noticeable differences.

Have fun, and stay tuned for ever-continuing Sega 8-bit summer!

This message will auto destruct itself someday.

fa_tetris-sms-kr.zip (21.22 KB)

flicky-v1-sg.zip (13.96 KB)

For references here's Paul mail about what he found on Flicky differences:

Comparing Flicky-Alt.sg (CRC32 26d2862c) to the previously released
Flicky.sg (CRC32 bd24d27b) reveals two clear differences:

1. Sometimes when pausing Flicky.sg, the PSG is not correctly silenced:
a constant tone continues playing. While Flicky.sg does immediately mute
the PSG on pausing the game (by writing 0x9f, 0xbf, 0xdf, 0xff to port
0x7f), for some reason this does not always work. Flicky-Alt.sg does not
have this bug: it moves the muting code into the IRQ handler, writing
the bytes on every interrupt (once per frame?) while the game is paused.

2. Flicky.sg allows the game to be played with either joypad, whereas
Flicky-Alt.sg only allows pad 1 to be used. However, Flicky-Alt.sg still
contains pieces of the pad 2 code, including at least one completely
redundant sequence of instructions: "rl c; rl c; rr c; rr c", starting
at address 0x27ee.

There may be other differences between the ROMs, but based on these two
I think we can safely conclude that Flicky-Alt.sg is newer than
Flicky.sg: the ROM with CRC32 bd24d27b should be [v0] and that with
CRC32 26d2862c should be [v1].

One further difference between the Flicky variants: v1 places many variables 0x44 bytes later in RAM than v0, in order to increase the space available for the stack (0xc000-0xc084 in v0, 0xc000-0xc0c8 in v1).

Perhaps it is possible, in extreme circumstances, for v0 to suffer a stack overflow?

This was previously attached but in a different thread

FA Tetris (KR) [HACK+MAPPER].ips (14 B)

Author	Message
Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8648 Location: Paris, France	FA Tetris (SMS/KR), Flicky [v1] (SG/JP) Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 7:46 am
	Sega 8-bit summer continues with two new releases today! Let's start with the yet adorable FA Tetris (에프에이 테트리스) for the Samsung GamBoy / Sega Mark III, an original Tetris clone developped in Korea in 1989. Originally released for MSX, the already obscure release was adapted to the local Sega Master System system. Despite being only a Tetris clone (a competent one, that is) this game breathes love from the developer and has an overal healthly "garage" feeling to it. As a side note I recommend to our readers who haven't done so already to check out Derboo's excellent article A History of Korean Gaming which covers this era of Korean gaming development. To follow on our recently established tradition of focusing on games solely based on animals, we have Flicky [v1]* (フリッキー) for the SG-1000, an updated build of the classic arcade game port on the SG-1000. As reverse engineered by our private ROM investigator Paul Baker, the v1 build is essentially a bug fix update of the game code. The original v0 had a bug where sound wouldn't be properly cut off on pause, and it was possible to play with both controllers. Updated v1 has a workaround against the sound bug and removes the possibility to play with both controllers (was it a bad thing, really?). It's uncertain whether the builds have other noticeable differences. Have fun, and stay tuned for ever-continuing Sega 8-bit summer!

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8648 Location: Paris, France	Temporary Transitional Attachment Fairy Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 7:51 am
	This message will auto destruct itself someday. fa_tetris-sms-kr.zip (21.22 KB) flicky-v1-sg.zip (13.96 KB)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8648 Location: Paris, France	Flicky differences Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 8:17 am
	For references here's Paul mail about what he found on Flicky differences: Comparing Flicky-Alt.sg (CRC32 26d2862c) to the previously released Flicky.sg (CRC32 bd24d27b) reveals two clear differences: 1. Sometimes when pausing Flicky.sg, the PSG is not correctly silenced: a constant tone continues playing. While Flicky.sg does immediately mute the PSG on pausing the game (by writing 0x9f, 0xbf, 0xdf, 0xff to port 0x7f), for some reason this does not always work. Flicky-Alt.sg does not have this bug: it moves the muting code into the IRQ handler, writing the bytes on every interrupt (once per frame?) while the game is paused. 2. Flicky.sg allows the game to be played with either joypad, whereas Flicky-Alt.sg only allows pad 1 to be used. However, Flicky-Alt.sg still contains pieces of the pad 2 code, including at least one completely redundant sequence of instructions: "rl c; rl c; rr c; rr c", starting at address 0x27ee. There may be other differences between the ROMs, but based on these two I think we can safely conclude that Flicky-Alt.sg is newer than Flicky.sg: the ROM with CRC32 bd24d27b should be [v0] and that with CRC32 26d2862c should be [v1].

RetroSpark Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 488 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 9:06 am
	One further difference between the Flicky variants: v1 places many variables 0x44 bytes later in RAM than v0, in order to increase the space available for the stack (0xc000-0xc084 in v0, 0xc000-0xc0c8 in v1). Perhaps it is possible, in extreme circumstances, for v0 to suffer a stack overflow?

bsittler Joined: 22 Apr 2018 Posts: 530	Sega mapper compatibility patch for FA Tetris Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2023 4:38 pm
bsittler Joined: 22 Apr 2018 Posts: 530	This was previously attached but in a different thread FA Tetris (KR) [HACK+MAPPER].ips (14 B)

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View topic - FA Tetris (SMS/KR), Flicky [v1] (SG/JP)