(WIP) Luca Elia: Pirate Flags - 模擬器

2015.12.28

幾年前在湯姆熊還有看過這台，可惜沒實際去玩過。

"Pirate Flags"

Jaleco produced a number of electro-mechanical games over the years, games
where the cabinet itself is key to the enjoyment of the experience. I'm
thinking about Arm Champs and Arm Champs II, arm wrestling simulations that
sported an actual hydraulic arm (flyer). Or the World PK Soccer series
(flyer) where you can kick a soccer ball mock-up.

The funniest I've emulated though is Scud Hammer. In that crazy thing you
play a rock-paper-scissors game with the most clichéd of Japanese
characters. When you win, a puppet head springs out of the cab, and you have
to hit it with a plastic hammer as hard as you can. Nice to blow off steam at
the end of a stressful day! In MAME that is simulated via an analog port
(e.g. mouse position) that reports the effect of the hit on the
accelerometer.

One of the problems with such games from a MAME/preservation perspective is
that, for a start, they're much more difficult to get hold of for dumping.
And even then, you usually have to acquire the whole cab together with the
PCB. As you can imagine, this poses some non-trivial issues of logistics and
price. Indeed, a few of these games are still undumped, such as the original
Arm Champs.

When recently one such game, Captain Flag (full cab and all) was spotted by
coolmod (a member of The Dumping Union), we knew we didn't want to pass on
it. It's a pirate themed redemption game released in 1993. It features a cool
electro-mechanical torso, with the screen as "face", and moving arms. They
hold a red and a white flag and mimic the player's vertical movements on two
joysticks. A video of the cabinet in action can be found online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC2WgZ6NY10&feature=player_embedded

Coolmod, with the help of a friend, took it upon himself to get this beauty
dumped and documented. This required moving the cab (a two-day job) and
involved a 350-mile trek to get the PCBs (two full boards and a sub-board).
Smitdogg also helped with the dumping and Ryan with the funding. Manual and
schematics were included:

http://www.lucaelia.com/images/mame_snaps/captflag/captflag_cabinet.jpg
http://www.lucaelia.com/images/mame_snaps/captflag/captflag_pcb.jpg

http://www.lucaelia.com/images/mame_snaps/captflag/captflag_assembly_small.jpg

worked on the emulation, since the hardware (minus the cab specifics) is the
same as Arm Champs and Scud Hammer, emulated in cischeat.cpp (that I wrote).
One of the hurdles of course was the need to simulate, at least to some
degree, the mechanical parts of the cabinet. Even when they're merely
cosmetic and not involved with the player inputs, as in this case, the
software will still hang and complain loudly if the actuators or sensors do
not respond according to their specs!

Below are the results. Jaleco games are usually of high quality and as you
can see this is no exception with nicely drawn cartoony graphics and smooth
animation. It's a polished game albeit, as most redemption games, quite
repetitive and short:

遊戲截圖恕略，請直接至來源處瀏覽

Below is a video of the current WIP emulation in MAME. Note that the flags at
the sides are not part of the screen, but a simulation of the mechanical
arms, done with MAME's Artwork system, to provide a visual feedback of the
cabinet state to the player (eventually actual images extracted from photos
of the cabinet should replace this crude approximation):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfpFelSrk5w&feature=player_embedded

If you're wondering what the heck is happening in that video... the game is
in Japanese and rather difficult to play if you don't understand the
language: the player has to quickly react to the phrases uttered in an
excited and confusing way by your opponent (don't expect fair play from a
pirate!)

The buccaneer challenges you, to raise or lower one flag or the other. Or
sometimes to *not* perform said action. Fortunately there aren't many
variations, and even us gaikokujin can beat the game with some effort. This
cheat-sheet should come handy:

http://www.lucaelia.com/mame.php/2015/Pirate-Flags

I actually cheated to win those two rounds... the P key in MAME is your
friend.

來源 http://www.lucaelia.com/mame.php/2015/Pirate-Flags

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ポーラステーション
http://perry0517a.blogspot.tw/

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