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Super Real Darwin – a confusing and bizarre sequel to the equally unusual Darwin 4078.\u00a0 Your ship can evolve in different ways, I’ve never actually managed to work out how all the possible combinations happen, but it’s actually possible to end up with a dud ship.\u00a0 Really great music in this one too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Top Secret – Japanese version of Bionic Commando.\u00a0 Back in the day Capcom did some strange things.\u00a0 For this game as well as fixing numerous bugs when making BC, they also redrew most of the sprites to give them a more serious look with heavier shading.\u00a0 Not sure why one of the four top ROM labels is missing, it’s missing on every Top Secret I’ve seen.\u00a0 If you see one for sale and notice grey blocking behind the logo, this is normal – MAME is wrong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Quiz & Dragons – Well polished quiz game from Capcom where your path is dictated by dice rolls.\u00a0 I find a lot of the questions very difficult since they’re US-centric.\u00a0 I’ll need to do something about that suicide battery, it’s still running on the original.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mug Smashers – very unusual Italian\/British (as far as I can tell) joint project.\u00a0 It’s a scrolling fighter which looks cheap and awful but but they really put some effort in, small graphical touches like an animated poster in the first level, trying desperately to match the quality of games like Crime Fighters.\u00a0 Someone removed all the capacitor packs from this one, very ugly hack repair but I need someone else who owns the game to tell me what the part numbers should be.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meta Fox – vertical shooter from Seta, only took this as part of the trade because I wanted Darwin above, it’s up for sale with original art.\u00a0 Epic heavily compressed boss music with rock vocals but the game isn’t much to talk about.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dark Seal – it was cheap and in very good shape, and I didn’t own one at the time.\u00a0 Controls are a bit akward due to the isometric presentation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gundhara – unusual and possibly unauthorised Chinese board.\u00a0 It’s covered with legitimate parts and appears to come from the same factory as original Allumer boards.\u00a0 It’s definitely come from the same people as the strange Daioh I posted recently, it seems likely the factory was making games it shouldn’t have been on the side.\u00a0 This arrived with a pretty ugly sound fault, seemed to be a faulty PAL which controls which sample ROM should be active.\u00a0 I had to come up with an interesting repair, posted it a few days ago.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Big Twin – finally found the adult version of this.\u00a0 It’s not a very good game, just one for the collection.\u00a0 Be careful of the regulators on these Playmark boards, they like to go bad and cook.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Contra – now this is a really interesting one.\u00a0 It’s in English but the code is closer to the Japanese release, with no provision for cocktail tables or single player controls.\u00a0 The riser boards and socketed PROMs with hand-made-with-Konami-ones labels suggest it’s a very early board, potentially a location test.\u00a0 This might explain why cocktail\/1P modes appeared later if this was raised as a concern by Western operators.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n