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Sega 18 - AlienStorm - Any Romboard Hack?

SCUBA King

SCUBA King

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I am trying to get AlienStorm to run on a 5987 daughter card.
I have done similar conversion as done with Moonwalker AnyRomboard name / location swapping, but when I boot it up, I get jacked up sprites.
I am assuming the "standard" code will not work since my original Alienstorm has the smaller (5874) daughter card with no Sega custom on it.

Was wondering if anyone ever hacked Alienstorm to work on 5987 and unencrypted.

I can get Shadow dancer working and Moonwalker working but think I need some different roms to get AlienStorm running.

Anyone have any luck with this?

I also found some threads talking about having to solder some jumpers, but I thought that was worked around also?

Any help is appreciated.

I just played AlienStorm to the end tonight on the original daughter card and with the 3 different screen / level aspects, it is actually way more fun than I remember.

Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
I found an old post from @apoc that says exactly what I figured. This fix is above my paygrade but hope someone has already done, or can take a look and see if they can make adjustments per Apoc.

Old post from archive:

Is it possible to run Shadow dancer (since it uses a 68k and no MCU) on 5987 using this ROM positions and jumper settings?
Click to expand...
I knew this question was about to pop up.
Yes it is possible BUT game would have to be patched to send bankswitching commands to the 315-5436 custom chip. Original commands for the older romboard can be kept making patched program universal (just like I did for Moonwalker).
Patching is very easy, just copy what is done for Moonwalker.

and further response:

Sorry for the late answer.
Let me explain: games write tile and sprite banking registers every frame. What I did is I simply inserted a jump there and created a new subroutine located in the free space you have at the end of program ROMs. Then since they aren't conflicting I kept the original banking writes followed by the writes needed by the 315-5436 custom chip. This way code becomes universal (works on both romboards).
 
I still need to get Alien storm running on Clutch Hitter rom board so eventually I will peek into the Moonwalker anyromboard code and see how its done. Assuming those roms are public?

Found em.

I guess these two are the routines mentioned.
0x7fE80 (this one JMP's around 0x442)
0x7FF00 (this one RTS as it's called from JSR around 0x1DD0)

1743981373895.png
1743981419315.png


I'll need a decrypted set to compare against, but my storage is 'messy' to say the least.
Someone point me to a decrypted set w/ no MCU/ROM patches pls?
 
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Asure said:
I still need to get Alien storm running on Clutch Hitter rom board so eventually I will peek into the Moonwalker anyromboard code and see how its done. Assuming those roms are public?

Found em.

I guess these two are the routines mentioned.
0x7fE80 (this one JMP's around 0x442)
0x7FF00 (this one RTS as it's called from JSR around 0x1DD0)

1743981373895.png
1743981419315.png


I'll need a decrypted set to compare against, but my storage is 'messy' to say the least.
Someone point me to a decrypted set w/ no MCU/ROM patches pls?
Click to expand...
check DM on klov, i tried to send DM here, but size limit on attach for me here is lower since Im still a noob.
 
I took a quick look but i won't be able to fix anything asap, there's already a load of projects on my plate, and busy work weeks. :(
 
Asure said:
I took a quick look but i won't be able to fix anything asap, there's already a load of projects on my plate, and busy work weeks. :(
Click to expand...
No rush, your work is always appreciated. I can use my original Alien Storm for now, I just think its awesome to have these roms available in case someone wants to make no MCU/FD68000 games run on either daughter board.

I know I speak for the whole hobby when i say Thanks in advance for looking at it, whenever you get a chance.
 
sidenote, when you do get time to poke at this, if you can look at doing bloxeed at the same time also, I think that is the only other joystick game that seems to be on the smaller daughter board also.
 
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