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solvalou: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Solvalou (c) 1991 Namco.

- TECHNICAL -

Namco System 21 hardware

Game ID : SV

Main CPU : (2x) 68000 (@ 12.288 Mhz), M6809 (@ 3.072 Mhz), HD63705 (@ 2.048 Mhz), (2x) TMS32025 (@ 24 Mhz)

Sound Chips : C140 (@ 32 Khz), YM2151 (@ 3.57958 Mhz)

Players : 1

Control : stick

Buttons : 4

- TRIVIA -

Released in December 1991.

Victor Entertainment released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Namco Video Game Graffiti Vol.8 - VICL-8074) on 21/04/1993.

- SERIES -

1. Xevious (1982)

2. Super Xevious (1984)

3. Solvalou (1991)

4. Xevious 3D/G (1995)

- STAFF -

Music composition by : Hiroyuki Kawada

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Nintendo Wii (2009, "Virtual Console Arcade")

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.62 [Phil Stroffolino]

0.55 [Phil Stroffolino]

Bugs:

- Solvalou crashes during the first level. Smitdogg (ID 02085)

WIP:

- 0.120u1: Phil Stroffolino fixed lockups in Solvalou and sprite priority (see Solvalou mountain range).

- 0.119u1: Phil Stroffolino fixed Solvalou - Game now playable. Changed TMS32025 CPU6 clock speed to 96MHz. Added 2x c76.rom's to cpu5 and 6. Fixed rom names.

- 9th September 2007: Phil Stroffolino - Surprisingly, this was one of the first titles I'd gotten "working" with HLE years ago, but the most annoying game to get running with proper emulation. It's got the usual cuskey protection. But it also does some strange things that no other game does: 1) 68k writes a good value to shared RAM, then a NOP, then overwrites with a bad value. The master DSP is in a tight loop and has to catch the good value to proceed, forcing a game-specific cpu-yielding hack to be used by the emulator. 2) there's a block of diagnostics information written as plain text to shared RAM, things like "ROM CRC:" - this info is quite useful while stepping through the CPUs - the CPUs even emit state changes as each subsystem boots up. For some strange reason, the ascii labels (written by the master 68k) are stored much closer together in Solvalou than in any of the other multi-dsp games - the parameters written by the BIOS overwrite the explanatory text, making the diagnostics barely readable. At first I'd worried that this game used a different BIOS, but all functionality appears to be intact. 3) The master 68k doesn't stick to the "standard" bootstrap sequence, but instead triggers the BIOS to reboot itself and waits for a second checksum on the PointROMs. I've patched this out until I can definitively sort out the interrupt handling. On the plus side, Solvalou exposes some cool features not used in other games, such as the ability to place sprites with a z-order providing excellent control over mixing into the 3D scene. One big mystery I'm hoping we'll get solved soon: there are multiple palettes for the 3D objects. In some games, they are all exact copies of each others. In others, one or more will have a radically different color scheme, i.e. everything with a fiery reddish tinge. There's got to be per-polygon control registers outside the point ROMs affecting this - but would be much easier if I knew where these special palette effects were actually used in-game. Possible related: some of the point ROM objects don't actually encode 3D data, and are currently skipped to avoid parse-related crashes. These surely have some_ meaning, but nothing is obviously wrong if I ignore them.

- 0.97u1: Phil Stroffolino updated the Namco System 21 driver. Solvalou works, but occasionally 3D graphics stop updating; press "A" to unblock the pipeline and resume drawing them. It also needs cuskey support (used from the master DSP).

- 0.62: Phil Stroffolino added Solvalou (Japan) (Namco 1991).

- 24th August 2002: Phil Stroffolino submitted the Namco System 21 and 22 drivers. Starblade and Solvalou are playable though missing some background graphics, the rest suffer from various problems.

- 23rd August 2002: Phil Stroffolino reported some progress with the Namco System 21 driver, which supports Starblade, Air Combat, Cyber Sled and Solvalou. All games have full sound support thanks to R. Belmont. Starblade is fully playable, but the other games are preliminary and suffer from various graphics glitches and lack of input ports.

- 0.55: Added Solvalou (Testdriver). Locks up on startup.

LEVELS: 3

Other Emulators:

* Mjolnir

Recommended Games (Terra Force 3D):

Solvalou

Xevious 3D/G

Ray Storm

Ray Crisis

Soukyugurentai

Radiant Silvergun

Star Soldier

Brave Blade

Ikaruga

Trizeal

Shooting Love 2007

Romset: 9400 kb / 26 files / 2.90 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Solvalou (Japan)</description>

<manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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