| Patch |
Features
|
Columns
|
Columns for the MSX2 is a great port of this classic game,
deemed by many to be of 16-bit quality.
Well, except for its two title screens. They were just hasty
digitizations of the Sega Mega-drive title screens, that
looked bland and missed a lot of details. Even the aspect
ratio was wrong.
This enhancement patch replaces the two title screens with
new ones, made as real Pixel Art, that are even more
colorful and detailed than the Mega-drive ones.
As a bonus, this patch also disables the keyboard click and
removes the annoying copy protection.
|
Duck Hunt
|
The original game is great, but it uses the Sega Light
Phaser directly connected to the MSX without any adapter.
When plugged this way, the Light Phaser will obtain the
ground for its entire circuit from a data pin of the PSG,
which is strongly not recommended. In the long run there's a
high probability to fry the PSG Port3/bit5. Imagine that for
the MSX models that have the PSG integrated into the
chipset. With this bit fried, a lot of MSX devices won't
work anymore, like the mouse, touchpad, paddles and even the
joymega.
This patch implement the following enhancements and fixes:
- Change the embedded Lightgun driver to the standard
MSX
lightgun. The Gunstick support was also dropped
(not enough space in a 8KB ROM).
- The game now passes all MSX AcidTests
- The turbo will be enabled if the CHGCPU routine is
present in the BIOS
- A better interrupt handler was implemented
- Both light guns can now start the game. When the 2nd
light gun starts the game, the two player mode will be
selected.
Note: You can still connect your Sega Light Phaser to the
MSX, but now you will have to do it the right way, by
connecting it to the gunSMS adapter.
And you're now also able use the NES Zapper with the gunNES adapter.
There's still a bug in the game that wasn't fixed: in two
player mode, if both players pull the trigger at the same
time and player-1 misses his shot, the player-2 sensor won't
be checked and will miss his shot too.
|
Fleet Commander
2
|
- Fixes a race condition that exists on the game boot,
that could cause problems on some machine under certain
circunstances.
- Allows the turbo to be enabled on any machine that has
the CHGCPU routine on its BIOS when R is keep pressed on
boot. The original routine only allowed the turbo on MSX
Turbo-R machines.
|
Galaga Paddle support
|
This patch adds support for
the MSX-Paddle to
the game Galaga.
As a bonus, it also adds:
- Supports MSX-HID PnP connection/disconnection
detection for the paddle
- Allows 5 to be pressed on boot to force 50Hz video
- Enables the turbo on machines that have the CHGCPU
routine on BIOS
|
Ghost
|
Ghost
is a fantastic a-la-Maze of Galious style game developed by
unepic_fran where
you control Ghost, one of Viktor's agents, who has the
mission to destroy a computer that went mad and is now
controlling the Dallas space station.
This patch makes many improvements to the game:
- Fixed the PSG replayer, so now the whole game passes
the Acid2Test
- Fixed a bug where the password could not be typed if
the caps lock was on. This was a problem with the Sharp
Hotbit computers, since they have the capslock enabled
by default in their BIOS. The first impression was that
the password screen just didn't work on the Hotbits.
- Implemented a new interrupt handler, for many reasons:
- It improves the game performance and reduces the
tearing that happened in some more crowded areas
- It also allowed the keyboard buffer flushing
routines to be eliminated from the game, saving more
CPU time.
- This also fixed the problem that the keyboard
routines had with turbo, probably leading you to
disable the turbo on turboR machines
- Implemented full joystick support. This way the game
can be played entirely on the joystick, without having
to get out of the comfort of your sofa to reach for the
keyboard ;). The new controls are:
- Joystick Button-2: pause the game
- Up in the pause menu acts like RETURN: teleports you
to the center room
- Down in the pause menu acts like CTRL: teleports you
to the area-4
- Since there are no more problems with turbos, now the
game enables the turbo on any machine that has the
CHGCPU function on its BIOS, for quicker screen
transitions and to eliminate any residual tearing on
crowded areas
- Added CoolColors (the same palette I used on Gradius-2
smooth scroll) to improve the visuals on MSX2 or higher.
These colors enhance the gradients and details of all
MSX1 graphics.
|
| Gradius-2 Patches |
This patch implements many enhancements on Gradius-2:
- On MSX1 and MSX2: DynamicVsync
- On MSX2+ and MSX Turbo-R: SmothScroll and standard
TurboFix.
- Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot
- CoolColors
- Many routines were optimized.
|
King's
Valley Plus Enhancements and Tiled Map Editor plugin
|
This package contains a load/save plug-in for
the Tiled Map Editor and
a patch for the King's Valley game that came on the 2nd disk
of the Konami
Game Collection 1. It's also known by many other
nicknames, like "King's Valley Treasured Edition", "King's
Valley with Edit mode" and "King's Valley Plus". I usually
call it by the latter name, since it's much easier.
The patch implements enhancements to the game King's Valley
Plus (aka King's Valley with Edit mode):
- Removes the terrible built-in editor and replaces it
with a simple file browser to load levels created by the
user
- Changes the .DAT extension to .KVG (King's Valley
GAME.USR) for the custom levels
- Unlocks all the engine features on user levels:
- Dual and triple rooms
- All mummy types instead of only the white mummy
- Flip doors, with optional auto-inversion
- Trap doors (one-way doors)
- Trap walls
- Fake floors
- Hard floors
- Bridges
- Up to 4 exit doors
- Fall from the bottom to the top
- Adds Dynamic Vsync, to prevent slowdowns on levels
with lots of objects
- Fixes the stair color glitch on the exit door
animation
- Enables the turbo when CHGCPU is present on the BIOS
- Eliminates the need for the WORK.DAT configuration
file, that was used to select for which levels the game
would load a GAMExx.DAT level edited by the user. The
game will now load a GAMExx.KVG whenever it's present
- Fixes a crash that happened when the a destination
door that doesn't exist was selected, i.e. on a user
level
- The game doesn't crash anymore on DOS2/Nextor after
quitting the custom level module (was: EDIT, now: LOAD)
- Fixes a bug where the game sometimes loaded the
incorrect theme for an internal level, including on the
autoplay demo
- Sets the MSX1 palette on MSX2 or higher
- Changes text PAUSING to PAUSED
- Fixes the release date on the title screen
- Increases the time the title screen stays before the
autoplay is activated
- Now you can have as many custom levels as you want,
instead of only 9.
- When the game is run under DOS2/Nextor you can
organize your levels inside folders, and select a folder
on startup. Just pass the desired folder as a parameter
for the KV1PLUS.BAT launcher script. Note: COMMAND
>=2.44 is required.
- You can type KV1PLUS /? on DOS2/Nextor to see a help
message
- MSX-DOS1 is also supported, but without folders or
help message
- Fixed the garbled password window caused by the 1st
version of the patch
- Better password window: it clears the sprites and has
a gray background box
- CTRL+Q now can be used to be used to abort the normal
"PLAY" game too, not only user levels
- More actions available on the joystick:
- Button-2: pause the game
- Hold the joystick button-2 then press button-1: kill
the player or quit the LOAD menu
|
King's
Valley
II Enhancements
|
On MSX1, MSX2 and MSX2-Gold versions, this patch
implements:
- DynamicVsync
- Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot
- Hold TAB to throttle the game speed
- Automatically sets the VDP to 60Hz on boot, to play
the game at the correct speed even on european machines.
If you have an old european TV that doesn't support
this, keep SELECT pressed on boot to disable it.
- Enhanced sprite multiplexing: if you have a turbo
machine, the sprite multiplexing routine will now take
advantage of that and the flickering of the sprites will
occur at a higher framerate, dynamically adjusted as
high as your CPU supports.
- Many small optimizations on the jukebox, reducing the
CPU usage
- Pausing the game don't stop the sprite multiplexer
(flickering) anymore
- Jukebox fixed to pass the Acid2Test
Specific bugfixes/enhancements for each version:
- KV22/KV2G: Much faster routine for picking a
tool/weapon. But 128KB of VRAM is now a requirement.
- KV22/KV2G: Smarter routine for refreshing objects on
screen. It's much faster and the objects don't flicker
anymore
- KV21/KV22: Now both coldboot and warmboot are
supported. This means that the ROM not only boots as a
cartridge, but also detects if it was booted from
MSX-DOS and boots correctly with disk support on both
cases. This allow you to load the games under the
MSX-DOS2 using your favorite ROM loader and use the
harddisk for loading/saving custom stages.
- KV21/KV22: Finally it's possible to set the desired
theme for custom stages. The 6 original themes are
supported and 2 "new" themes (see below) are supported,
which along with the second palette supported for each
theme supported by the KV22 version results in 32
different possibilities.
- KV22: Two "new" themes were created by combining two
of the themes with the palette of each other.
