MAME 0.114 - Beatmania the Final

[my58vw]

I noticed today that beatmania the final was dropped from MAME 0.114 - any idea why? - Same with he pop'n musics!

[SavannahLion]

What do you mean by "dropped"? As in, not working anymore or just flat out dropped? I looked at the .114 whatsnew.txt and didn't see Beatmania being added to the list of non-functioning titles.

[my58vw]

Removed, not moved to non working status. It is no longer on the game selection window in Mame 0.114. They also combined beatmania 3rd mix...

[Zakk]

Will Mame survive such a travesty?

[RayB]

Maybe because those games still make coin.

[SavannahLion]

If that's the case, I'm a little annoyed about the Pop'n Musics being dropped. Ever since I saw a video of a guy playing the game I always wanted to play it but can't seem to locate an arcade with it. I was really hoping to implement a Pop'n Music CP as part of my CP design.

[MonMotha]

The original 5-key beatmania series has long ended, including beatmaniaIII, hence versions of both known by "The Final".  7-key beatmaniaII [DX], however, is still amazingly popular and makes tons of money for Konami.  14th Style ("GOLD") is scheduled to be released in the USA soon; it will be the first official IIDX arcade release in the USA.  GOLD was also tested in Europe, but evidently interest was not high enough for it to be offered.  The USA did see a brief presence of original beatmania under the name "Hip Hop Mania".  It flopped.  IIDX runs on completely different hardware from original beatmania (1st-8th style run on "Twinkle", which is basically a Playstation with add-ons for video merging from a DVD player and extra sound hardware), and newer styles run off a PC running an embedded flavor of Windows.

pop'n music is also still well and alive in Japan.  Everything after 6 runs on new hardware (6-8 run on, IIRC, Firebeat, and 9th+ run on Viper).  6 and older run on the same hardware as beatmania: "DJ Main", which basically amounts to a GX with a hard drive attached.  To my knowledge, Firebeat and Viper have no emulators available.  There was a test version of pop'n music (1) in the USA, but I'm unaware of any production for the USA or Europe regions.

If you want to play either game, you can buy the console versions, which are pretty arcade faithful ports.  pop'n 8 and newer are very well done and available for PS2 (Japan region only).  IIDX was released on the PS2 only, and home releases began with 3rd style, which was based on the 4th style AC engine.  6th Style and newer are pretty arcade faithful.  I'd highly recommend IIDX RED and pop'n 12 to get started.

(Yes, I know way too much about Bemani arcades...)

[my58vw]

Beatmania 7th mix, and the Final have no console ports (I own all the beatmania, and beatmania IIDX games for PSX, PS2). The other ports are very close but not perfect. I like poping in coins to the real games just like I used to do at the arcade. Beatmania the Final was my favorite mix of all the arcade mixes. I am still trying to get a beatmania III the final machine, but they are hard to get, and expensive. I am building an actual beatmania clone (and will be posting plans). I am looking hard for a 20 inch med res monitor to - or 20" multisync. Beatmania the final was in mame 0.113U2, but it disipeared - maybe someday it will be back in - I don't even have the rom files, or chd for the final.

[Haze]

they were dropped because we were never sent the original PCBs / Hard Disks to verify the dumps, only a list of CRCS / SHA1s that we were unable to verify as accurate.

Assuming you have the PCBs / Original Hard Disks then just send them along so we can verify the dumps and the games will be reinstated.

[SavannahLion]

they were dropped because we were never sent the original PCBs / Hard Disks to verify the dumps, only a list of CRCS / SHA1s that we were unable to verify as accurate.

So you don't waste time writing and debugging a hardware emulator for software that is potentially a bad dump anyways. Seems fair enough.

[my58vw]

Haze, so what do you need? The PCBs and Hard Discs? I am in the process of buying a beatmania the final machine, and may possably be able to send the hardware if needed.

[Haze]

Well the problem was that all we had were a bunch of rom CRCs, nothing more, we were never sent the boards / drives etc. so that we could check that the CRCs were real, not just made up, and we don't support sets long-term based on hearsay as we aren't able to test the driver at all.

For BeatMania the Final to be supported the roms and hard disk need dumping by a member of the development team.  Likewise the PopN series.

The BeatMania drives are slightly tricker to dump than the others because they're password protected, the and password is stored in the program roms so it's a bit trickier than just using CHDMAN as you would with other games.

If you have access to any of the said games (or 7th mix, club mix, or undumped revisions of the already supported sets) then you should contact the development team via mamedev.org, and hopefully somebody will get in touch with you.  Once we can correctly verify things support will be added.