03-26-2023, 12:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-10-2023, 02:41 PM by Yawackhary.)
Have been so busy heavily downsizing my gaming collection that I haven't had much time to rip at all until recently. (goes back to downsizing)
Out of This World
The closest thing to Fantasy Zone on the computer (surprised that it didn't get a port but neither did the original Hang-On or maybe it did start off as one... since it was published by Ariolasoft who originally brought out the Master System in Germany but later pulled out). It does seem unfinished though since there's sort of only one boss in the entire game and there is no HUD and you have to press Enter to view your score and weapon (similar to LED Storm) that is a bit clunky. It is a technical achievement though since it was the first game that uses both horizontal overscan and the rarely used hardware scrolling, this was later refined in BMX Kids, the last Titus games Super Cauldron and Prehistorik 2 as well as modern homebrew.
Nova Blast
This was done for the fill the letters project, this is my first and most likely my last Colecovision rip. So that covers all of the pre-gaming clear-out rips.
Milk Race (Spectrum)
A quickie rip.
Outside of the above, the Amstrad rips are on the backburner and struggling on the Spectrum so decided to do some Commodore 64 rips. Was going to finish off ripping my Terry Gedou Densetsu sheet that I started back in November but looks like I got beaten to the punch yet again... Not complaining at all, Xinos has done a great job and one less rip for me!
As a technical note in case any one is interested. The C64 has 2 main sprite modes, one is monochrome (two colours) like the Spectrum and they are in 8x8 blocks while the other has 4 colours like the NES however has a weird size of 24x21 blocks as generally the 4 colour sprites are on bitplane 3 (but not always). Some games mix and match these modes for the sprites like Hyper Sports where one layer is monochrome and the other is 4 color. Feels weird to say sprites again since most of the other 8 bit computers don't really have them even if some games use character sets instead.
(Oh and because CSFEC uses a general custom palette for the sprites most of these have been recoloured back to how they appear in game. The sprites might not be technically 100% in terms of palette choice however this is just for the background. It's a shame that VICE doesn't have a graphics viewer at all and that's the leading C64 emulator but CSFEC is far easier to use.)
Footballer of the Year
Some games on the C64 do stretch/scale the sprites in game, this is one example.
Night Racer
Invade-a-Load!
When I was ripping Night Racer, this loading game based on Space Invaders popped up. This appeared on quite a fair bit of Mastertronic's games on the C64, even a story was written on how it happened. If only someone was aware of this then Namco wouldn't have patented the idea for nearly 20 years but then again Taito might have complained...
(The hardest thing to do was actually getting an icon, the game is just too difficult for me and getting a half decent one took about 15-20 minutes of gameplay losing 100s of lives, usually getting a Game Over with half or more of the enemies on screen. Only cleared a stage once but died on the 2nd straight away.)
911 Tiger Shark
With a name like that you'll think of a shump but nope. Considered one of the worst games on the C64, even the people who worked on the game used the words "naff" and "lame" to describe it. I would also add the words "crap", "terrible" and "broken" to that list along with "the only good thing that I found was that the Porsche sprite isn't too bad for 1985 standards and only ripped it because I was looking for a number game to add to tSR's C64 section". Then again it was a licensed game for... tires. Not the actual Porsche itself as there are good licensed games such as Porsche Challenge on the PS1 and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Apparently it was going to be sold full price but copies were either dumped onto petrol (gas) stations or given away if you bought Dunlop tyres depending on who you ask. Probably because it was originally mail order but no one actually bought the game once the reviews got out.
Overlander
As mentioned the 3rd sprite suffers from graphic corruption, this is from an original tape dump rather than a cracked version. Still working on the enemies.
Lemans
This was one of HAL Laboratory's pre-Nintendo games, they did a bunch of Commodore stuff (VIC-20, C64) beforehand. Many of their early games was a clone and this was inspired by Monaco GP (with an added "pit" function when you crash your car).
Also ripped from a certain Italian drainage duo, this time a C64 adaptation of a Game & Watch game and a remake before the Game & Watch Gallery series existed. The origins are rather mysterious on where it came from but is a Dutch game done by the scene. For some reason the programmer chose the music from Roland's Rat Race for the game...
(It was actually pretty stressful ripping the MB2 sheets at the time to the point of having a shutdown but recovered the next day.)
Just as a mention; in the future and as shown in my backlog below, my main focus is going to be racing game rips. A lot of my non-racing backlog will just have to be dropped but will try to finish as much as possible. For anyone curious, some WIP progress and pitfalls:
[spoiler]
Due to the clearout, it meant that there were brief days where there was a bit of a late night rip before going to sleep. By mistake one day at 3AM, accidentally posted a WIP post on here but was quickly deleted. Did managed to have a week to work on some rips as well as progress of ones that are on the backburner.
