Strider. According to M.A.M.E. you get a bonus life at: 1) 20k, 60k 2) 30k, 60k 3) 20k, 40k, 60k 4) 30k, 50k, 70k. As a matter of fact, if you choose settings 1 or 3 you never win a life at 20k. My knowledge of the game is not such as to allow me to check at which points you actually win the bonus lives. However, I consulted the arcade manual and found out the settings are the same as Ghouls’n Ghosts, i.e. 1) 30k, 60k, every 70k 2) 10k, 30k, every 30k 3) 20k, 50k, every 70k 4) 40k, 70k, every 80k. M.A.M.E. emulation of the Dip Sw department appears to be inaccurate. Ghouls’n Ghosts. According to Mark Longridge’s web page, the TG settings of this game require that all (the six) “unknowns” are set on position “on”. But after thorough examination (I think I can have my say on this) I can safely claim that turning those switches “on” does not affect the gameplay in any way. It makes absolutely no difference whether they’re “on” or “off”, which means that, as far as difficulty goes, TG settings = default settings. Why should they change anything, after all? The CPS1 motherboard (which is the same for all CPS1 games) has three Dip Sw banks containing each 8 switches. As can be expected, the settings are basically the same for all CPS1 games, but some of these games may have some features others don’t have. Let’s compare Strider and Ghouls Dip Sw (I refer to the respective arcade manuals): the first bank, Dip Sw (A), which concerns the coin settings, is identical in every respect: sw 1, 2, 3 (coin 1), sw 4, 5, 6 (coin 2) and sw 7, 8 unused. The second bank, Dip Sw (B), concerns difficulty levels (sw 1, 2, 3) and bonus extend (sw 5, 6). Sw 7, 8 are not used. The only difference is that Strider has an option Ghouls does not have, i.e. “2 coins/play 1 coin continue”, which is set by sw 4. Since Ghouls does not have this option, sw 4 is not used in this game and will therefore be one of the “unknowns” reported in the M.A.M.E. version. The essential point is that it does not set “something else”, it is simply not used. In the case of Strider, the third bank, Dip Sw (C), has the following options: number of player (sw 1, 2), screen stop (called “freeze” in M.A.M.E.) (sw 3), free play (sw 4), screen normal /flip (sw 5), sound during demo (sw 6), continue (sw 7), game/test mode (sw 8). Strider therefore makes use of all eight switches on bank C. In the case of Ghouls, the Dip Sw are exactly the same except for sw 3 and 4, as Ghouls does not have the “screen stop” (but see the note at the end, below) and “free play” options. And in fact, if you see the arcade manual, these switches are blank. And they are blank because they’re not used, not because they set some other mysterious parameters. Summing up, we have two unused switches (7, 8) on bank A for both Ghouls and Strider; three unused switches (4, 7, 8) on bank (B) for Ghouls and only two (7, 8) for Strider; two unused switches (3, 4) on bank (C) for Ghouls. Thus, Ghouls have a total of seven unused switches and Strider four, whereas according to M.A.M.E. the former has six and the latter two. These inconsistencies (as well as that mentioned in the note at the end) show once again that the emulation of the Dip Sw department is not accurate. Back to the main issue: the upshot is that the rule of setting “all unknowns on” in Ghouls has no reason to exist and should be eliminated. It may be worth noting that, as far as difficulty goes, the factory setting recommended by the arcade manuals of both Strider and Ghouls is “B”, which corresponds to “very easy” on M.A.M.E. Also worth noting in this connection is the fact that Ghouls and Strider have a “computer aided difficulty adjustment” (Ghouls was the first Capcom game to display this innovative feature). It would be too complicated to go into details (for which I refer to the arcade manuals), suffice it to to say that difficulty level is automatically raised if player is still playing after a certain amount of time (from 45” to 1’30”, depending on setting) and then it increases every 10” or 15” (again, depending on setting). When player dies difficulty is dropped to the immediately preceding level. If you manage to stay alive enough time it starts to increase again and so on. There are sixteen internal difficulty levels set by eight external levels. Therefore, if you start at external difficulty level 4 (“normal”) and go through the whole game with the first life (as I did in my 266,300 pts game) you’ll actually be playing 3/4 or so of the game at the hardest difficulty level, which does not mean external difficulty level 8 (called “hardest” on M.A.M.E.), since that starts at internal difficulty level 9 (out of 16), but at internal 16 (after which it does not increase anymore). I also started playing at external level 8 (“hardest” on M.A.M.E.) and finished the game with the first life (final score 264,600 pts) and can safely confirm the above is true: after a while the difficulty level is exactly the same.

