How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

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MaximRecoil
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How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by MaximRecoil »

I know the C board and ROMs are different, but what about the A and B boards?
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by Spork »

You could maybe get someone to hack up the roms to work but even then the A board wouldn't be correct because CE used the 12 Mhz Dash. I think it's a bad idea and a better one is just sell it and buy a CE.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by pulstar »

Spork wrote:You could maybe get someone to hack up the roms to work but even then the A board wouldn't be correct because CE used the 12 Mhz Dash. I think it's a bad idea and a better one is just sell it and buy a CE.
Wasn't it Hyper Fighting that used the Dash (12mhz) A board? I agree though, it'll be a better idea (and probably easier) to just find a CE boardset.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by Spork »

They both used the Dash. Hyper Fighting was a rom upgrade for CE. The whole upgrade kit was 3 roms with Capcom holostickers.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by MaximRecoil »

Spork wrote:You could maybe get someone to hack up the roms to work but even then the A board wouldn't be correct because CE used the 12 Mhz Dash. I think it's a bad idea and a better one is just sell it and buy a CE.
I'm not specifically looking for a CE boardset. I have two TWW boardsets, one fully working and the other has a bad C-board (specifically, the CPS-B-05 chip is bad, causing the game to have no sync with the monitor). At the very least I'm going to have to replace the C-board, and if I find a C-board that has a different version of the CPS-B chip (such as CPS-B-17 like my other SFII: TWW has), then I'll have to replace/reburn the ROMs too. So I figured that if CE was just a different C-board and ROM set, it would expand my options when looking for a replacement.

I don't understand why Capcom did things the way they did. The idea behind the CP system was to save time and money by not having to create a new hardware platform for every game. That should mean you can just swap ROMs to convert any CPS-1 game to any other CPS-1 game, just like you can with the arcade Neo Geo platform, or the Nintendo PlayChoice platform. But instead of doing that, they made forty-eleven hardware differences among most of games anyway, while calling them all CPS-1.

I doubt there was any legitimate requirement to change anything other than the ROMs in order for them to create CE. CE doesn't play significantly, if any, faster than TWW, nor does it have any new characters or stages. The differences between the two games are very minor, i.e., the 4 boss characters became playable by humans whereas they were formerly only playable by the computer, the same character became selectable by both players, and there were some minor tweaks to certain moves, animations, and colors.

I bet that someone who knew what they were doing could do nothing more than modify the TWW ROMs and turn it into a game that's indistinguishable from CE, which would prove that all those hardware changes that Capcom did were completely unnecessary. And they definitely didn't need to have 7+ different versions of the CPS-B chip (most or none of which are compatible with each other) for 7+ different revisions of the TWW ROM set. Those revisions were so minor that I can't even tell the difference between any of them (aside from the Japanese ones with the only noticeable difference being Japanese writing in some parts instead of English writing).
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by Spork »

The C board for CE probably is not going to come up for sale by itself very often as it's the easiest piece to use for conversions. It's possible to have someone create hacked roms probably that could get any CPS1 game running on any CPS1 A+B+C combo. Possible but not likely and the Mhz difference is there for the games that used it.

I'm sure Capcom's computers could make the changes needed per hardware setup so they didn't go through the headaches we do for conversions. Roms only = no sales whatsoever. Rom swaps and bootlegs are the reason for the CPS1 variations. The only reason Hyper Fighting was roms only is because Capcom was battling with hackers who were selling rom upgrades they hacked into Rainbow Edition etc. Nintendo Playchoice used incredibly weak protection. It just changed colors I think. And Neogeo is not rom upgrades, it's carts, and they had legendarily bad bootlegging problem.

All they could pull off was going from 10 Mhz to 12 but it was something. At the time there were speedup hacks and they were competing with the hacks. Like the Quicken hacks for World Warrior.

If you don't care about the speed being accurate then you might as well just use mame for it. You might be able to piece together a combo but it's hard to imagine a working 01 or 21 chip C board going up for sale in 2018.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180125225 ... mbers.html

There's supposed to be a new multigame kit coming from Darksoft that plugs into a normal CE setup.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by MaximRecoil »

Spork wrote:And Neogeo is not rom upgrades, it's carts, and they had legendarily bad bootlegging problem.
Those cartridges primarily consist of EPROMs (plus some dirt cheap, off-the-shelf, clearly labeled TTL chips). It is fundamentally a ROM swap, the same as when you swap a cartridge in an old console.
All they could pull off was going from 10 Mhz to 12 but it was something. At the time there were speedup hacks and they were competing with the hacks. Like the Quicken hacks for World Warrior.
The increased clock speed wasn't necessary for CE. If CE plays any faster than TWW, it is only slightly; I don't even notice a speed difference when going from TWW to CE. TWW is already capable of playing at a much higher speed; just watch what happens when you hold a button down in between fights; everything speeds up drastically, including the animations of the background characters. If you do it after a fight you've lost, you'll see the animation of the character you lost to speed up as well. Look at the SNES with its comparatively slow hardware but more-accurate-than-you-might-expect ports. There is a code you can use to speed the game up so fast that it's virtually unplayable. Plus, speed-up hacks of TWW have already been done. For example:

https://youtu.be/-nTIVdeO8O8

And this hack speeds up certain elements of the game:

https://youtu.be/IXdpgdwzrmM

Speed-up hacks have been around for a long time, and they never required upgraded hardware. They were out there for Pac-Man, Galaga, etc.
If you don't care about the speed being accurate then you might as well just use mame for it.
I didn't say anything about not caring about the speed being accurate, plus the speed of TWW and CE in MAME is accurate anyway. The only inherent issue with MAME and other emulators is input lag, which doesn't have anything to do with the speed at which the game animates its graphical elements. Also, like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm not specifically looking to acquire CE; I actually prefer TWW, though I'd take a working CE over a non-working TWW. If converting to CE was just a matter of swapping the C-board and ROM s, it would give me more options for getting my boardset working. But it isn't, so I'll have to limit my search to C-boards that will work with TWW.
You might be able to piece together a combo but it's hard to imagine a working 01 or 21 chip C board going up for sale in 2018.
The likeliest scenario would be a complete non-working CE boardset being sold.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by leonardoliveira »

Just adding up to the previous post, all variations of SF2 sync the gameplay speed to the video framerate by updating the screen once every vertical interrupt is generated by the video hardware...

Overclocking the CPU will have zero effect on the actual game play speed. Usually overclocking is desirable when one notices the hardware is sagging down in performance when a lot of processing is required to update the screen. For example a shooting game where too many enemy ships or bullets are traversing the screen. That causes the CPU to not be able to update all of them in a fixed time slice required for the video frame and since it lagged behind the screen timing, it has to skip some of the processing. that's what causes games to skip frames. And man, that's very noticeable visually.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by MaximRecoil »

leonardoliveira wrote:Just adding up to the previous post, all variations of SF2 sync the gameplay speed to the video framerate by updating the screen once every vertical interrupt is generated by the video hardware...

Overclocking the CPU will have zero effect on the actual game play speed. Usually overclocking is desirable when one notices the hardware is sagging down in performance when a lot of processing is required to update the screen. For example a shooting game where too many enemy ships or bullets are traversing the screen. That causes the CPU to not be able to update all of them in a fixed time slice required for the video frame and since it lagged behind the screen timing, it has to skip some of the processing. that's what causes games to skip frames. And man, that's very noticeable visually.
Yeah; an arcade game that really benefits from overclocking is the original Double Dragon (1987). That game has terrible slowdown when there are several enemies on the screen at once, even in one-player mode. I've overclocked it in MAME before which eliminates the slowdown (and of course, doesn't change the gameplay speed). I've heard that some of the bootleg DD boardsets used faster hardware than the originals did and have less slowdown. I have an original Technos/Taito boardset, and I've always wondered if the CPUs could be overclocked or upgraded to faster versions, but it probably isn't as simple as that.

SFII: TWW doesn't have any slowdown issues though, and since CE is the same game with minor tweaks, I see no technical reason why it couldn't have been done as a simple ROM swap.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by leonardoliveira »

Double Dragon use MC6809s which are pretty damn old CPUs and don't take overclocking very kindly. I suppose it would work if they replaced those with the enhanced Hitachi clone(HD6309) in the 6809 compatibility mode and ran it at an higher speed...
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by NoAffinity »

So i was just about to post about the differences of cps1 vs cps1 dash a boards but it seems to play into this topic so hopefully I'm not jacking the thread with that piece if it. Firstly, ce is faster than ww. 13% faster if I remember correctly - Leonardo do you know that one?

Now then, I recently swapped a 12mhz crystal from a parts dash a board, and replaced the 10 kHz crystal on a non dash a board that was married up with a partially working hyper fighting b+c board. This was of course after thoroughly comparing both boards and seeing no significant difference between the two except the crystal and the 68000. Both rated 10 mhz on non dash, both rated 12 mhz on dash. So with he 12 mhz on the non dash board, I am certain hyper fighting is playing at correct full speed. And the 68000 is being oveclocked? Funny thing is capcom didn t bother changing the screen printing on the dash boards. They still say 10 mhz under the 12 mhz crystal. So, thoughts in this? If i read above correctly, its being said that overclocking the non dash board won't have an affect but I'm certain it has.

Now to the question of game differences, between ww and ce, they are significant. Sprite differences. Move set differences. Of course the speed and boss playability that's already been said. Well, at least what I would consider significant.

But, all that aside, try apocalypse and see if he can provide you a modded rom set to convert one of your boards to ce. apocalypse-mods@outlook.co.nz. he's a whiz at cps1 conversions. You will need the ability to burn the roms and a gal chip tho.

Lastly, that cps-b-05 board goes to us rev d 910318. Maybe others but it's pretty unique. I got one of those sets partially working a while back and finally got it working. Some interesting gameplay tqeak, just a month after initial release - most noticeably redizzies are nerfed.