Max Torque
![[Image: 6jTkn4fE48Uu.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/6jTkn4fE48Uu.png)
A few sprites seems to be glitched but unsure whether they are duplicate sprites. The original tape sadly doesn't seem to be dumped, the C64 scene doesn't seem to be as interested in originals unlike the Spectrum and Amstrad scenes where they have both originals and cracks. Outside of that, just need to assemble (even though it's hard to check when the road itself uses black) and get the other palettes.
Burnin' Rubber - The latest version of Caprice Forever can rip the game (yay!) but the sprite viewer is glitchy and more messing about getting it to run as Plus/GX4000 emulation is very temperamental. So far managed to rip 2 sprites!
Yie Ar Kung Fu (Spectrum, using the 128k version) - Already ripped Buchu and Nuncha just after the Dizzy rip but stuck on Star... Just cannot find Star's shuriken anywhere in the graphics. I've tried Spectrum Analyser to see if I can find it but it wasn't much help.
Yie Ar Kung Fu (C64) - Oolong has most of the graphics ripped outside of his jump and death but needs to check the animation then to recolor the sprites.
Sharkey's Moll (Spectrum) - Some of the enemy sprites have been ripped a while ago but just stopped. What I often do is rip from a game then literally forget about it. It's harder to come back to a game when you forgot your progress.
Super Spin (Genesis) - Ripped the three portraits (one that is unused) but stumped on the font. Yet to rip from the cars themselves.
Pole Position (Spectrum) - Got a bit stuck ripping the car as the graphics are stored upside down. Ripped the signs though.
4X4 (Spectrum) - Ripped a bit of the Storm Trooper car.
Overlander (Spectrum) - Ripped the player car but have to do a check before submitting.
Road Racer (Spectrum) - Still hitting a brick wall with the sprite boundaries on an otherwise easy to rip game.. Arrghh...
Titus Classiques - Already ripped from the Space Invaders game and did some progress on Glutton (Pac-Man) and Grand Prix (their Monaco GP styled game). I don't know whether to have both volumes as one game or two...
Pitstop - Trying to find the tires and their palettes as the rest of the car is ripped.
Out Run (C64) - Reripping this one because of a bit of confusion regarding the arrangement and that it was one of my first modern C64 rips with CSFEC. As of writing, have to check the ending sprites (there seems to be only 1 ending in the game) and recolour the sprites. Also didn't realise that the US version has different graphics for the Testarossa, not sure for that to have its own game or using the same section. CSFEC currently only accepts tape and certain cartridges if it is a prg, any time that I boot up a d64 file it refuses to boot and a lot of C64 dumps/cracks/whatever are in disc format. Can however rip using the old fashioned way of C64 Ripper and booting up the US version in VICE making a savestate err... snapshot.
Enduro Racer (C64) -
![[Image: 46Ylzo3eSKDs.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/46Ylzo3eSKDs.png)
Ripped the rider but needs arrangement and recoloring. It seems to use layers on the same video mode so it would have to be assembled. Sadly I can only rip from the tape version so the improved disc version that only came out on an Australian compilation cannot be done for now.
Turbo Out Run (C64) - Partially ripped the F40 with the spinout frames left to do, partially assembled but needs recolouring. Should have it done soon hopefully, it's been a smooth rip.
Dalek Attack - Since it's the last commercially released Spectrum game, I'm trying to wait until the Spectrum backlog clears a bit before finishing. I might have to re-rip this one because it was one of my earliest Spectrum rips.
Angel Neito (Spectrum) - Some confusion regarding the bikes. Forgot the progress on the Amstrad version...
International Soccer - On the checklist, can only rip from the 1988 re-release rather than the Commodore original.
Nigel Mansell's World Championship (Spectrum & Amstrad) - Similar reason to Dalek Attack. The Amstrad 128k disc version is partially ripped in terms of the car but the 64k tape and Spectrum versions have yet to be ripped. There are slight graphical differences between the 3 versions.
Monument - Ripped (most?) of the player however the game manage to crash on me very early on.
Spellbound Dizzy
![[Image: WgEPDTAwlkWz.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/WgEPDTAwlkWz.png)
I need to check regarding the mine cart sprites as those aren't ripped and the graphics for those aren't in the same place as the rest. It also needs sorting out however the walk and jump animations are getting there.
Renegade 3 - Renegade is coming along nicely and done most of Stage 1 enemies. Ripping from the Andrew Deakin/Ivan Horn duo games are lovely to do on the Amstrad (not as much on the Spectrum).
