RoboCop - Cracked By TTE

[h0ffman]

Ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole while disassembling RoboCop from DataEast. Seems it had some copy protection using an HuC6280 CPU, so I couldn't help but crack it!

Post 1

https://hoffman.home.blog/2025/12/18/robocop-the-future-of-copy-protection/

Post 2

https://hoffman.home.blog/2025/12/26/robocop-breaking-the-law/

If you manage to resurrect an old RoboCop PCB as a result of this patch, I'd love to hear about it!

 

[twistedsymphony]

interesting, thanks for sharing!

 

[raidenmaniac1]

great read, thanks for sharing. The HuC6280's processing bandwidth is now offloaded back to the 68000. how do you guaranty it does not impair gameplay ?

 

[h0ffman]

great read, thanks for sharing. The HuC6280's processing bandwidth is now offloaded back to the 68000. how do you guaranty it does not impair gameplay ?

Oh I tested this. Robocop updates the screen every two frames so a quick test you can modify that to 1. The original rom starts slowing down when one enemy appears one screen. My patched version slows down when there's more than 10 and a bunch of bullets.

The whole thing is dreadfully wasteful on cpu cycles

 

[Hammy]

Great work! it will now probably run on "bad dudes" type romboard
Are the bootleg(s) "bad cracks" ?

Interesting it adds lag to the game, it would not be the first time... those jaleco MCU's add quite a lot of input and game lag.

Also, Midnight resistance seems to have the same protection as robocop, but on a slightly different board. Probably the info could be re-used to do that game too.

 

[raidenmaniac1]

That's why I can't 1CC the game; it's because of the dam lag their sloppy coding introduced.

 

[chomponooch]

@Hammy please check your pm/email.

 

[caius]

Tested the patches on real hardware (with the HuC6280 desoldered), it works great

 

[Darksoft]

Fantastic work! Thanks for sharing!