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I may meet the guys from M2 this week-end ( http://www.mtwo.co.jp/ ).
They are responsible for doing the various Sega systems emulators used in PS2 Sega Ages compilation and Wii Virtual Console among other things. And and, the newly released Fantasy Zone II DX ( http://smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11207 ) that runs on System-16 hardware (apparently the programmer is quite nuts, in the good way).
Any questions or things you may be curious about that I could ask him/them ?

Phantasy Star 4's virtual console release had a bug fix in the form of a patch that was applied in real time. Would you mind asking how they discovered it?

Also, how complete are their emulators?

I.S.T. wrote

Phantasy Star 4's virtual console release had a bug fix in the form of a patch that was applied in real time.

Patching the emulator or the ROM? There's plenty of patches on VC games, mostly to avoid screen flashes because Ni****do is scared of lawsuits. How do you know it was a bugfix? I thought emulator patches were done as "updated versions" in the VC shop.

No questions for the M2 guys, play it cool instead of being a fanboy :)

I'm quite curious about YM2612 emulation in MD VC titles; how did they managed to handle it, did they get their hand on some old "secret" files ?
Because, even if not perfect, it's way more advanced than any previous attempts from Sega. Also, what always surprised me is that they correctly emulated a quirk that plagged most MD emulators up to very recently (the infamous "blip blip" sound ;-) )

I don't honestly thnik they are going to answer those questions but who knows ;-)

Enjoy your meeting !

Quote

that runs on System-16 hardware (apparently the programmer is quite nuts, in the good way).
Any questions or things you may be curious about that I could ask him/them ?

Is one of the guys the FZ II DX programmer? I have a few questions. :D

Did he have the original System 16 documentation work with, or did somebody have to 're-discover' how the hardware worked in order for him to program the game?

I am sure he used the same emulator that powered the Windows version of the game to develop it, but was there ever any real hardware for him to test on? If so was it a new board, fabricated just for this purpose, or was it an existing System 16B board that was modified?

Do they have any plans to make more System 16 games, or games on other old Sega hardware? Could you suggest they look at System 24? :DDD

I'm asking as I am (sadly) 100% sure that Sega has lost nearly all of their old information and documentation for their arcade stuff, so the idea that someone could make a new System 16 game in 2008, potentially on a new board, seems amazing and difficult and awesome.

Charles MacDonald wrote

Did he have the original System 16 documentation work with, or did somebody have to 're-discover' how the hardware worked in order for him to program the game?

It's mostly there in MAME and other emulators isn't it? MAME is far from perfect granted, but theres enough to go forward and make something new I believe.

Charles MacDonald wrote

I'm asking as I am (sadly) 100% sure that Sega has lost nearly all of their old information and documentation for their arcade stuff, so the idea that someone could make a new System 16 game in 2008, potentially on a new board, seems amazing and difficult and awesome.

If true that's a bit sad. It's quite a lot harder to run many tests on arcade machines because they are more unwieldy and custom hardware usually needs to be designed to do it. Combined with the fact they are a lot more rare and expensive. Thing is though, to get the kind of documentation that is helpful to emulators these tests do need to be run at some stage, people like yourself with the relevant skills are probably in high demand in MAME circles.

...

One thing you could do Bock is maybe distract the main programmer and then search his desk for any technical documents, because I would assume if he has any new ones he signed NDAs and won't give them over easily. :) Also it would be nice to know if they used any open source cores in their emulators or designed it all themselves.

My guess is that they are programming everything from scratch. Beside are there many BSD-ish licensed core available they could use? With PS2 and Wii projects behind it's quite worth to take the time to do things right (and they seem very competent people as well).

I'll ask some bits about Fantasy Zone II DX for System-16.
Sorry I am certainly not going to follow your "distracting" suggestion PoorAussie, but I'll do my best to make them drunk and verbose :)

Maxim wrote

I.S.T. wrote

Phantasy Star 4's virtual console release had a bug fix in the form of a patch that was applied in real time.

Patching the emulator or the ROM? There's plenty of patches on VC games, mostly to avoid screen flashes because Ni****do is scared of lawsuits. How do you know it was a bugfix? I thought emulator patches were done as "updated versions" in the VC shop.

No questions for the M2 guys, play it cool instead of being a fanboy :)

Somebody over at romhacking.net took apart the file. Well, to be exact, he first noticed this over at Gamefaqs, then decided to post it at RHDN.

