| paleface [sys=PC; cat=Action_Variety; reg=NA] |
| | | 18 Irem arcade games are included in the Irem Arcade Hits collection:
Air Duel
Battle Chopper
Blade Master
Cosmic Cop
Dragon Breed
Gunforce
Gun Force II
Hammerin' Harry
Image Fight
In the Hunt
Kung-Fu Master
Legend of Hero Tonma
Mystic Riders
Ninja Spirit
R-Type Leo
Superior Soldiers
Undercover Cops
Vigilante
The collection runs in a horrible DotEmu emulator job. However, the ROMs can be extracted from the trial version (http://games1.gamefools.com/downloads/installers/IremArcadeHitsInstaller.exe) or the retail version ($2.99 from GameFools, but automatically enlisted me in monthly $14.99 charges for their game service thing until I canceled, so I'm not going to link to it; I ended up doing my extraction from the trial version rather than the retail one--although I think they're actually the same self-installing .exe, it's just that when you get the retail one they insert your user name and unlock code into the filename ; D) per the directions here (for Windows, they require installing and running Windows Subsystem for Linux, aka WSL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install): https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/wiki/Irem-Arcade-Hits
Note: when I tried following the guide for Windows, step 3, downloading the script, failed due to some kind of write permission for the Irem Arcade Hits game rom folder. So I copied it to a separate directory and continued from there.
Here's the guide, copied crudely from that github page as a back-up--just the Windows part (there's also a Mac guide):
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For Windows, follow these instructions using WSL.
Open up a terminal window and navigate to the to the "gamefiles\Games\roms" folder inside your Irem Arcade Hits install.
For WSL, the easiest way to do this is to open the folder in Windows explorer and type bash into the address bar.
Install the required dependencies by running:
sudo apt install nodejs zip wget busybox
Download the dotemu2mame.js conversion script by running:
wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/cxx/81b9f45eb5b3cb87b4f3783ccdf8894f/raw/5b5e677d2d904071888fe7ea08a83c50ab9ba1cb/dotemu2mame.js
Download another script that converts the game files to the Mac format that dotemu2mame.js uses:
wget https://github.com/farmerbb/RED-Project/releases/download/tools/irem-convert-win-to-mac.sh
Run the Windows-to-Mac script with:
chmod +x irem-convert-win-to-mac.sh
./irem-convert-win-to-mac.sh
Finally, run the dotemu2mame.js script with:
node dotemu2mame.js converted
The converted games are saved as *.zip files inside the "roms" folder.
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The process gave me this list of roms:
airduelm72.zip
bchopper.zip
bmaster.zip
cosmccop.zip
dbreedm72.zip
gunforc2.zip
gunforce.zip
hharry.zip
imgfight.zip
inthunt.zip
kungfum.zip
loht.zip
mysticri.zip
nspirit.zip
rtypeleo.zip
ssoldier.zip
uccops.zip
vigilantbl.zip
I couldn't get the extracted roms to run in current MAME, version 0.253. Most of them did run from the command line of MAME 0.119, from 2007 (the last non-64-bit MAME); I ran them with something like the following:
mame [rom name] -video gdi -waitvsync -volume -10
Image Fight and Vigilante didn't run in MAME 0.119. Air Duel ran once I changed the file name from airduelm72 to airduel, and Dragon Breed ran after I changed the file name from dbreedm72 to dbreed72.
Vigilante ran in MAME 0.78 (2003 :P; I jumped back there from 0.100, which didn't run it, so there could be something more recent in between that does) once I renamed it from vigilantbl to vigilant.
Went as far back as MAME 0.56 (2001) with Image Fight without any luck (then I tried 1997's MAME 0.29 but that doesn't run in 64-bit Windows : P).
12 of the games scanned successfully in the latest release FinalBurn Neo: Blade Master, Cosmic Cop, Dragon Breed (named dbreedm72), Gun Force II, Gunforce, Hammerin' Harry, In The Hunt, Mystic Riders, Ninja Spirit, R-Type Leo, Superior Soldiers, and Undercover Cops.
(The guide said "All 18 games in this compilation can be extracted and run using FinalBurn Neo" (extracted via the scripts and process in the guide, they mean, not via FBN), so maybe I'm doing something wrong with FBN; I'm not too interested in using it after finding, six years ago, that FinalBurn Alpha ran KOF 2000 with a few more frames of input lag than MAME on my old computer : P: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT1uEUFcTfA .) |
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| | | | Gun Force II aka "Geo Storm" in Japan; the Gun Force games were made by the team that would become Nazca, creators of the similar "Metal Slug" sprite-intensive run-n-gun games. |
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| | | | Oh yeah the Nazca folks also did In the Hunt, and kept doing similar submarine sprite shooter stuff in Metal Slugs. ; ) |
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| | | | Probably not gonna do -waitvsync actually, since these arcade games may not be quite 60 fps anyway (have to use OBS's ~59.94 fps setting). |
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| | | | Ah, Superior Soldiers was also a Nazca job, according to Wikipedia. It's a fighting game that seemed to have screen flash FX after nearly every hit in the very brief look I took at it. 8 o And rather underwhelming pixel art, particularly for Nazca. |
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| | | | Taking vsync out of the command line. ^ _^ I'd thought I'd needed it for recording games well but doesn't seem to be the case, at least for the ones I've checked now; and they're mostly noticeably more responsive with it off, whee! : ) |
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| | | Kung-Fu Master was ported to loads of things. It's on a PS1 Japanese three-game compilation (10 Yard Fight and some driving game) where the graphics look spot-on to the arcade, and it's got the same stiff forward jump: you can jump diagonally forward, but you have to have been moving forward first; if you try up-forward from standing, it will only jump up.
Wikipedia stuff:
The NES port, "Kung Fu," was by Miyamoto. (I THINK you can forward jump normally in that.) TCRF says "It's notable for being an obscenely rare (if not the only) instance of Nintendo porting an arcade game they did not develop."
Kung-Fu Master is "Spartan X" in Japan and was based on the Jackie Chan movie "Meals on Wheels"--called "Spartan X" in Japan. =p The stage set-up was based on the Bruce Lee movie "Game of Death."
The arcade game was by Takashi Nishiyama, who had done Moon Patrol and would go on to do tons of stuff like Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, and KOF, and found Dimps.
There's a non-Nishiyama sequel on Famicom called "Spartan X 2"; doesn't quite seem to have the zip, and has a different, much more visually detailed militaristic theme. It's a bit expensive on eBay--so's the PS1 version, which I may have just accidentally bought before I remembered this PC compilation (hopefully the seller in Japan, from whom I've bought stuff before, will let me cancel the purchase). |
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| | | | GameFools is no longer selling the collection, according to the game page--but the "demo" installer download URL above still works, and it's the same file as the retail version (which was just a registration code basically) and the ROMs can still be extracted from it. GameFools is weird. |
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| | | | Ah Irem Arcade Hits is still for sale from other places online--even Apple's store! |
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