Oh and there was a working cps-b-21 board on eBay a couple weeks ago, for $80. I don't see it anymore.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by MaximRecoil »

NoAffinity wrote:
Now to the question of game differences, between ww and ce, they are significant. Sprite differences. Move set differences. Of course the speed and boss playability that's already been said. Well, at least what I would consider significant.
It's the same idea as the differences between Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out. SPO has all new opponents, so those sprites are all new (with the exception of Great Tiger, who is a palette/head swap of Piston Hurricane and Pizza Pasta from Punch-Out); the statistics display (timer, health bars, etc.) is redesigned, and also includes fastest KO time statistics, which PO didn't have at all. A new move is added (ducking, which required a new joystick with a 5th microswitch; pull up on the joystick toward the sky to activate it); the announcer says new things (such as when announcing the names of the new opponents); and gameplay speed is increased (your character dodges and throws punches significantly faster than in PO; it's a more noticeable speed increase than whatever the speed increase is in CE). The official Nintendo conversion kit consisted of a new set of EPROMs and a new set of color PROMs. It also included a "security board", but that was nothing more than an anti-piracy measure; it didn't add to the capabilities of the hardware in any way.
But, all that aside, try apocalypse and see if he can provide you a modded rom set to convert one of your boards to ce. apocalypse-mods@outlook.co.nz. he's a whiz at cps1 conversions. You will need the ability to burn the roms and a gal chip tho.
Thanks.
Lastly, that cps-b-05 board goes to us rev d 910318. Maybe others but it's pretty unique. I got one of those sets partially working a while back and finally got it working. Some interesting gameplay tqeak, just a month after initial release - most noticeably redizzies are nerfed.
I never noticed any differences of any kind between my two boardsets. I never actually looked for any, but none ever jumped out at me. I don't do redizzies so that's not something I'd ever notice anyway.
Oh and there was a working cps-b-21 board on eBay a couple weeks ago, for $80. I don't see it anymore.
I don't get the ridiculous prices on this stuff now. TWW, and especially CE, were among the most common arcade games ever. The boardsets sold for about $50, fully working, about 10 years ago. I turned down a fully-working Hyper Fighting boardset for $50 in 2007 or 2008; it even included the marquee. I didn't buy it because I don't like HF. I like CE okay, but not as much as TWW, and I already had two TWW boardsets (which were also around $50 each), both of which worked at the time. If I'd known the prices were going to go through the roof I would have bought it just to have it.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by NoAffinity »

I don't get the ridiculous prices on this stuff now. TWW, and especially CE, were among the most common arcade games ever. The boardsets sold for about $50, fully working, about 10 years ago. I turned down a fully-working Hyper Fighting boardset for $50 in 2007 or 2008; it even included the marquee. I didn't buy it because I don't like HF. I like CE okay, but not as much as TWW, and I already had two TWW boardsets (which were also around $50 each), both of which worked at the time. If I'd known the prices were going to go through the roof I would have bought it just to have it.
Haha, yeah I got my Hyper Fighting board around 2003-2004, $45 off ebay, fully working and in pristine condition. Well, there's a surge of demand currently as the generation that played in the arcades are getting to an age of affluence. But also because, as you're experiencing, the boards are failing with age, and replacement parts are obsolete, with the exception of pulling from parts boards but with associate risk of those parts failing with time. I'm seeing rumors of folks working on C board replacements in an FPGA package, but haven't seen anything coming to fruition yet. That would certainly be a nice development to keep these boards chugging along well into the future.
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Re: How would you convert an SFII: The World Warrior boardset to Champion Edition?

Post by MaximRecoil »

NoAffinity wrote:
I'm seeing rumors of folks working on C board replacements in an FPGA package, but haven't seen anything coming to fruition yet. That would certainly be a nice development to keep these boards chugging along well into the future.
That would be great. If worst comes to worst I'll just hook up a MAME PC to my SFII arcade cabinet, using GroovyMAME to output ~15 KHz RGB to the monitor, and an Ultimarc J-Pac to connect to the controls. I don't notice any difference between MAME and the actual hardware when it comes to TWW or CE. However, it would be a hassle to rig that up, and I don't like the idea of waiting for Windows or other OS to boot when I want to play.

I don't even consider that to be an option for my Super Punch-Out machine though, because both PO and SPO in MAME are horrible: missing and incorrect sounds, audio slightly out of sync, and worst of all, noticeable input lag, which makes the game next to impossible after a certain point. For example, Dragon Chan does a kick to the head which is a one-hit-knockdown if you don't duck it, and the 3rd-and-higher versions of him do it fairly fast. It is easy to duck on the actual hardware, but in MAME, due to the input lag, with Dragon Chan 3+ you can only duck it if you get lucky.

I have 3 boardsets: 1 PO and 2 SPO, and I've had to fix them more times than I can count. Normally the problem is a failed TTL chip, and those are cheap off-the-shelf chips. PO/SPO is notorious for color PROMs going bad too, and that's more of a hassle and expense, because the blank PROMs themselves are expensive and most ROM burners can't program them. There are only two custom chips: the Ricoh N2A03 CPU for the music (same CPU as the NES used) and the Sanyo VLM5030 CPU for the speech synthesis. Those both seem to be fairly robust, though I did have one N2A03 fail on me. Those are like a $25 chip now. Fortunately I already had another one onhand that I bought ~10 years ago when they were only a few dollars each.
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