I would post the link, but as a guest, I cannot, it seems. The name of the hack is "Phantasy Star IV - Level 99 & Megid Bug Fix", you can find it with the site's search engine.

[Admin edit: here's the link. Sorry, guests can't post links because spammers suck.]

Check the readme. And please, next time, don't accuse someone of fanboyism. I wanted to know how complete the emulator/s are due to the performance limitations of the platforms, given their age and all. That's all. There was/is no hidden agenda. Performance limitations with regards to emulators and embedded platforms has been an interest of mine for about a year, especially with regards to the Wii.

I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult.

I.S.T. wrote

Check the readme. And please, next time, don't accuse someone of fanboyism. I wanted to know how complete the emulator/s are due to the performance limitations of the platforms, given their age and all. That's all. There was/is no hidden agenda. Performance limitations with regards to emulators and embedded platforms has been an interest of mine for about a year, especially with regards to the Wii.

I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult.

I'm pretty sure Maxim was talking to Bock about being a fanboy not you, so there is no need to be insulted. It's a good question though, if hacks are needed to get adequate performance on the Wii, for the typical SMS emulator it shouldn't really need any though. I've wondered myself if cycle accurate 8bit emulation was possible on it, it's probably unlikely but would be a good challenge.

I.S.T. wrote

I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult.

Well, it wasn't directed at you and it wasn't meant as an insult. I was suggesting that if this is not a formal interview then Bock should not turn up with a list of trivial questions and harass them all evening.

The Simpsons, a long time ago, wrote

DATABASE
Ah, excuse me Mr. Simpson. On the Itchy & Scratchy CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key?

HOMER
What the hell are you talking about?

BELLAMY
You're a lifesaver, Homer, I can't deal with these hardcore fans!

That sort of thing. Not that I'm suggesting your question is trivial.

PoorAussie wrote

It's a good question though, if hacks are needed to get adequate performance on the Wii

It's more likely to be a reasonably standard emulator, with the possibility to fine-tune each executable for specific games. In the murky world of VC hacking, people seem to have discovered that the emulators vary between releases, to disable unneeded features or perhaps to handle tricky behaviour.

However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues.

Quote

It's a good question though, if hacks are needed to get adequate performance on the Wii, for the typical SMS emulator it shouldn't really need any though. I've wondered myself if cycle accurate 8bit emulation was possible on it, it's probably unlikely but would be a good challenge.

the Wii is a 729 Mhz PowerPC, make your calculations
and the GX rendering hardware, even if quite programmable, is frame-based, which make it difficult to use for accurate emulation (ie everything must be done in software first)
anyway, the current version of SMS Plus shows that you can get very good accuracy at full speed (and there is still some room that make me think VDP cycle accuracy with cell-based rendering could be possible, not sure about Z80 cycle level emulation though)

Maxim wrote

However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues.

I can confirm that ;-)
the current version is even heavily modified to improve "accuracy" and speed is definitively not a problem on the Wii (even Virtua Racing and its unoptimized SVP core is running fullspeed), mayb eit's also related to this very fast RAM it uses, i don't know.

So speed hack are very unlikely. Also, it's not like there was one different version for each released game, so they aren't per-game-hacks (apart from ROM patches): as I imagine it, they use a generic emulation core with additional modules that got developped or updated when a game requires special handling (SRAM support) or maybe also when they use common programming schemes (same sound engine for example,YM2612 being definitively the most complex thing related to Genesis emulation)

Maxim wrote

However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues.

Wait, doesn't the lack of speed issues imply the emulator was optimized sufficiently? :D

It can play games fullspeed on a 266 MHz Pentium system, with no assembly bits added (and sound disabled). Surely that's optimized enough for portable, pure-"C" code? :)

Maxim wrote

I.S.T. wrote

I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult.

Well, it wasn't directed at you and it wasn't meant as an insult. I was suggesting that if this is not a formal interview then Bock should not turn up with a list of trivial questions and harass them all evening.

The Simpsons, a long time ago, wrote

DATABASE
Ah, excuse me Mr. Simpson. On the Itchy & Scratchy CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key?

HOMER
What the hell are you talking about?

BELLAMY
You're a lifesaver, Homer, I can't deal with these hardcore fans!