Subway Vigilante (C64) - Watching a gameplay video gave me the idea. The player is ripped but needs sorting out and arranging, the enemy actually shares the same legs as the player. Both this and Renegade 3 are extremely likely to be my last beat 'em up rips.
Off Shore Warrior - Ripped part of the player boat as well as some of the splash (that I have to check on) and started on the enemy boat. This was the last Amstrad game that I was working on before the clearout.
Superstar Soccer (C64) - Ripped the players however would have to check the animations.
Road Trip: Shifting Gears / Gadget Racers (PAL) / Choro Q Advance 2 - Now this is a surprise! Already ripped some of the maps, just have to sheet them.
Top Gear - Have to re-rip the backgrounds due to wrong SNES palette. If I do continue SNES ripping, I'll be offering both palettes with the old school ZSNES/SNES9X palette being the default and the modern bsnes/BizHawk palette as an option. That way it would please well... nearly everyone. As a note the rip will take some time because I know how important the game is for people, my ETA for the sheet will be around December, maybe 2024. Yes, that long but we might see it earlier fingers crossed.
Also some games that I tried to rip from but just couldn't:
Motorbike Madness (Amstrad) - Firstly the disc version wouldn't run as it stuck on the "Pasword" screen so only the tape version works. Neither Mode 1 or 2 on the Graphics Viewer match the sprites that are displayed on screen. I can rip the background tiles as they are in Mode 1 but not of the motorbike.
Turbo Charge (C64) - Crashes on the loading screen on CSFEC, tried both default settings and enabling later C64 models... Tried two different tape rips and even inserted the tape twice but no joy.
Kikstart - Cannot leave the title screen as it's a case of modern computers especially laptops dropping the number pad on the keyboard with no alternative (outside of buying an USB number pad). While I can view the sprites via debug, due to the layering on the monochrome mode it means that cannot verify the sprites. Each sprite has 4 monochrome layers (wheels, frame, saddle, rider), similar in a way to the Footballer of the Year rip.
Slalom (Tronix) - Cannot leave the title screen.
Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 (C64) - Crashes after the loading screen around 996 on the tape counter with debug popping up.
Roland's Rat Race (C64) - Crashes with a white screen with 124 on the tape counter. This is with an original tape dump as well.
Deathchase - The enemy sprites are way too small for me to even attempt and the rider seems to be glitched out. A shame since it's an iconic Spectrum game.
[/spoiler]
Out of This World
RP2-16
Enemies
The closest thing to Fantasy Zone on the computer (surprised that it didn't get a port but neither did the original Hang-On or maybe it did start off as one... since it was published by Ariolasoft who originally brought out the Master System in Germany but later pulled out). It does seem unfinished though since there's sort of only one boss in the entire game and there is no HUD and you have to press Enter to view your score and weapon (similar to LED Storm) that is a bit clunky. It is a technical achievement though since it was the first game that uses both horizontal overscan and the rarely used hardware scrolling, this was later refined in BMX Kids, the last Titus games Super Cauldron and Prehistorik 2 as well as modern homebrew.
Nova Blast
Nova 1
This was done for the fill the letters project, this is my first and most likely my last Colecovision rip. So that covers all of the pre-gaming clear-out rips.
Milk Race (Spectrum)
Cyclist
A quickie rip.
Outside of the above, the Amstrad rips are on the backburner and struggling on the Spectrum so decided to do some Commodore 64 rips. Was going to finish off ripping my Terry Gedou Densetsu sheet that I started back in November but looks like I got beaten to the punch yet again... Not complaining at all, Xinos has done a great job and one less rip for me!
As a technical note in case any one is interested. The C64 has 2 main sprite modes, one is monochrome (two colours) like the Spectrum and they are in 8x8 blocks while the other has 4 colours like the NES however has a weird size of 24x21 blocks as generally the 4 colour sprites are on bitplane 3 (but not always). Some games mix and match these modes for the sprites like Hyper Sports where one layer is monochrome and the other is 4 color. Feels weird to say sprites again since most of the other 8 bit computers don't really have them even if some games use character sets instead.
(Oh and because CSFEC uses a general custom palette for the sprites most of these have been recoloured back to how they appear in game. The sprites might not be technically 100% in terms of palette choice however this is just for the background. It's a shame that VICE doesn't have a graphics viewer at all and that's the leading C64 emulator but CSFEC is far easier to use.)
Footballer of the Year
Players
Some games on the C64 do stretch/scale the sprites in game, this is one example.
Night Racer
Car
Invade-a-Load!
