Donkey Kong won't work on Hyperspin

[gms1975]

Hi,
I am having a frustrating issue with my Hyperspin cabinet, Donkey Kong won't work correctly. I have tried different ROMs from different sites (dkong and dkongo). When you select Donkey Kong most of the graphics come up, but there are jumbled graphics on the top and bottom of the screen and the sounds come out wrong. You can add credits and start a game, but jumpman comes out from the right instead of the left and dies immediately. Donkey Kong 3 and Jr work fine as well as Crazy Kong. Any ideas on what to do???

[DaveMMR]

Are you able to run Donkey Kong outside of your FE (i.e. run from a command prompt)?

[gms1975]

I don't know how to do that.  I have Hyperspin set up on windows XP.  I also have the hiscore saver version if that makes a difference. Thanks

[gms1975]

I should have also mentioned, Donkey Kong used to work fine, then one day it didn't.  I messed around with it today, just putting credits in and starting the game over and over, and then just let it sit.  It started working again on its own after about 20 minutes.  I played several games set some new high scores and then turned it on and off a few times and it played fine. A couple of hours later, it went back to the garbled characters on the top and bottom of the screen.  Very strange.

[abispac]

Looks to me that it might be a proble with your video card.Nothing to do with hyperspin has hyperspin is just a launcher

[Howard_Casto]

I don't know how to do that. 

Learn how to do that immediately. 

If you can't run mame from the command line then you are going to have a lot of trouble with this hobby.  You also need to get familiar with the mame.ini and the various settings you can only tweak from outside your front end. 

It isn't hard, I'll start you out:

First learn basic DOS commands as those are still used to navigate in a windows command prompt you really only need to be concerned with navigation.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4687575_navigate-directories-dos.html

You can bring up the command prompt in windows by typing "cmd" in the run box of the taskbar menu.

Now that you know how to navigate to your mame folder, do so. 

type mame.exe -showusage to get a list of available mame commands

mame.exe dkong           should run donkey kong btw.

mame.exe -cc will make/update your mame.ini   Open it up in notepad to expose all kinds of settings.


Hope that helps!

[gms1975]

I found that deleting the dkong.hi file in the hi folder basically resets the game and it seems to be working fine now.  I have played several games and set new high scores and it still plays fine.  After this, I went back in and saw that the dkong.hi file reappeared.  Why would this have fixed the issue?  Any ideas?

[headkaze]

Looks like that hiscore file was for a different ROM version.

[DaveMMR]

I found that deleting the dkong.hi file in the hi folder basically resets the game and it seems to be working fine now.  I have played several games and set new high scores and it still plays fine.  After this, I went back in and saw that the dkong.hi file reappeared.  Why would this have fixed the issue?  Any ideas?

Glad you got it working but +1 (times a million) what Howard said.  Once you're able to run MAME from a command prompt, at the very least, you'll be able to pinpoint what's a FE problem and what's a MAME issue.  It's almost like your TV not working and being able to see if it's unplugged before trying anything else.

BTW: Though I recommend getting comfortable with navigating in the command prompt, you can also install something that puts a RIGHT-CLICK command on your folders so you can open a command prompt directly from the MAME directory and save yourself the trouble of typing your way into the MAME folder. http://www.petri.co.il/add_command_prompt_here_shortcut_to_windows_explorer.htm

 

[gms1975]

So if the hiscore file was wrong and I deleted it, how did another appear?  And is the one that appeared going to work from now on, or might I experience more problems with it down the line?

[gms1975]

I tried it again tonight and it is doing the same thing again, garbled graphics and out of place sounds.  I deleted the dkong.hi file and entered hyperspin again and now it works again.

[gms1975]

I don't care so much about it saving hi scores as much as the game playing reliably all the time.  Is there a way to cancel Donkey Kong from keeping high scores since that seems to be what is causing it to mess up?

[headkaze]

It could be that you're using a hiscore.dat for the wrong ROM versions. Try deleting hiscore.dat. It shouldn't save .hi files after that anyway.

[Gray_Area]

I don't know how to do that. 

Learn how to do that immediately.

This is all I would've said, in anticipation of resistance to the idea.

[gms1975]

I couldn't find the hiscore.dat file.  I disabled hiscore patch support by changing the 0 to a 1 and that seems to be working for now, no high score saves, but hopefully no more garbled screens....