That sort of thing. Not that I'm suggesting your question is trivial.

I',m sorry, I misread you. I need ot be more careful in the future, I guess. I apologize.

A side-note, Bock, are you going to Tokyo Game Show this weekend? I'm going on Sat, so if you're there, why don't we meet up?

Charles MacDonald wrote

Maxim wrote

However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues.

Wait, doesn't the lack of speed issues imply the emulator was optimized sufficiently? :D

It can play games fullspeed on a 266 MHz Pentium system, with no assembly bits added (and sound disabled). Surely that's optimized enough for portable, pure-"C" code? :)

I think I already told you but your VDP core definitively has a very smart design and is also quite optimized with those lookup tables and this insane pattern cache.

On that note, I got a quite good speed increment by using memory pointers for faster RAM/ROM access in the CPU cores (instead of generic function handlers) and merging the VDP planes rendering functions in one single function. The rest is slow because it comes directly from MAME and is not optimized at all (68k, z80 & YM2612 cores), checking interrupts on each instruction also slowdown the original emulation.

Please ask them if Sega ages for ps2 is dead. (Will more Sega Ages come out?)
I know they cannot talk about what they're working on, but if you ask like this you might get an emotional reaction. A yes or a no.
(I still want a Shinobi compilation with all 2D shinobi games released for SMS Megadrive and Saturn, Gamegear)

Bock wrote

Any questions or things you may be curious about that I could ask him/them ?

Yes. Can you please please puh-lease ask them if they have an XBLA port of Virtua Racing planned?

Also, if they answer "no" to this question, can you please beat them over the head with a blunt object and ask them again? Keep repeating until the answer becomes "yes"

:D

Tell them that we demand more 2D retro games like Fantasy Zone II DX,

(seriously: I really, really envy you that you meet with these guys)

So, I briefly met three the guys on saturday (thanks Chaz for arranging it!). Sorry I haven't been able to read the forum prior to that.

The people I met are Naoki Horii (President), Tsuyoshi Matsuoka (Planner) and Jason Nisperos aka Chibi-Tech (Audio Engineer). Beside their card title they seem to be all pretty hardcore old-school programmers directly involved in the softs. Naoki for example programmed the new Fantasy Zone II DX. They love old games and have plenty of knowledge and trivia on games and who made what. They are also quite knowledgeable about western systems, love eg: C64 and Amiga, and referred to us of some games using their western names ("Power Strike", "Global Defense").

M2 has been around since a while (circa 93?). They programmed Gunstar Heroes for the Game Gear and Tsuyoshi before being involved in Puyo Puyo series did a bit on Power Strike 2 on the Master System.

A few infos (I am omitting some things that were said under implicit privacy).

- They are generally working on all kind of emulators, Sega consoles and various arcade machines, mainly for PS2 Sega Ages series and Wii Virtual Console but also other systems (DS Namco Museum?). Some things are unreleased and hoping for a publisher etc. to enable some projects.

- Mentioned that there are not happy with their YM2413 emulation for the SMS on Virtual Console (I did not ask for detail at that time).

- Don't know anything about a SMS version of Gunstar Heroes (would be interested to see it if there was one!). I still guess that the source from Treasure who casually mentioned it when answering an interview question was wrong on this matter.

- Can't detail now, but they recently purchased the right for an old franchise (which graced the SMS among other systems) of which they hope to make a new game.

- Tsuyoshi wish to make a new Amiga game. Also interested in emulating the C64 and Amiga (to play old demos).

Fantasy Zone II DX
Hardware specs and tools are lost at Sega. They however got access to some game source code, including the original Fantasy Zone.
They started working by hacking an original System-16 board. Their main modification consisted in upgrading RAM from 16 KB to 64 KB. This is quite huge and enabled to use C along with 68K assembly to write the new game (I suppose that C was used for the less critical bits). The game was written from scratch with no re-use from the original Fantasy Zone.
Because they had already developed a System-16 emulator for the Quartet/SDI Sega Ages compilation, they could also work early on using their emulator. They had only three System-16 boards (which I am not sure were all modified, maybe only one was) so testing on real hardware was difficult. Typically they would test 2 or 3 times a week on real hardware.
The only time the real board was showcased was this shoot-em-up event of which we have pictures on the FZ2DX thread.

