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nob: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Noboranka (c) 1986 Data East.

This game is a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up where the player controls a character that has to climb a tree and shoot bug-like enemies. The story is that the princess has been kidnapped by the villains of the Insect World, and Zippy Bug has to rescue her. After shooting the enemies, they drop fruits that the player can collect for extra points, and skulls that are deadly if touched. The player is able to fly for a short time, and every time this is done, one of the letters from the 'I Love You' at the bottom of the screen is used up. The letters regenerate over a small period of time. There are also other items, such as the key, which surrounds the player in a bubble and makes him invulnerable to 1 hit. Another item is a ring which seems to instantly replenish all of the used up 'I Love You' letters. One other item is the hammer, which allows the player to wipe out all the enemies off the screen. There is a boss at the end of each level.

- TECHNICAL -

Sega System 1 Hardware

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 8 Mhz)

Sound CPU : Z80 (@ 4 Mhz)

Sound Chips : SN76496 (@ 4 Mhz), SN76496 (@ 2 Mhz)

Players : 2

Control : 8-way joystick

Buttons : 2

- TRIVIA -

Released in October 1986.

Data East licensed the game from Coreland for distribution in the U.S. Back in the early to mid 80's, Coreland and Sega collaborated on many games. For some reason, it didn't seem like Sega was interested in licensing this game from Coreland even though it had already been ready for manufacture on the System 1 Hardware. Obviously, Data East was interested, they indirectly licensed the System 1 Hardware that this game uses from Sega, even though it would be another 9 years before they would finally license hardware from Sega, for games they created. This seems to be the one and only game that Coreland sold to Data East.

Noboranka was one of the rarest game developed by coreland. Others are "119" and "bepop".

This game is known as "Zippy Bug" outside Japan.

A bootleg of the game was made by Game Electronics.

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

MAME Info:

0.131u1 [Guru]

0.58 [David Haywood, Stephane Humbert]

< Japan >

WIP:

- 0.131u2: The Decapping Project and Aaron Giles fixed Noboranka - Game now playable.

- 0.131u1: Changed Noboranka (Japan) from a clone of Noboranka (Japan, bootleg) to the parent set. Aaron Giles added and began hooking up the 8751's for the System 1 games. Still some work to do. Added I8751 (8MHz) CPU3 and 4k MCU to Noboranka (Japan).

- 6th May 2009: Guru - Chip 8751 found on Noboranka (Data East) has just been decapped and dumped.

- 0.130u4: Changed visible area to 224x256.

- 0.129u3: Guru added clone Noboranka (Japan), not working (undumped 8751 MCU). Changed parent description to 'Noboranka (Japan, bootleg)'. Renamed (noboranb) to (nobb). Changed Z80 CPU1 clock speed to 4MHz.

- 20th July 2008: Guru - Noboranka/Zippybug (original Data East) arrived. This is a extremely rare and expensive game. Thanks to a couple of people that donated some postage bucks, another package arrived from Japan a few days ago.

- 0.115u4: Replaced SN76496 sound with SN76489.

- 2nd December 2006: f205v dumped Noboranka (Japan, bootleg).

- 0.81u6: Stefan Jokisch fixed missing enemies in Noboranka.

- 21st February 2003: Angelo Salese submitted an improvement to the Noboranka protection emulation and fixed the missing sound in level 2 and later.

- 0.58: David Haywood added Noboranka (Japan) (bootleg 1986).

- 31st January 2002: David Haywood added Noboranka (bootleg) to the Sega System 1 driver, and Stephane Humbert made it fully playable.

- 13th March 2000: Guru - Dumped G.P. Bug / Noboranka.

LEVELS: 3 (endless)

Other Emulators:

* FB Alpha

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Romset: 341 kb / 16 files / 134.8 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Noboranka (Japan)</description>

<manufacturer>Coreland / Data East Corporation</manufacturer>