MAMEWorld Forums - News - The Return of the Japump

Allow me to tell you a Tale of The Guru, Samurais & some Monkey Magic. The reason for this very long story is simply to forward the preservation agenda in Japan where collectors and preservationists alike have been isolated from MAME.

Context

We all know that Team Japump was removed from the DU due to what happened with Monkey Magic and that they stopped contributing to the Western community some time ago. They have long been vilified as hoarders and the like. Once upon a time in the late 90s and early 2000s, Japanese collectors and developers alike contributed to MAME but something happened and almost all contributions came to a halt...

Fast forward to 2016

Last summer, I had become aware of the 68705 MCU dumper that brizzo had developed with others and volunteered to test the product as I had a dead MCU on a Get Star (bought from The Guru who claimed it worked but was actually faulty...) & wanted to revive it. After successfully dumping the 68705 from a working Get Star, I had notified brizzo that I own many PCBs that used this as a security device and that we should go about dumping all of them. Around this time, I coincidentally bumped into Yohji in Akihabara and caught up with him regarding the latest preservation news. Hearing that I dumped the 68705 piqued his interest as his group, Game Preservation Society (a registered NPO in Japan), had been trying to engineer tech to do just this but had not found any success. I did not initially understand why he was so keen on it until he told me the tale of Team Japump and the incident that would stop all contributions from them.

Team Japump's contributions to arcade preservation is significant. More than half of their dumps were sourced from a well known collector in Japan who we will call Collector X.

Problem 1

Collector X wanted nothing more than for Japanese arcade games to be accurately preserved for posterity. In 2009, he generously loaned the uber rare Taito's Chack'n Pop PCB (Currently valued at $10,000 USD) to The Guru in order to get the 68705 MCU decapped. Now, this was not done directly as neither Collector X nor Team Japump actually read/write/speak English! Instead Yasu Ogawa from MAMEDEV who is bilingual helped facilitate communications between The Guru and Team Japump. The Guru then would forward the PCB to Dr. Decap. Now, we all know if you pass the same message between multiple people, the final receiver will end up not exactly getting the whole message. Imagine using another language in this communication transfer and you can start to understand where the eventual problem came from - communication.

Team Japump was under the impression that Chack'n Pop would be treated with high priotity and with care. Dr. Decap just added it to his growing list of decaps that needed to be done. Neither could communicate to each other in the same language. Collector X was obviously anxious about the status of his valuable board and pushed Team Japump to get the status of it as no communication had come to them after the shipment. Eventually, Dr. Decap did try to decap it with no success and the PCB was returned to The Guru. For years, it languished in his hands while Team Japump had no transparency into the status of it. Fortunately, Yohji met Team Japump and understood their plight. He took it upon himself to recover the PCB after lengthy badgering and using his own funds. When it arrived, it would not boot as the MCU was destroyed.

At this point, 6 years had passed since the initial shipment of the board for decapping. Collector X now does not have a working PCB and no easy way to replace it.

Problem 2

Also in 2009, discrete sound for Taito's Lupin III was not emulated correctly in MAME. Andy Welburn who is an expert in this hardware wanted a sample to correct this. Seeing that Lupin III is also a very rare game in Japan, Team Japump offered to send the PCB from Collector X to help with this. Again, Yasu Ogawa from MAMEDEV helped to facilitate communication and shipping to Andy Welburn in the UK. Again like with Chack'n Pop, no communication was made to them on the status and even Andy himself did not know where to return the board when he was done with it. The board has never been returned and Andy says he does not have it (he did have several before which he sold on his store site). It possibly could have been mixed up with his store inventory or lost in his move to the US). Lupin III is not as rare as Chack'n Pop but very uncommon. It averages in value at around $1200 USD if you can find one.

The People

Dr. Decap (US, English only) < The Guru (AU, English only) < Yasu Ogawa from MAMEDEV (JP, Bilingual) < Team Japump (JP, Japanese only) < Collector X (JP, Japanese only)

Andy Welburn (UK, English only) < Yasu Ogawa from MAMEDEV (JP) < Team Japump (JP) < Collector X (JP)

The Journey

Yohji and myself spent a weekend this past spring on a 10 hour road trip traveling to central Japan to meet the head Team Japump members in order to present a gift to start to repair relations with the Japanese preservation community. We were accompanied by 2 of their Tokyo members, 1 who I have met previously and helped with background information on protos/rare games.

This gift is the result of a global collaboration of like minded individuals. We had successfully dumped a working MCU from Chack'n Pop that Yohji was able to borrow from Team Japump and we had also programmed a replacement MCU. Presenting this is meant to be an apology for what happened in the past and to start relations anew with the preservation community in Japan.

Many of Team Japump had already heard of me by reputation but I had never met them before. Imagine the scene in one of the Star Wars prequels where Anakin goes before the Jedi council. That was me. Scrutinized by their local standards for what I have released, who I know in Japan and what I have sold before on auctions - they knew quite a bit about what I have done since joining the DU.

After much discussion and the successful repair of Chack'n Pop, I was told their side of the story of what happened and also inquired into what happened with Monkey Magic. For those that don't know, Moogly Guy and the DU spent a significant amount of money to acquire this undumped Nintendo game only to find that Team Japump submitted the dump and driver after we acquired the game. To most people, this would seem to be outrageous. An obscene amount of money ($4000 USD) was just spent and this submission just seemed to be trolling.

Immediate action was taken and Team Japump was removed the DU. The submission to MAMEDEV was deleted.

Why did Team Japump do this?

The simple truth is coincidence and the lack of English communications skills further exacerbated the situation. Chack'n from Team Japump had just happened to download his emails from the DU and saw the topic with Monkey Magic in it. He did not know what was happening as he couldn't read anything but Yahoo and Monkey Magic but saw the link to the auction. Not wanting people to waste money, he quickly released what he already prepared in the past. Unfortunately, since he could not defend himself, we are where we are today.

Team Japump now understands why the DU and MAMEDEV took those actions.

The Resolution

Team Japump will see to the return of the funds used for Monkey Magic to be put into rare dumps that will be released to MAME in the immediate future. Dumps that they have held in the past will be released in the future as well.

The Chack'n Pop incident (Problem 1) has now been resolved. I will work with Andy Welburn (a great guy who has contributed much) and Team Japump to resolve the Lupin III incident (Problem 2) even if it comes out of my own pocket.

Together, I hope that our preservation community becomes stronger through better communication handled by myself/Yohji and that Japanese developers come back & lead dev on things like mahjong and hanafuda.

PS: Dr. Decap said that The Guru was crazy and could not reasonably manage the workload which is why he quit. There were no issues recovering the chips from him.