I originally tried to avoid mentioning SMS Power activities because I thought it could indirectly conflict with part of their business. My friend at some point eventually mentioned it, and then Naoki went all joy-crazy knowing who I was (me all humble, looking very high on those guys). They were indeed big fan of the site (technical stuff) and Meka. As it happen he showed me that he posted in the Japanese board a few times using his name. One other poster on the board is also the programmer of GG Aleste 2. He said it was a shame that he did not know early, because he is good friend with S. Sakamoto composer of Wonder Boy which he could have invited (ah, next time.).

I kept contact and guess they would be happy to discuss some things.

- Why did you choose to develop for the System-16 ?
- (Tsuyoshi pointing to Naoki) Because it was his dream.

Wow Bock,

Thanks so much mate, thats was a really interesting read!

Quote

- Can't detail now, but they recently purchased the right for an old franchise (which graced the SMS among other systems) of which they hope to make a new game.

Can you at least confirm that it is not Wonderboy?

lol yes I know I am desperate.

Sitting down with S.Sakamoto would have been great, fingers crossed there will be a next time ;)

Thanks Bock, that was super awesome. I would love to meet and talk with those guys as well. Cool that they are still working on ps2 sega ages as I am a big fan of their work. If they ever need a playtester or whatever, I'm their man. my occupation is test-coordinator. Cool, love to hear more.

Awesome read. How I wish these guys were making the next Sonic game.

Next time, perhaps you could ask them to release FZ2DX for the Virtual Console Arcade, please?

Author	Message
Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8661 Location: Paris, France	M2 Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 2:41 pm
	I may meet the guys from M2 this week-end ( http://www.mtwo.co.jp/ ). They are responsible for doing the various Sega systems emulators used in PS2 Sega Ages compilation and Wii Virtual Console among other things. And and, the newly released Fantasy Zone II DX ( http://smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11207 ) that runs on System-16 hardware (apparently the programmer is quite nuts, in the good way). Any questions or things you may be curious about that I could ask him/them ?

I.S.T. Guest	Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:35 pm
I.S.T. Guest	Phantasy Star 4's virtual console release had a bug fix in the form of a patch that was applied in real time. Would you mind asking how they discovered it? Also, how complete are their emulators?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14751 Location: London	Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 4:02 pm
	I.S.T. wrote Phantasy Star 4's virtual console release had a bug fix in the form of a patch that was applied in real time. Patching the emulator or the ROM? There's plenty of patches on VC games, mostly to avoid screen flashes because Ni****do is scared of lawsuits. How do you know it was a bugfix? I thought emulator patches were done as "updated versions" in the VC shop. No questions for the M2 guys, play it cool instead of being a fanboy :)

Eke Joined: 06 Feb 2009 Posts: 110 Location: Toulouse, France	Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:17 pm
	I'm quite curious about YM2612 emulation in MD VC titles; how did they managed to handle it, did they get their hand on some old "secret" files ? Because, even if not perfect, it's way more advanced than any previous attempts from Sega. Also, what always surprised me is that they correctly emulated a quirk that plagged most MD emulators up to very recently (the infamous "blip blip" sound ;-) ) I don't honestly thnik they are going to answer those questions but who knows ;-) Enjoy your meeting !

Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:17 am
Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Quote that runs on System-16 hardware (apparently the programmer is quite nuts, in the good way). Any questions or things you may be curious about that I could ask him/them ? Is one of the guys the FZ II DX programmer? I have a few questions. :D Did he have the original System 16 documentation work with, or did somebody have to 're-discover' how the hardware worked in order for him to program the game? I am sure he used the same emulator that powered the Windows version of the game to develop it, but was there ever any real hardware for him to test on? If so was it a new board, fabricated just for this purpose, or was it an existing System 16B board that was modified? Do they have any plans to make more System 16 games, or games on other old Sega hardware? Could you suggest they look at System 24? :DDD I'm asking as I am (sadly) 100% sure that Sega has lost nearly all of their old information and documentation for their arcade stuff, so the idea that someone could make a new System 16 game in 2008, potentially on a new board, seems amazing and difficult and awesome.

