SDOJ in MAME - now available, in a goofy hacked ROM

[EOJ]

Very interesting thread on this topic:

https://i.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/b62rjt/mame_0208/ejlng9t/.compact

Update (December 2021): see this post

http://cave-stg.com/forum/index.php?topic=1820.msg34285#msg34285

[peg]

So it involves desoldering the ROM chip?  Yikes, no wonder this and others (Mushi Matsuri and Akai Limited) haven't been dumped.  If SDOJ isn't dumped, surely those other 2 never will be either.  What the hell are all those ports on the PCB used for?  Surely one of those could be used to read the ROM instead of having to desolder chips?  I guess not.

[EOJ]

I don't think CAVE wants anyone dumping the ROMs or other things on these PCBs. They did a good job of making it difficult, at least.

I have heard Mushi Matsuri and AK LE have been dumped, but the ROMs aren't publicly available (and may never be).

[el_rika]

Matsuri Mushi and AK LE are rare PCBs. Sdoj is not. If the existing Sdoj dump(s) will not be released, sooner or later a PCB will fall into the right hands.
If Cave would release a new shmup tomorrow, i bet that inside a month we would see a Sdoj dump. It's an ego thing, nothing more.

Were CPS3 boards easier or harder to dump?..just a curiosity. I clearly remember Guru stating that a CPS3 dump will never happend.

[EOJ]

You're right, SDOJ is not that rare (350 made). However, it is extremely expensive (current rate on the low end is 500,000 yen, or $4500 USD), and I know I would be very nervous to have someone desoldering chips on such a pricey board I owned. You can ruin the board if you aren't careful, and then that's $4500 down the drain.

There is also a port of the game, so it's not like you can't already play it for an affordable amount (unlike AK LE).

I think you are right that eventually it will turn up in MAME. Best chance for this is to crowd fund the purchase of a PCB ($5 per person from 900-1000 people should do it), then dump that. No one would be worried if the board broke because the most anyone spent on it was five bucks.

[OlDirty]

I was wondering why SDOJ is still not available in MAME. Thanks for that link. If somebody has a dump why not share it for gods sake? They are afraid of loosing money if a MAME version is available? NEO GEO multi and CPS2 multicards exist, do the original games lost value? I don't think so.. SDOJ is also a PCB i'm missing in my Cave collection, but i play it on the xbox connected to my Egret2.
Funding that game with several people would be a really a nice idea. I would be in with 100$ for sure. So no one would loose a huge amount of money if something should go wrong.

[Queen Charlene]

i would absolutely contribute to a board collection/rom dumping fund! i've grown a fondness for game archival that i think also feeds into my current love for STGs, and anything that helps preserve history is something i want to be involved in.

[OlDirty]

To make things easier there would be also another way to get the dump done. Lets find a few people willing to throw 500$ /each in a pot ( i would be one of them). Buying a PCB with that money. Send it to a good dumper. Have it dumped and the dumper sells the PCB again. The dumper keeps 10% of the selling price and pays the rest back in equal parts back to the guys which spent 500$. So the dumper has something for his work and the guys which spent the money didn't loose much. Of course if the dumping process was succesfull.

[el_rika]

The dumper keeps 10% of the selling price and pays the rest back in equal parts back to the guys which spent 500$. So the dumper has something for his work and the guys which spent the money didn't loose much.

The dumper would not do it for the money, that you can be sure. As already stated by Haze, the only reason Sdoj is not dumped to public, is the difficulty of aquiring the PCB (at a decent price) by the able & willing party.

[OlDirty]

Why the dumper wouldn't dump it for that money? Is it too much work? Sorry i have no idea of the dumping process. I thought the bigger problem is buying a PCB,but that wouldn't  be the dumpers problem.

[el_rika]

I probably phrased it wrong. The dumper affiliated with Haze will do it, but not for money.
When the first batch of the cv1000 games were dumped, it happened quite fast, one after the other, so i guess there is nothing particulary difficult in the dumping process, though there's that small risk involved that something could get fried.
Had Sdoj been released some 2 years prior, it would've been dumped along with the rest.

[slateman]

You're right, SDOJ is not that rare (350 made).

Is this right?  Only 350?  Sounds awfully low to me - were prior Cave titles given higher production runs?

[EOJ]

It's low for a non-black label or Ver 1.0 game (though Akai Katana is the lowest in that regard). See here for production estimates based on serial number data:

http://cave-stg.com/forum/index.php?topic=1754.0

[SWZ]

Funny to see the disparity between PCB pricing and the absolute rarity of the game. I was not aware that SDOJ was that common compared to the other games, in particular Futari BL, nor was I aware so few copies of BL were made.

I'm still not certain if I understand the inflated price of the SDOJ PCB. I thought that price was due to the lack of a publicly available dump to play in MAME. Needless to say that thread on reddit stands as a very good explanation as to what is going on behind the scenes. It seems there is a lot of confusion regarding the state of SDOJ in MAME. I would hope that someone eventually learns how to interface with the PCBs so you could dump it without, you know, desoldering the memory off the board. Was there ever any progress made to hacking those boards? I don't think home conversions of CV1K boards have ever shown up on the market, only CAVE official conversions, no?

[EOJ]

The Futari BL port isn't even that good, although it's a lot better than playing the game in MAME (emulation in MAME is horrible, the slowdown isn't close to accurate no matter what blitter rate you use or whatever). However, there is a widespread perception that the Futari BL port is extremely good, because it was made by M2. And there is a widespread perception that the SDOJ port is not very good (actually, other than the few extra frames of input lag, it's not far off from the slowdown accuracy of the Futari BL port). It's funny how perception can influence PCB pricing.

