MAMEWorld Forums - News - Free Kick finally dumped by Charles!!

> > Charles beat the custom CPU module

>If you look at technology from a common sense perspective, you soon realize that it
>isn't infallible. If enough people or one really dedicated person wants to breach its
>defenses, they will eventually do so.

True....but with some of the pcbs using hardware chips for encrypting (NEC MC-8123, FD1089A/FD1089B, FD1094) plus relying on batteries that still work for game to operate means those games are/were on serious borrowed time. I'd hate to think if folks like Charles, Nicola, Aaron, Andreas, Guru, Dave Widel and a few others were not around to help prevent many of the games from being lost. You'd have to have been a visitor on Gridle's old MAME.net web site and read the forum in order to recall the redundant posts of "when will so-and-so Sega game be playable?" and the standard reponse was "Game is encrypted". Those posts were appearing on the forum every other day along with some of the posts regarding CPS-2 games also. Good to have to no longer see those type of posts and all that is moot....with exception of alternate versions of some of the Sega games have yet to be found and preserved.

It does still require pcb owners to know how to modify or repair a pcb in case battery no longer works in order to restore a pcb back to working shape....if even possible, but at least it is possible.

>All it takes is to exploit a vulnerability or two in the hardware or software in question.

Master Boy was one of those in which vulnerability was almost next to impossible http://cgfm2.emuviews.com/old2007.php

If reading Charles' old wip regarding Master Boy, the programmers were very efficient at closing many of the loopholes which made Charles' Master Boy work all the more impressive imo.

It is still impressive that Seibu COP protection hardware has been able to hold out for a long time and same for the Atari "sloop" protection used for later Atari games (Space Lords and etc.). I figure those two might be able to be eventually emulated and thankfully they don't make use of a battery system that controls game operation.

As others have previously posted in the past it is the "Dallas MCU" that will be the protection hardware that will probably never be fully emulated.

>Also, from the screenshot of Free Kick, is that an Arkanoid-clone? I see a paddle at the
>bottom of the screen that looks like the one from Arkanoid.

I'll say a distant clone of Atari Break Out since Break Out was my generation of games in the arcade years back then during 1970s.