Recently picked up a Numan Athletics 2 / Mach Breakers Japanese PCB. Looking at the rom sets in MAME, it seems like a pretty easy task to swap it over to the World edition. Basically erase and burn the two program roms, 11C and 11D. I've now tried this twice, and can't seem to get the board to function properly using the World roms.
Condensed Info:
- The PCB fully works if I re-burn the Japanese Program ROMS.
- According to MAME, the only differences between the original Japanese version (MB1 romset) and the World edition, are those two Program Roms (MB2 romset).
- Pulling all socketed EPROMs and verifying them against the Japanese romset in MAME comes back 100% accurate. There are a number of surface mounted flash roms as well, that I do not currently have the ability to remove. They are correctly identified, via their silk screening as belonging to the MB1 romset.
- Using the World Program roms switches the language completely to English, but there are odd bugs.
- The attract mode demo can sometimes reset the game, and various graphics that should be present (flags behind characters during selection) are either missing or completely wrong / a jumbled mess.
- The service menu of the World edition should have an option for region selection (N. America / Europe OR Asia). My PCB with the World program roms installed gets defaulted to the Asia version, I am unable to switch it to the N. America / Europe option.
- The Asia version is supposed to remove various Japanese references from the game, so it could be used in the Korean market. My Japanese version with World Program roms doesn't remove them. Even with the game being stuck on the Asia version.
- The PCB w/ World Program roms does actually work when playing the game. At least the first three stages (only tested up to that point). No graphical issues, and everything is in English.
- Other glitches and weird issues with the attract demo, but you get the idea.
Has anyone done a region swap on this PCB before? Am I just overlooking something dumb? I've blank checked my EPROMs every time before burning, and verified the written data after each burn. Everything always comes back 100%. I even gave the EPROMs the full 30 minute erase cycle this last time, just to make sure there wasn't any lingering data. Again, this region swap seems like a no brainer. Any ideas are welcome.
Condensed Info:
- The PCB fully works if I re-burn the Japanese Program ROMS.
- According to MAME, the only differences between the original Japanese version (MB1 romset) and the World edition, are those two Program Roms (MB2 romset).
- Pulling all socketed EPROMs and verifying them against the Japanese romset in MAME comes back 100% accurate. There are a number of surface mounted flash roms as well, that I do not currently have the ability to remove. They are correctly identified, via their silk screening as belonging to the MB1 romset.
- Using the World Program roms switches the language completely to English, but there are odd bugs.
- The attract mode demo can sometimes reset the game, and various graphics that should be present (flags behind characters during selection) are either missing or completely wrong / a jumbled mess.
- The service menu of the World edition should have an option for region selection (N. America / Europe OR Asia). My PCB with the World program roms installed gets defaulted to the Asia version, I am unable to switch it to the N. America / Europe option.
- The Asia version is supposed to remove various Japanese references from the game, so it could be used in the Korean market. My Japanese version with World Program roms doesn't remove them. Even with the game being stuck on the Asia version.
- The PCB w/ World Program roms does actually work when playing the game. At least the first three stages (only tested up to that point). No graphical issues, and everything is in English.
- Other glitches and weird issues with the attract demo, but you get the idea.
Has anyone done a region swap on this PCB before? Am I just overlooking something dumb? I've blank checked my EPROMs every time before burning, and verified the written data after each burn. Everything always comes back 100%. I even gave the EPROMs the full 30 minute erase cycle this last time, just to make sure there wasn't any lingering data. Again, this region swap seems like a no brainer. Any ideas are welcome.