Note. It must be added that it’s impossible to play the U.S. and the Japanese (Dai Makaimura) versions of Ghouls with the alleged TG settings, as when you turn the fourth “unknown” on, the screen... stops! It would seem, then, that that switch sets the “screen stop” (or “freeze”) option. But we have seen above that according to the arcade manual (and I refer to the U.S. manual), which is certainly more reliable than the M.A.M.E. team on this matter (keep in mind the mess they did with the Strider bonus settings), Ghouls does not have this option.

PS. Strider arcade manual can be found here: www.arcadeflyers.com/strider/ Ghouls’n Ghosts arcade manual can be found here: www.appolo.com

-- Michele "dances with ghouls" Nassivera (MKL) (m_nassivera@yahoo.it), October 05, 2001

Answers

"It would be too complicated to go into details".......

Jeez..just as well you didn`t :-))

Cheers,

AL

-- AL (alexweir@indigo.ie), October 05, 2001.

I don't think this is the right place to discuss TG settings? But I'll aggree with you if you've played with the unkown dipswitches set and they make no difference (other than making a difference in the clones by freezing the game) they probably don't have to be turned on... there is no such thing in the marp ghouls game so default recordings are obviously welcomed? not sure of the point of this although it's pretty interesting when someone discovers what unkown dip switches mean :)

-- Chad (churritz@crash.cts.com), October 06, 2001.

MARP players aren't constrained to use TG settings except in a few cases where the games degenerate into mind-numbing marathons. Sometimes the games are inherently harder in MAME than they are in the arcades, Star Wars is a good example, so even though Star Wars is marathonable, no one has marathoned it in MAME. Back in MAME 30 when INPs first made an appearance lots of games didn't read the dip switches at all. Also sometimes the dip switches don't do anything, even in the original arcade version. I spend years trying to figure out what the dip switches did in Carnival, after reading the manual to the game I now know they don't do anything.

In some other games, it's not very clear what exactly the dip switches do. The original TG list of settings was based on the arcade games up to 1985, so naturally games after this were not included. I've extended that list as best I could. Of course there are tons of games I've never played, and to rigorous test every game to see if the dip switches actually do what they do in the arcade version seems an almost impossible task. Certainly it will be years yet before all the dip switches are well tested.

I'm aware that the MAME emulation isn't perfect. The controls aren't going to be as good for one thing. Not all circuitry is emulated either, in the pac games the watch dog timer isn't emulated. I'm sure there are other games aside from Ghouls and Ghosts which didn't get all the dip switches right.

All I can say with absolute certainty is that all the games I own have the emulation and dip switches correct. I can easily compare that Blockout, Joust, Ataxx, SF2 CE, SF2 Hyperfighting and Dig Dug all are emulated correctly. In the case of Blockout the dip switches were all labeled "unknown" at one point, and I pointed out that certain dip switches were used, and other ones were not, so that information was added. But in a lot of the cases the owners of the games aren't telling the MAME Dev people about which games have the dip switches wrong.

Generally the situation has got a _lot_ better since the days of MAME version 30, but it's not perfect. I expect MAME will keep improving. And the TG settings for MAME are not completely inflexible. If someone emailed me saying "I didn't follow TG settings because the dips don't work in MAME" I'd definitely still accept the score. In the future if the dips were corrected I can always make 2 categories for that game... Default and Tournament.

-- Mark Longridge (zero1@look.ca), October 06, 2001.

If your information are correct,please submit them to the MAME testers homepage.Since MAMEdev should check by tries to get correct DIPSWs if they don't have a manual,it's afaik better to to share these iformations to them.Also,can be a Strider in-game bug the 20k life,if you can get 2 lives at a certain point...

-- Kale (angelo.salese@tin.it), October 07, 2001.