Gameplay Sprites
When I was ripping Night Racer, this loading game based on Space Invaders popped up. This appeared on quite a fair bit of Mastertronic's games on the C64, even a story was written on how it happened. If only someone was aware of this then Namco wouldn't have patented the idea for nearly 20 years but then again Taito might have complained...
(The hardest thing to do was actually getting an icon, the game is just too difficult for me and getting a half decent one took about 15-20 minutes of gameplay losing 100s of lives, usually getting a Game Over with half or more of the enemies on screen. Only cleared a stage once but died on the 2nd straight away.)
911 Tiger Shark
Porsche 911
Obstacles
With a name like that you'll think of a shump but nope. Considered one of the worst games on the C64, even the people who worked on the game used the words "naff" and "lame" to describe it. I would also add the words "crap", "terrible" and "broken" to that list along with "the only good thing that I found was that the Porsche sprite isn't too bad for 1985 standards and only ripped it because I was looking for a number game to add to tSR's C64 section". Then again it was a licensed game for... tires. Not the actual Porsche itself as there are good licensed games such as Porsche Challenge on the PS1 and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Apparently it was going to be sold full price but copies were either dumped onto petrol (gas) stations or given away if you bought Dunlop tyres depending on who you ask. Probably because it was originally mail order but no one actually bought the game once the reviews got out.
Overlander
Overlander
As mentioned the 3rd sprite suffers from graphic corruption, this is from an original tape dump rather than a cracked version. Still working on the enemies.
Lemans
Car
Rival
This was one of HAL Laboratory's pre-Nintendo games, they did a bunch of Commodore stuff (VIC-20, C64) beforehand. Many of their early games was a clone and this was inspired by Monaco GP (with an added "pit" function when you crash your car).
Also ripped from a certain Italian drainage duo, this time a C64 adaptation of a Game & Watch game and a remake before the Game & Watch Gallery series existed. The origins are rather mysterious on where it came from but is a Dutch game done by the scene. For some reason the programmer chose the music from Roland's Rat Race for the game...
(It was actually pretty stressful ripping the MB2 sheets at the time to the point of having a shutdown but recovered the next day.)
Just as a mention; in the future and as shown in my backlog below, my main focus is going to be racing game rips. A lot of my non-racing backlog will just have to be dropped but will try to finish as much as possible. For anyone curious, some WIP progress and pitfalls:
[spoiler]
Due to the clearout, it meant that there were brief days where there was a bit of a late night rip before going to sleep. By mistake one day at 3AM, accidentally posted a WIP post on here but was quickly deleted. Did managed to have a week to work on some rips as well as progress of ones that are on the backburner.
Max Torque
A few sprites seems to be glitched but unsure whether they are duplicate sprites. The original tape sadly doesn't seem to be dumped, the C64 scene doesn't seem to be as interested in originals unlike the Spectrum and Amstrad scenes where they have both originals and cracks. Outside of that, just need to assemble (even though it's hard to check when the road itself uses black) and get the other palettes.
Burnin' Rubber - The latest version of Caprice Forever can rip the game (yay!) but the sprite viewer is glitchy and more messing about getting it to run as Plus/GX4000 emulation is very temperamental. So far managed to rip 2 sprites!
Yie Ar Kung Fu (Spectrum, using the 128k version) - Already ripped Buchu and Nuncha just after the Dizzy rip but stuck on Star... Just cannot find Star's shuriken anywhere in the graphics. I've tried Spectrum Analyser to see if I can find it but it wasn't much help.
Yie Ar Kung Fu (C64) - Oolong has most of the graphics ripped outside of his jump and death but needs to check the animation then to recolor the sprites.
Sharkey's Moll (Spectrum) - Some of the enemy sprites have been ripped a while ago but just stopped. What I often do is rip from a game then literally forget about it. It's harder to come back to a game when you forgot your progress.
Super Spin (Genesis) - Ripped the three portraits (one that is unused) but stumped on the font. Yet to rip from the cars themselves.
Pole Position (Spectrum) - Got a bit stuck ripping the car as the graphics are stored upside down. Ripped the signs though.
4X4 (Spectrum) - Ripped a bit of the Storm Trooper car.
Overlander (Spectrum) - Ripped the player car but have to do a check before submitting.
Road Racer (Spectrum) - Still hitting a brick wall with the sprite boundaries on an otherwise easy to rip game.. Arrghh...
Titus Classiques - Already ripped from the Space Invaders game and did some progress on Glutton (Pac-Man) and Grand Prix (their Monaco GP styled game). I don't know whether to have both volumes as one game or two...
Pitstop - Trying to find the tires and their palettes as the rest of the car is ripped.