PoorAussie Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 292 Location: Australia	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 1:08 am
	Charles MacDonald wrote Did he have the original System 16 documentation work with, or did somebody have to 're-discover' how the hardware worked in order for him to program the game? It's mostly there in MAME and other emulators isn't it? MAME is far from perfect granted, but theres enough to go forward and make something new I believe. Charles MacDonald wrote I'm asking as I am (sadly) 100% sure that Sega has lost nearly all of their old information and documentation for their arcade stuff, so the idea that someone could make a new System 16 game in 2008, potentially on a new board, seems amazing and difficult and awesome. If true that's a bit sad. It's quite a lot harder to run many tests on arcade machines because they are more unwieldy and custom hardware usually needs to be designed to do it. Combined with the fact they are a lot more rare and expensive. Thing is though, to get the kind of documentation that is helpful to emulators these tests do need to be run at some stage, people like yourself with the relevant skills are probably in high demand in MAME circles. ... One thing you could do Bock is maybe distract the main programmer and then search his desk for any technical documents, because I would assume if he has any new ones he signed NDAs and won't give them over easily. :) Also it would be nice to know if they used any open source cores in their emulators or designed it all themselves.

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8661 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:50 am
	My guess is that they are programming everything from scratch. Beside are there many BSD-ish licensed core available they could use? With PS2 and Wii projects behind it's quite worth to take the time to do things right (and they seem very competent people as well). I'll ask some bits about Fantasy Zone II DX for System-16. Sorry I am certainly not going to follow your "distracting" suggestion PoorAussie, but I'll do my best to make them drunk and verbose :)

I.S.T. Guest	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 9:47 am
I.S.T. Guest	Maxim wrote I.S.T. wrote Phantasy Star 4's virtual console release had a bug fix in the form of a patch that was applied in real time. Patching the emulator or the ROM? There's plenty of patches on VC games, mostly to avoid screen flashes because Ni****do is scared of lawsuits. How do you know it was a bugfix? I thought emulator patches were done as "updated versions" in the VC shop. No questions for the M2 guys, play it cool instead of being a fanboy :) Somebody over at romhacking.net took apart the file. Well, to be exact, he first noticed this over at Gamefaqs, then decided to post it at RHDN. I would post the link, but as a guest, I cannot, it seems. The name of the hack is "Phantasy Star IV - Level 99 & Megid Bug Fix", you can find it with the site's search engine. [Admin edit: here's the link. Sorry, guests can't post links because spammers suck.] Check the readme. And please, next time, don't accuse someone of fanboyism. I wanted to know how complete the emulator/s are due to the performance limitations of the platforms, given their age and all. That's all. There was/is no hidden agenda. Performance limitations with regards to emulators and embedded platforms has been an interest of mine for about a year, especially with regards to the Wii. I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult.

PoorAussie Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 292 Location: Australia	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:25 am
	I.S.T. wrote Check the readme. And please, next time, don't accuse someone of fanboyism. I wanted to know how complete the emulator/s are due to the performance limitations of the platforms, given their age and all. That's all. There was/is no hidden agenda. Performance limitations with regards to emulators and embedded platforms has been an interest of mine for about a year, especially with regards to the Wii. I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult. I'm pretty sure Maxim was talking to Bock about being a fanboy not you, so there is no need to be insulted. It's a good question though, if hacks are needed to get adequate performance on the Wii, for the typical SMS emulator it shouldn't really need any though. I've wondered myself if cycle accurate 8bit emulation was possible on it, it's probably unlikely but would be a good challenge.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14751 Location: London	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 1:26 pm
	I.S.T. wrote I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult. Well, it wasn't directed at you and it wasn't meant as an insult. I was suggesting that if this is not a formal interview then Bock should not turn up with a list of trivial questions and harass them all evening. The Simpsons, a long time ago, wrote DATABASE Ah, excuse me Mr. Simpson. On the Itchy & Scratchy CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key? HOMER What the hell are you talking about? BELLAMY You're a lifesaver, Homer, I can't deal with these hardcore fans! That sort of thing. Not that I'm suggesting your question is trivial. PoorAussie wrote It's a good question though, if hacks are needed to get adequate performance on the Wii It's more likely to be a reasonably standard emulator, with the possibility to fine-tune each executable for specific games. In the murky world of VC hacking, people seem to have discovered that the emulators vary between releases, to disable unneeded features or perhaps to handle tricky behaviour. However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues.

