{"id":1732,"date":"2015-12-02T22:17:58","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T22:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.system11.org\/?p=1732"},"modified":"2017-05-21T23:01:06","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T23:01:06","slug":"code-archeology-sky-smasher-leads-to-cabal-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/?p=1732","title":{"rendered":"Code archeology &#8211; Sky Smasher leads to Cabal II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found this out a while ago, but haven&#8217;t managed to post about it yet other than mentioning it on IRC and maybe a mailing list.<\/p>\n<p>When I discovered Sky Smasher (which is a great shooter you should try out) by Nihon System, one game element really stuck out as being ahead of its time &#8211; continuous aimed bullet spreads from the larger tanks, a feature now incredibly common in danmaku (bullet hell) type games from a much later era.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/skysmasher_flyer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1733\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/skysmasher_flyer.jpg\" alt=\"skysmasher_flyer\" width=\"1280\" height=\"1815\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/skysmasher_flyer.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/skysmasher_flyer-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/skysmasher_flyer-722x1024.jpg 722w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/skysmasher_flyer-768x1089.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/skysmasher_flyer-1083x1536.jpg 1083w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s known that a lot of staff moved around Japanese companies over the years, so I decided to go looking through the code for hidden credits to see if I could establish a link to staff known to have worked at Toaplan.\u00a0 In the end, I didn&#8217;t find what I was looking for, but I found something arguably more interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Sky Smasher actually uses TAD hardware, it&#8217;s on the exact same PCB as Blood Bros.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bloodbros_flyer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1734\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bloodbros_flyer.jpg\" alt=\"bloodbros_flyer\" width=\"1280\" height=\"1811\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bloodbros_flyer.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bloodbros_flyer-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bloodbros_flyer-724x1024.jpg 724w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bloodbros_flyer-768x1087.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/bloodbros_flyer-1086x1536.jpg 1086w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And while the names were never as far as I&#8217;m aware used together in the same place, Blood Bros is clearly a sequel in spirit to Cabal, using much of the same gameplay, even the victory tune and running into the screen.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal_flyer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1735\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal_flyer.jpg\" alt=\"cabal_flyer\" width=\"723\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal_flyer.jpg 723w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal_flyer-212x300.jpg 212w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 723px) 100vw, 723px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I can reveal that the working title of Blood Bros was in fact <strong>&#8220;<\/strong><strong>Cabal II in West&#8221;<\/strong>.\u00a0 When Sky Smasher was developed, at some point in the process between programming and manufacture, the Sky Smasher code must have been read into a dirty code buffer which at the time contained a development copy of Blood Bros.\u00a0 The end result is a piece of development history which was never supposed to see the light of day (see FFE0h):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal2inwest.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1736\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal2inwest.png\" alt=\"cabal2inwest\" width=\"1239\" height=\"938\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal2inwest.png 1239w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal2inwest-300x227.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal2inwest-1024x775.png 1024w, https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/cabal2inwest-768x581.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1239px) 100vw, 1239px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you want to poke around and look yourself, you&#8217;ll need to interleave rom7 and rom8.\u00a0 I checked the actual Blood Bros code and it&#8217;s been purged from there &#8211; so a fun bit of history hidden in another game!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found this out a while ago, but haven&#8217;t managed to post about it yet other than mentioning it on IRC and maybe a mailing list. When I discovered Sky Smasher (which is a great shooter you should try out) by Nihon System, one game element really stuck out as being ahead of its time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arcade","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.system11.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}