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As David Haywood stated "The ST-V cartridge for Decathlete contains a chip marked 315-5838, this chip provides encryption and compression related functions for the game"
The issue with this game is that it makes extensive use of decompression to such an extent that almost the complete graphics would be to need decompressed and then adapt the game code for it.

@Darksoft discussed it with @MetalliC and this doesn't look like will be doable anytime soon.
 
that decathlete is now decrypted.
it is not, but at least compression/encryption algorithm is known now.

as was said above - this game have most of graphics/textures compressed, also they are stored as separate "files" (not grouped into bigger data chunks).
so, there needed to extract/decompress hundred(s) of files and then rebuild game data, or implement in SH-2 code on-the-fly decompressor.
any of approaches is not easy and will require fair amount of work...
 
I understand, I thought it was easier with just an encryption to break.

Thank you for your explanations
 
I wonder has there been any progress on getting Decathlete working. Would a trick like the SNES Star Ocean decompressed larger rom work here?

Looking at the smokemonsters gamelist pack, it looks like just Decathlete and Batman's sound that are incompatible with the multi cart. Excellent compatibility overall.
 
All of us Sega ST-V owners who now love Winter Heat want to play Decathlete...

:D
 
That game is very complex to make it work as most of the data is compressed and tbh, few people in the world can do the job. @MetalliC is one of them, but he said he's not interested, so we'll need to wait for this to come from someone else. Maybe we can raise a pledge big enough so that it raises enough interest for the right person to convert it.
 
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