This is why, football games go in the scrap pile and that is where this one was heading until I decided to do a romident just to make sure it wasn't a good football game (if such a thing exists).
Momoko? what the hell is that... a little girl with a gun in a burning building shooting aliens that sounds amazing!.
Time to find the pinout, both klov and a post on the aussie arcade forum say it's not JAMMA and there's no JAMMA markings on the board also someone has previously soldered to it. There's no pinout online though and very little information in general, eventually I found a pdf of the manual here. Which confirmed that it is JAMMA.
On power up I had no sync, on closer inspection half the sync pin was missing and it was about 1mm too short to touch the edge connector pin.
I've had to do a repair like this before on a DK Jr pcb (posted a while back)
I was dreading having to do any work on this board because every single chip apart from the eproms has had it's markings sanded off, not to mention the huge amount of factory mod wires.
I was able to check every socketed chip and luckily the markings are still on the pcb itself, the 6264 work ram failed in my chip tested. I fitted a new one and...
Bingo! (hmm pink text?) :)
After a quick blast I dumped all the roms and checked them with romident and the two program roms came up as unknown. After trying the game in mame I instantly noticed that the screen with the age of the girl was in japanese but on mine it was english.
Jaleco not only translated what little japanese there was in the game they also improved the text colour making it easier to read.
It's amusing that Jaleco thought they had a market for this game outside of Japan and that they didn't even rename it or change the title screen.
It's amusing that Jaleco thought they had a market for this game outside of Japan and that they didn't even rename it or change the title screen.
I suspect this board is a prototype because of all the sanded chips / mod wires and the fact another hasn't been found yet. I wish I could remember where I got it and find out some more information. I think I got it from when I cleared out a local operator as they had quite a few treasures.
Maybe when the work ram died and the pcb was stored someone later came across it they marked it as 'football' as it does resemble a world cup 90 board and that's why it's got football written on it?.
Maybe when the work ram died and the pcb was stored someone later came across it they marked it as 'football' as it does resemble a world cup 90 board and that's why it's got football written on it?.
Anyway that's enough speculation and rambling, this version will be showing up in mame soon.
I have to say, you are one lucky man. I would give my left testicle to own this pcb.
ReplyDeleteI have been a big fan of the Momoko 120 game ever since I was young, and its a game (along with Psychic 5 and City Connection) that turned me into the Jaleco Collecting nut that I am today.
I Would love to see it appearing on MAME and get to play it (although the gameplay I assume is identical).
If you ever do choose to sell this pcb, please take the time to look me up, it is pretty much something I would only dream of owning.
I envy you more than anything. Congratulations on owning something that is more beautiful in the world of arcades than anything (in my opinion haha).
4 6 and 18 are all flipped, thats got me intrigued. Also that pink text, where the rest is blue.
ReplyDeleteFascinating
You'll have to let me know if you find any other differences. Most of them make sense like the lighter shade of blue so you can read the text easier on the black background.
ReplyDeleteI've no idea why the pink text on the title screen or the flipped sprites though. They also didn't fix the text not displaying bug when you complete the game which is the same in the Japanese version.
The game was originally supposed to be a Usari Yatatsu game (based loosely on the anime/manga series, also referred to as Lum, after the alien oni girl in the series). Jallio almost had the rights to it when they finished the game, so they had to redo Lum's sprite (turning her into Momoko). If you want to see what the game was supposed to be, play the Famicom game Lum No Wedding Bell.
ReplyDelete