A Post about Operation Wolf

[Haze]

Just thought this one might be of interest to people here.

Operation Wolf is a game we've never managed to emulate properly, going back to when it was first emulated there have been significant flaws in the emulation.

Recently a prototype showed up, which seems to be 99% complete (although you have to play it in Japanese) and is entirely unprotected, meaning the features of the game missing from our regular emulation work fine.
http://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/2016/04/01/a-wolf-in-prototype-clothing/

It remains to be seen if we can use information from that set to improve the simulation we use on the regular ones, and ultimately we do still need to work out a way of dumping the custom Taito C-Chip and using that instead of emulation..

but I thought this might be of interest to some people who have 'gun' cabinets, and also those who say old versions of MAME are fine, this prototype was added yesterday, so won't even be in MAME officially until the 0.173 release next month. 

[harveybirdman]

Appreciate the efforts David, though Operation Wolf is one I'd like to have in my original hardware collection one day, still glad to hear about incremental improvements in MAME.

[Malenko]

Never cared much for OpWolf, but a neat read anyway. Just makes me flash back to the CPS changer boards helping with CPS2 XOR tables.

[EssexMame]

Fantastic!

[pbj]

and also those who say old versions of MAME are fine, this prototype was added yesterday, so won't even be in MAME officially until the 0.173 release next month.

Old versions of MAME are fine.

Makes one wonder why Taito exerted so much effort in bootleg prevention on this game.  What the hell were people going to convert over to an Operation Wolf with a cheap kit?

[Howard_Casto]

It's a valid question.  Maybe they were afraid of from-scratch clones or something.

[Haze]

Interesting question..

However bootlegs based off the 'Operation Bear' bootleg were quite common (it's not a rare PCB to see sold at all)

The bootleggers there went to the extent of programming their own Z80 rom to mimic the C-Chip (inaccurately)

so, there definitely was a market, and by doing it Taito definitely stopped people getting the real game experience..

I'm actually surprised the bootleggers didn't manage to get their hands on this version back in the day and use that as a source, had they it would have been a lot easier for them, and a fair few bootlegs are made from pre-release versions of the games (most famously pretty much all the Defender ones)