Out Run (C64) - Reripping this one because of a bit of confusion regarding the arrangement and that it was one of my first modern C64 rips with CSFEC. As of writing, have to check the ending sprites (there seems to be only 1 ending in the game) and recolour the sprites. Also didn't realise that the US version has different graphics for the Testarossa, not sure for that to have its own game or using the same section. CSFEC currently only accepts tape and certain cartridges if it is a prg, any time that I boot up a d64 file it refuses to boot and a lot of C64 dumps/cracks/whatever are in disc format. Can however rip using the old fashioned way of C64 Ripper and booting up the US version in VICE making a savestate err... snapshot.
Enduro Racer (C64) -
Ripped the rider but needs arrangement and recoloring. It seems to use layers on the same video mode so it would have to be assembled. Sadly I can only rip from the tape version so the improved disc version that only came out on an Australian compilation cannot be done for now.
Turbo Out Run (C64) - Partially ripped the F40 with the spinout frames left to do, partially assembled but needs recolouring. Should have it done soon hopefully, it's been a smooth rip.
Dalek Attack - Since it's the last commercially released Spectrum game, I'm trying to wait until the Spectrum backlog clears a bit before finishing. I might have to re-rip this one because it was one of my earliest Spectrum rips.
Angel Neito (Spectrum) - Some confusion regarding the bikes. Forgot the progress on the Amstrad version...
International Soccer - On the checklist, can only rip from the 1988 re-release rather than the Commodore original.
Nigel Mansell's World Championship (Spectrum & Amstrad) - Similar reason to Dalek Attack. The Amstrad 128k disc version is partially ripped in terms of the car but the 64k tape and Spectrum versions have yet to be ripped. There are slight graphical differences between the 3 versions.
Monument - Ripped (most?) of the player however the game manage to crash on me very early on.
Spellbound Dizzy
I need to check regarding the mine cart sprites as those aren't ripped and the graphics for those aren't in the same place as the rest. It also needs sorting out however the walk and jump animations are getting there.
Renegade 3 - Renegade is coming along nicely and done most of Stage 1 enemies. Ripping from the Andrew Deakin/Ivan Horn duo games are lovely to do on the Amstrad (not as much on the Spectrum).
Subway Vigilante (C64) - Watching a gameplay video gave me the idea. The player is ripped but needs sorting out and arranging, the enemy actually shares the same legs as the player. Both this and Renegade 3 are extremely likely to be my last beat 'em up rips.
Off Shore Warrior - Ripped part of the player boat as well as some of the splash (that I have to check on) and started on the enemy boat. This was the last Amstrad game that I was working on before the clearout.
Superstar Soccer (C64) - Ripped the players however would have to check the animations.
Road Trip: Shifting Gears / Gadget Racers (PAL) / Choro Q Advance 2 - Now this is a surprise! Already ripped some of the maps, just have to sheet them.
Top Gear - Have to re-rip the backgrounds due to wrong SNES palette. If I do continue SNES ripping, I'll be offering both palettes with the old school ZSNES/SNES9X palette being the default and the modern bsnes/BizHawk palette as an option. That way it would please well... nearly everyone. As a note the rip will take some time because I know how important the game is for people, my ETA for the sheet will be around December, maybe 2024. Yes, that long but we might see it earlier fingers crossed.
Also some games that I tried to rip from but just couldn't:
Motorbike Madness (Amstrad) - Firstly the disc version wouldn't run as it stuck on the "Pasword" screen so only the tape version works. Neither Mode 1 or 2 on the Graphics Viewer match the sprites that are displayed on screen. I can rip the background tiles as they are in Mode 1 but not of the motorbike.
Turbo Charge (C64) - Crashes on the loading screen on CSFEC, tried both default settings and enabling later C64 models... Tried two different tape rips and even inserted the tape twice but no joy.
Kikstart - Cannot leave the title screen as it's a case of modern computers especially laptops dropping the number pad on the keyboard with no alternative (outside of buying an USB number pad). While I can view the sprites via debug, due to the layering on the monochrome mode it means that cannot verify the sprites. Each sprite has 4 monochrome layers (wheels, frame, saddle, rider), similar in a way to the Footballer of the Year rip.
Slalom (Tronix) - Cannot leave the title screen.
Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 (C64) - Crashes after the loading screen around 996 on the tape counter with debug popping up.
Roland's Rat Race (C64) - Crashes with a white screen with 124 on the tape counter. This is with an original tape dump as well.
Deathchase - The enemy sprites are way too small for me to even attempt and the rider seems to be glitched out. A shame since it's an iconic Spectrum game.
[/spoiler]