Mega Drive Core / Psycho Pinball Issue

[Reg]

Hi All,

Can anybody please check this game for me and see if they can get it fully running ?

On the below video at around 18:55 the game breaks when you shoot the mouth of the whale on the Abyss table.

Off video, I tried the other version I had of this and had awful crackling sound. Messing with the two cores...

...one core plays the game but seems to break on the whale feature and watching the game in demo mode - cut seems to be broken.
...the other core plays the game and cut scenes are fine, but the music is wrecked and a constant crackle.

Audio is turned right down for this video.

I vaguly remember Micro Machines having broken music as well and the common between everything is all these games are from Codemasters.

The hashes of the roms are:

2.png (6.73 KiB) Viewed 1623 times

Thank you.

[kathleen]

Hi @Reg,

I could reproduce your issue on my Mister. I mean, having a black screen once the ball enters into the mouth of the whale.

BUT, I also found out that if I let ₄₀ seconds the black screen, then the table goes back again and I was able to continue to play.

I entered two times in the mouth of the whale and the 2 times, it behaved the same.

So, I can confirm your issue. However, as I'm curious, may I ask you also to do the same exercise again and let the screen black long enough without touching anything (₄₀ sec) to see if on your side, you'll get also the table back ?

EDIT : I've just also noticed this kind of issue (black screen) happens if I let the DEMO mode on. Between each tables, the screen gets black for almost the same duration. Maybe one mode (resolution) is missing.

EDIT2 : I do not know if this behavior is normal but I found a lot of slowdown during the game, especially when a lot of things are blinking. I'm wondering if on the original hardware it is the same.

Last but not least, the HIGH SCORE table seems to not being shown neither. According to the manual, if we let the game on the title screen for a couple of seconds, the table will appear (My bet it is the black screen that we see instead)

https://evercade.info/wp-content/upload ... inball.pdf

EDIT3 : Interesting point, I checked the game (the same rom) under the core GENESIS and I have the high score table and no black screen anymore during the DEMO. So my guess was correct, the black screen should shows the high score table during the DEMO, If I have time, I'll play the ABYSS table under the GENESIS core to see. But in my opinion, it should work.

EDIT4 : The last one I played the game under the GENESIS core and it works as it should. I can tell you that once the ball in the mouth of the whale, there is a mini game appearing. Unfortunately I was not fast enough to take a screenshot as I lost my player in one second I was just able to take a screen shot of the screen showing how to play the mini game (which you cannot see under the MEGADRIVE core as at that time it is a black screen

NODATE-Psycho Pinball (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It)_0002.png (295.33 KiB) Viewed 1391 times

NODATE-Psycho Pinball (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It)_0003.png (252.41 KiB) Viewed 1391 times

Will you report this issue ?

Cheers.
Kathleen

[FPGA64]

The codemasters games used to require you to set the region manually. If you didnt you got terrible sound

[SwedishGojira]

This game needs to be run in PAL mode (50Hz) to work properly. Some mechanics in the background usually gets out of sync if run in 60Hz.

[DaveGeorge]

If you reset the game after selecting language, that god awful sound won’t appear anymore.

[aberu]

If you reset the game after selecting language, that god awful sound won’t appear anymore.

Are you testing with the Mega Drive core or the Genesis core?

The Mega Drive core resolved this issue last I tested. It was the same problem that Total Football had with the Genesis core, it was very likely a bus arbiter timing problem.

This game needs to be run in PAL mode (50Hz) to work properly. Some mechanics in the background usually gets out of sync if run in 60Hz.

It should be launching in the european region I believe. Unless it's using an incorrect region code in the header or if the user has bypassed the normal setting of auto detecting the region.

[DaveGeorge]

Are you testing with the Mega Drive core or the Genesis core?

The Mega Drive core resolved this issue last I tested. It was the same problem that Total Football had with the Genesis core, it was very likely a bus arbiter timing problem.

I was refering to the genesis-core.