Thread: For the record, the thing that has me the most stoked about the Game & Watch library being on the cusp of fully preserved in MAME is not that it happened, but that 10 years ago nobody ever even thought that it *could* happen.
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It was in the process of emulating other VFD-and-LCD-based systems from the late 70's and early 80's, through decapping, that Sean Riddle happened to decap a Game & Watch. Much to many parties' surprise, it turned out to be a full-on microcontroller.
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The reason for my verbal hedges above is this: The relevant people in the Soviet Union knew pretty early on that this was the case. This is why exact clones exist for certain Game & Watch titles, with names such as as Ну Погоди and Космический мост.
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However, this knowledge only got filtered through to those of us in the US and Europe once Game & Watch games started getting dumped. Initially, it was just Sean Riddle dumping these machines. He quickly ran out of spare time to do so, though, and so he documented his process.
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This ended up leading to
@algestam stepping up and exactly duplicating Sean's process, and providing an unexpectedly convenient vector for dumping: Since I decided to take point on acquiring these handhelds, and I also lived in Sweden, it drastically cut down on shipping.Näytä tämä ketju -
Once again,
@algestam's setup, similar to Sean's setup, is pretty cool: There are custom-made PCBs to which the LCD matrices get attached, which can selectively light all or individual segments. There's also a high-quality camera with a fixed tripod pointed at the setup.Näytä tämä ketju -
The end result is the ability to get high-quality, vectorizable photos of each LCD segment. Combined with dumping the ROM data and scanning the underlays and overlays, and high-quality photos of the case, one winds up with the HD-quality artwork available for these games.
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Last but not least, I want to give a shout out to an anonymous donator who agreed to essentially bankroll all of the final, practically Unobtanium, entries in the Game & Watch library. If not for him stumping up a couple thousand bucks, we'd be short several units.
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We'd not have Donkey Kong Circus, or Mario The Juggler, or Super Mario Bros. Crystal, if not for this person. it's been a monumental task, but it's nearing completion. And apart from a few alternate revs, we can finally say Nintendo's Game & Watch line is preserved.
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