@reidrac games certainly have higher production values, are they better games? that's questionable. you can't really review relative to previous generations of games, or we'll be stuck at a point where every game gets a 10 because of better graphics. @reidrac although I agree with your main point, you can't dock points for framework. If the 'maker' results in less interesting games due to maker limitations, or being too similar to existing games then that should be factored into the general review, not as an automatic penalty.

so uhm.. this is a thing that happened this is also a thing that happened... (for those not in the know, neither of these was released, these are cancelled JAKKS GameKeys)

@0x15e @Darren__O @yesterzine a fair amount of the Defender difficulty comes from the control scheme however, as you don't have left/right inputs, only 'thurst' and 'turn around' Adding l/r joystick inputs on an original cab that aren't used except in a hypothetical 'easy' would make it more confusing. @0x15e @Darren__O @yesterzine (of course in console compilations containing the game there are code hacks / cheats to do exactly that)

@yesterzine Then consider just giving the player more (but not infinite) health. The player will play the first half of the game not worrying much about enemy attacks, not learning the patterns. They'll then hit a brick wall later when that matters, but they didn't learn it early on. @yesterzine It's actually a pretty in-depth subject anyway, one that I'm sure will make for some great research papers. Maybe a sign on the box that tells you the developer has implemented such things, so buyers can decide, vote with their wallets, but mandating them in a can of worms.

@System11b Indeed, I'd consider it a platformer, because gravity plays a key role, but that brings us to The New Zealand Story, which Taito explicitly declare 'for Maze game fans' in the attract mode. @System11b I wonder if a Maze needs defined walls. Electric Yo Yo is in there a a 'Maze' game though, and from what I can see, while the levels have patterns, there are no walls. I'd say that wasn't a maze game. Outside of that, where does 'Maze' end and 'Level' begin.

@SoftlistG I did play Wardner on a stream, but I think it's one I ended up not exporting because of Twitch / Streamlabs issues. I don't hate it, it just fits in a very specific genre of slow paced, slightly stiff platformers, and is maybe not what you expect from Toaplan @SoftlistG But yeah, that's one issue with a 'worst' list. You could fill it with Kyle Hodgetts games or 'stealth' gambling frontend games and be done, but that's not too interesting to watch, as expectations were 0 to start with. The other is arcades had location testing as a filter.

Ixion is a Sega prototype I added to MAME many, many years ago. I was checking it recently and noticed at some point the sprite/fg priority had been flipped, leaving the game near unplayable. I also noticed the fg colour hookup I'd used was the wrong one. Fixing the FG colour hookup causes the score to be rendered in white, and the Ixion letters to light correctly when you pick them up. There are still unused bits in the PROM however, it is unknown if they have meaning.

Sean dumped the TV Board Games 6-in-1 with CandyLand. The die was an Elan EP3A19A, and while still 6502 based, and likely using the same page based video as the EU3A05, some system registers seem to be different so it'll take some extra work to get it booting. This is starting to look more like something now

TeamEurope dumped 4 more e-kara cartridges one of the dumped cartridges, the SC-05 works with multiple units in addition to the e-kara, including Popira, Taiko de Popira, and Jumping Popira

Sean dumped one of the other NES based ones, noteworthy mostly for having instruction text copy+pasted from a DS version on the box, which talks about upper and lower screens (which obviously doesn't apply here) this was also a regular FlashROM, as are most of the MSI units, the only exception seems to have been the Midway 3-in-1, which was just 2 globs without even anywhere easy to connect (hence why that one didn't get dumped yet) Maybe there are multiple versions of that though.

So last time I upgraded to the latest Win 10 I experience an issue where if the machine had been on for more than about 20 minutes, git connections would start dropping out, meaning I couldn't make any substantial pulls or pushes. Reverting to the previous Win 10 worked. I've waited many months now, tried updating again, same thing happens, after about 20 mins, the only way I can do any git operations without the connection being dropped is to reboot from cold.

I guess as we head towards the end of the year I just tend to get a bit nostalgic,start to wonder what my favourite memories of contributing to MAME really have been. Was it some of the earlier stuff - improving NMK sprite decryption (Macross etc.) or Sega C2 learning Genesis hw Maybe some of the stuff slightly after that, such as getting Sega System 32 / Multi 32 up and running in MAME, and discovering things that the Modeler emulator hadn't implemented such as the RGB controls used in Alien3

While the 2020 writeup contains a lot of pictures of things we have emulated, it should also be noted that a lot of things have been dumped over the course of the year that still show nothing at all, and haven't been covered at all outside of a mention in the release whatsnew. Sometimes this is because we don't yet emulate the required level of tech (some of the NESVT stuff) other times it's because there's likely additional Internal ROM data that needs extracting (some of the mini arcade type things)

'Easy Karaoke' takes an age to boot / shut down, redraws screen rather slowly, feels very low powered, but modern. looks like it's an ARM based device based on the markings on one of the square chips? Also I guess that's a Flash ROM on the back.

Team Europe dumped the Code Lyoko handheld provided by "KaruzoHikari" This 25-in-1 handheld uses the Senca 'Family Sport' game as a base, but customizes the frontend and 5 of the games with a Code Lyoko theme Code Lyoko #2

new in box apparently.... annoyingly I bought this so I could record a few bits from the unit to help with the emulation (it's already dumped) and maybe see if there's any way to run custom code on it as I think there's internal ROM (although it's a pads, not sub-board' case, so will be tricky)

We're approaching mid November now, which means only 2 more MAME releases left in 2020. It hasn't really felt like almost a year, but I guess the whole pandemic has moved me from 'high functioning' (even if I hate that term) to 'barely functioning' My patterns haven't changed much as I'm not that much of a social person (it usually just exhausts me) but not being able to 'reset' with friends once a month has just lead to a cloud of depressed feelings, no motivation to get out of bed, and even simple tasks being overwhelming

I've been making some improvements to MAME's VT emulation.

this thing really is tiny Overall a poor form factor for the games included tho. While some have double sized fonts to make them easier to read, others don't, and the display is clearly half the resolution of the NES/VT so pixels are simply being dropped making a lot of things very difficult to make out.

The 153/152-in-1 units are also full of unused games, including 'Deal or No Deal' There's also a 'PacMan' but it isn't playable, it just loops saying 'Ready...' and 'P T' so I guess it is incomplete.

The 160-in-1 of these low-resolution handhelds actually contains a list of 180 games, all present in ROM, just 20 haven't been selected for the menu. Most are in the other units, some are reskins of included, some I guess weren't chosen for legal reasons. pastebin.com/P7wSSXt8 If I hack the menu index I can launch the unlisted games. This OTM Pick Fruit doesn't seem to be in the other currently dumped units.