Eke Joined: 06 Feb 2009 Posts: 110 Location: Toulouse, France	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:20 pm
	Quote It's a good question though, if hacks are needed to get adequate performance on the Wii, for the typical SMS emulator it shouldn't really need any though. I've wondered myself if cycle accurate 8bit emulation was possible on it, it's probably unlikely but would be a good challenge. the Wii is a 729 Mhz PowerPC, make your calculations and the GX rendering hardware, even if quite programmable, is frame-based, which make it difficult to use for accurate emulation (ie everything must be done in software first) anyway, the current version of SMS Plus shows that you can get very good accuracy at full speed (and there is still some room that make me think VDP cycle accuracy with cell-based rendering could be possible, not sure about Z80 cycle level emulation though) Maxim wrote However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues. I can confirm that ;-) the current version is even heavily modified to improve "accuracy" and speed is definitively not a problem on the Wii (even Virtua Racing and its unoptimized SVP core is running fullspeed), mayb eit's also related to this very fast RAM it uses, i don't know. So speed hack are very unlikely. Also, it's not like there was one different version for each released game, so they aren't per-game-hacks (apart from ROM patches): as I imagine it, they use a generic emulation core with additional modules that got developped or updated when a game requires special handling (SRAM support) or maybe also when they use common programming schemes (same sound engine for example,YM2612 being definitively the most complex thing related to Genesis emulation)

Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 7:06 pm
Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Maxim wrote However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues. Wait, doesn't the lack of speed issues imply the emulator was optimized sufficiently? :D It can play games fullspeed on a 266 MHz Pentium system, with no assembly bits added (and sound disabled). Surely that's optimized enough for portable, pure-"C" code? :)

I.S.T. Guest	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:11 pm
I.S.T. Guest	Maxim wrote I.S.T. wrote I would like an apology, sir. Being called a fanboy of anything is an insult. Well, it wasn't directed at you and it wasn't meant as an insult. I was suggesting that if this is not a formal interview then Bock should not turn up with a list of trivial questions and harass them all evening. The Simpsons, a long time ago, wrote DATABASE Ah, excuse me Mr. Simpson. On the Itchy & Scratchy CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key? HOMER What the hell are you talking about? BELLAMY You're a lifesaver, Homer, I can't deal with these hardcore fans! That sort of thing. Not that I'm suggesting your question is trivial. I',m sorry, I misread you. I need ot be more careful in the future, I guess. I apologize.

ccovell Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 374 Location: Japan	Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:49 pm
ccovell Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 374 Location: Japan	A side-note, Bock, are you going to Tokyo Game Show this weekend? I'm going on Sat, so if you're there, why don't we meet up?

Eke Joined: 06 Feb 2009 Posts: 110 Location: Toulouse, France	Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 8:23 am
	Charles MacDonald wrote Maxim wrote However, people have ported not-particularly-speed-optimised emulators like Genesis Plus to the Wii and there don't seem to be any speed issues. Wait, doesn't the lack of speed issues imply the emulator was optimized sufficiently? :D It can play games fullspeed on a 266 MHz Pentium system, with no assembly bits added (and sound disabled). Surely that's optimized enough for portable, pure-"C" code? :) I think I already told you but your VDP core definitively has a very smart design and is also quite optimized with those lookup tables and this insane pattern cache. On that note, I got a quite good speed increment by using memory pointers for faster RAM/ROM access in the CPU cores (instead of generic function handlers) and merging the VDP planes rendering functions in one single function. The rest is slow because it comes directly from MAME and is not optimized at all (68k, z80 & YM2612 cores), checking interrupts on each instruction also slowdown the original emulation.

D Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 252 Location: Almere, The Netherlands	Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:02 pm
	Please ask them if Sega ages for ps2 is dead. (Will more Sega Ages come out?) I know they cannot talk about what they're working on, but if you ask like this you might get an emotional reaction. A yes or a no. (I still want a Shinobi compilation with all 2D shinobi games released for SMS Megadrive and Saturn, Gamegear)

unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891	Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 12:59 pm
unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891	Bock wrote Any questions or things you may be curious about that I could ask him/them ? Yes. Can you please please puh-lease ask them if they have an XBLA port of Virtua Racing planned? Also, if they answer "no" to this question, can you please beat them over the head with a blunt object and ask them again? Keep repeating until the answer becomes "yes" :D