Putting SDOJ in MAME won't make a difference on the PCB price, because no serious player will play it that way (due to lack of slowdown or messed up/super inaccurate slowdown). Look at the PCB prices for Akai Katana, DSMBL or DFK BL (all available in MAME, and all run like garbage in it), for example. Pretty pricey. The X360 ports of these games are so much better than playing emulated ROMs, and the same will be true of SDOJ if/when it gets dumped and added to MAME. So people who want to play these games but don't want to pay the high PCB prices should buy an X360 and the ports (they're not very expensive!). If people could find a way to emulate the SH3 games as well as, say, Ketsui or DOJ BL are emulated, then I think PCB prices might come down a bit.

No SH3 conversions out there AFAIK because they're too hard to do to make it worthwhile for the bootleggers out there. CAVE did a great job designing their SH3 hardware to be safe from copying/conversions.

[SWZ]

I came to the same conclusion on my own after attempting to play Futari in MAME and purchased both ports shortly after. They were cheap and easily accessible (except pork, I still haven't picked that one up). I'll just say the experience with MAME was not enjoyable in the slightest. The random beeping and buzzing that happens while shooting was the icing on the cake. CV1K emulation in MAME is not being improved any time soon, nor is SDOJ being dumped, so what exactly is/was the fascination with it?

[xygax]

Putting SDOJ in MAME won't make a difference on the PCB price, because no serious player will play it that way (due to lack of slowdown or messed up/super inaccurate slowdown).

It might in GroovyMAME though. Besides the lag that you can get down close to the PCB's if your PC isn't too wimpy, with it you can also tweak the CPU% to try and get a better approaching slowdown behaviour (method arguably working better than the blitter delay option which seems broken these days).
It works great with some games, I remember getting PS to work better than the 360 port with a setting somewhere around 39~40%. But for most cv1k titles thorough research with heavy playtesting is required, b/c the OC thing is actually extremely sensitive, it has higher granularity hidden behind the inappropriate UI slider (saving in Groovy tho which is a major plus) yet appearing in the .cfg files.
Getting Groovy to work as it should often seems to overwhelm and frustrate people though, and then work on finding the best working OC settings after that is a huge task, so I guess all that combined will forever continue to put people off from actually get it done.

Anyway yes I think it'd have good chances to make a difference for SDOJ, at least technically so since the difficult method won't ever be popular.

[EOJ]

CV1000 blitter/CPU settings discussion has moved to its own thread: http://cave-stg.com/forum/index.php?topic=1839.0

[EOJ]

As you might have read in the 'Auctions of Interest' thread, we've identified the first SDOJ conversion PCB (probably converted from DFK 1.5):

https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/cave-dodonpachi-saidaioujo-5500usd-shipped.17918/

This comes out of China. Since the SDOJ ROM must have been loaded to a computer before transfer to the DFK PCB, we cannot ignore the possibility it will leak online soon.

Might want to keep your eyes peeled. 

[el_rika]

Wow...this news has quite a few layers to it 
Maybe that rumour about a dump kept "private" was true after all 

[buffi]

Since someone seems keen on selling conversions, i guess its in their best interest to keep the dump private.

[el_rika]

True,

On the other hand:
1. It is confirmed the dump exists
2. If they want to use the momentum, they will have to sell the boards at much lower prices, so maybe the dump enthusiasts will purchase one.
3. I have no ideea what i'm talking about, i'm just wishful thinking 

[SuperPang]

Pretty sure all rare CAVE games will have been dumped by now for preservation.

[EOJ]

Looks like buffi bought the converted PCB from that Chinese guy, and will attempt to dump the rom, but I'm skeptical this will all work out. LinkArcade is obviously lying about a lot of stuff, including his story he bought it 3 years ago for $3800 and never knew it was a conversion until we pointed it out. All of that is clearly baloney.

[SuperPang]

Yep. Kicked him off AO straight away.

[buffi]

Looks like buffi bought the converted PCB from that Chinese guy, and will attempt to dump the rom, but I'm skeptical this will all work out. LinkArcade is obviously lying about a lot of stuff, including his story he bought it 3 years ago for $3800 and never knew it was a conversion until we pointed it out. All of that is clearly baloney.

We'll see what happens

[el_rika]

Looks like buffi bought the converted PCB from that Chinese guy, and will attempt to dump the rom, but I'm skeptical this will all work out. LinkArcade is obviously lying about a lot of stuff, including his story he bought it 3 years ago for $3800 and never knew it was a conversion until we pointed it out. All of that is clearly baloney.

We'll see what happens

Hey man,

Any news regarding this acquisition and possibility of a dump becoming reality?
Thanks so much and have a great weekend!

[buffi]

Looks like buffi bought the converted PCB from that Chinese guy, and will attempt to dump the rom, but I'm skeptical this will all work out. LinkArcade is obviously lying about a lot of stuff, including his story he bought it 3 years ago for $3800 and never knew it was a conversion until we pointed it out. All of that is clearly baloney.

We'll see what happens

Hey man,

Any news regarding this acquisition and possibility of a dump becoming reality?
Thanks so much and have a great weekend!

https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/dodonpachi-saidaioujo-conversion-sold-for-2500usd.17918/page-6#post-289858

[EOJ]

There is a weird hacked ROM called "DDP Saidaioujou & Knuckles" playable in MAME now:

http://www.emuline.org/topic/2626-dodonpachi-saidaioujou-knuckles/

Apparently your ships are Knuckles, Hello Kitty and a Dinosaur, but the game is otherwise SDOJ.

For the record, I do not have this ROM and have not tested it (nor do I plan to).

I wonder if this was born from buffi's ROM dump?

[el_rika]

Wtf