Christuserloeser Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 295 Location: Pangea	Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 9:36 pm
	Tell them that we demand more 2D retro games like Fantasy Zone II DX, (seriously: I really, really envy you that you meet with these guys)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8661 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 4:38 pm
	So, I briefly met three the guys on saturday (thanks Chaz for arranging it!). Sorry I haven't been able to read the forum prior to that. The people I met are Naoki Horii (President), Tsuyoshi Matsuoka (Planner) and Jason Nisperos aka Chibi-Tech (Audio Engineer). Beside their card title they seem to be all pretty hardcore old-school programmers directly involved in the softs. Naoki for example programmed the new Fantasy Zone II DX. They love old games and have plenty of knowledge and trivia on games and who made what. They are also quite knowledgeable about western systems, love eg: C64 and Amiga, and referred to us of some games using their western names ("Power Strike", "Global Defense"). M2 has been around since a while (circa 93?). They programmed Gunstar Heroes for the Game Gear and Tsuyoshi before being involved in Puyo Puyo series did a bit on Power Strike 2 on the Master System. A few infos (I am omitting some things that were said under implicit privacy). - They are generally working on all kind of emulators, Sega consoles and various arcade machines, mainly for PS2 Sega Ages series and Wii Virtual Console but also other systems (DS Namco Museum?). Some things are unreleased and hoping for a publisher etc. to enable some projects. - Mentioned that there are not happy with their YM2413 emulation for the SMS on Virtual Console (I did not ask for detail at that time). - Don't know anything about a SMS version of Gunstar Heroes (would be interested to see it if there was one!). I still guess that the source from Treasure who casually mentioned it when answering an interview question was wrong on this matter. - Can't detail now, but they recently purchased the right for an old franchise (which graced the SMS among other systems) of which they hope to make a new game. - Tsuyoshi wish to make a new Amiga game. Also interested in emulating the C64 and Amiga (to play old demos). Fantasy Zone II DX Hardware specs and tools are lost at Sega. They however got access to some game source code, including the original Fantasy Zone. They started working by hacking an original System-16 board. Their main modification consisted in upgrading RAM from 16 KB to 64 KB. This is quite huge and enabled to use C along with 68K assembly to write the new game (I suppose that C was used for the less critical bits). The game was written from scratch with no re-use from the original Fantasy Zone. Because they had already developed a System-16 emulator for the Quartet/SDI Sega Ages compilation, they could also work early on using their emulator. They had only three System-16 boards (which I am not sure were all modified, maybe only one was) so testing on real hardware was difficult. Typically they would test 2 or 3 times a week on real hardware. The only time the real board was showcased was this shoot-em-up event of which we have pictures on the FZ2DX thread. I originally tried to avoid mentioning SMS Power activities because I thought it could indirectly conflict with part of their business. My friend at some point eventually mentioned it, and then Naoki went all joy-crazy knowing who I was (me all humble, looking very high on those guys). They were indeed big fan of the site (technical stuff) and Meka. As it happen he showed me that he posted in the Japanese board a few times using his name. One other poster on the board is also the programmer of GG Aleste 2. He said it was a shame that he did not know early, because he is good friend with S. Sakamoto composer of Wonder Boy which he could have invited (ah, next time.). I kept contact and guess they would be happy to discuss some things. - Why did you choose to develop for the System-16 ? - (Tsuyoshi pointing to Naoki) Because it was his dream.

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 5:24 pm
	Wow Bock, Thanks so much mate, thats was a really interesting read!

Logbomber Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 207	Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 5:34 pm
Logbomber Joined: 06 Apr 2009 Posts: 207	Quote - Can't detail now, but they recently purchased the right for an old franchise (which graced the SMS among other systems) of which they hope to make a new game. Can you at least confirm that it is not Wonderboy? lol yes I know I am desperate. Sitting down with S.Sakamoto would have been great, fingers crossed there will be a next time ;)

D Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 252 Location: Almere, The Netherlands	Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 11:33 am
	Thanks Bock, that was super awesome. I would love to meet and talk with those guys as well. Cool that they are still working on ps2 sega ages as I am a big fan of their work. If they ever need a playtester or whatever, I'm their man. my occupation is test-coordinator. Cool, love to hear more.

ICEknight Joined: 03 Apr 2001 Posts: 601 Location: Asturias	Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 1:01 pm
	Awesome read. How I wish these guys were making the next Sonic game. Next time, perhaps you could ask them to release FZ2DX for the Virtual Console Arcade, please?

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