- KV21/KV22: Fixed the bug that allowed files with
spaces on its name to be saved on disk. This resulted in
files that could no be handled properly by the MSX-DOS.
The spaces on the filename are now replaced with
underlines. The stage title will continue to be shown
with spaces.
- KV22: Translated the introscreen logo
- KV2G: Translated the introscreen logo, certificate
screen and the menus
- KV21: On the 5th theme, the decorative beetle eyes now
blink at the right place.
- KV21: Fixed the disk routines, now harddisks are
supported for loading/saving stages (KV22 didn't had
this bug and supported harddisks from the beginning)
- KV21: Removed GameMaster-1 compatibility, because it
caused problems on harddisk support. GameMaster-2
compatibility is still present though.
- KV21: Fixed the bug that caused the player sprite to
appear on the wrong side of the screen for 1 frame on
screen changes.
- KV21: The TMS9918 palette is loaded on MSX>=2
machines. I decided to use this palette instead of
CoolColors because there's already an MSX2 version of
the game. So the TMS9918 palette would be more faithful
for comparisons between the two versions.
- KV22/KV2G: Modified to use the HKEYI hook instead of
HTIMI, just like any other Konami game.
- KV22/KV2G: Relocated a variable that was placed on the
HTIMI hook
|
Konami's Soccer
|
- Standard TurboFix
- Removes some annoying software protection routines to
make space for the turbofix routines.
|
| Laydock-2 enhancements |
Laydock-2 is one of the very few MSX2+ exclusive
games. This patch does many enhancements into this
game, aiming to improve the playability, performance
and balance the difficulty of the game between the
one player and two player modes.
- New title screen. The original title screen
was a hasty digitisation. The MSX2+ trump card
was to have thousands simultaneous of colors,
something just unseen at that price range in
1988, and even less on an 8-bit machine. But the
title screen of this game was almost monochrome
and was full of artefacts, leaving a not so
great impression.
- Turbofixed the game. The turbo is
automatically enabled on machines that have the
CHGCPU routine on BIOS, and on Panasonic MSX2+
machines. Even the sample player will work at
the correct rate, regardless of the CPU speed.
- Optimised many of the game routines, so it
runs a quite faster now even at 3.57MHz
- Modified the sample player to play the samples
at the PPI instead of the PSG. The samples were
1bit anyway, and this saved space for the new
routines
- Fixed a bug in the intro demo that caused the
loading screen to be shown (and the respective
sample to be played) only once every 256 loops
of the demo
- Implemented Double-buffering on the SAT
(Sprite Attribute Table)
- Fixed a bug that caused the shield meter to
show an incorrect percentage
- Fixed a race condition in the vertical scroll
code that caused the sprites to jump on certain
CPU speeds
- Fixed a bug that made the Alpha weapon launch
backwards in the horizontal stages
- Bugfix: Bulldog didn't clear its explosion
last sprite frame from the screen
- The shield energy is now refilled at the
beginning of each planet. This was implemented
since the game allows you to start with a full
shield at any stage you already played anyway.
- Adjusted the power and speed of the weapons to
match those of Super Laydock
- To compensate for the stronger weapons, the
shield now works differently:
- It holds 20% less initial power
- As a reward for careful players, the
undocked ships now can recharge up to 8 units
(50% of the max) per planet. It slowly
recharges when the docking power is kept maxed
for at least 4 seconds
- There's a new dotted gauge just below you
shield gauge, that show the amount of charging
you still have left
- The docking power also plays a rule at the
fire rate of your projectile weapons. At the
minimal level, your weapons have the original
Laydock2 fire rate. At the maximum docking
power, your weapons will match the fire rate of
Super Laydock.
- The docking power now discharges when taking
hits even when the players are undocked. This
will reflect in the ships fire rate (as
explained before), and will also make docking
harder, in a way to balance the difficulty
between the single-player and dual-player modes.
- All the weapons you have available can be
fired at any time now. Some weapons were blocked
from firing under some conditions as a
workaround for bugs they had. This caused a
nightmare for the player since he selected
weapons that sometime just wouldn't fire without
any explanation. Those bugs were fixed, so the
blocks could be removed.
- The "Double" weapon now kills both airborne
and ground enemies on vertical levels too
- Implemented 3 button joystick/keyboard
support. They select the next/previous weapon
respectively:
- Changed the SHIFT to N and M for the
keyboard 2nd and 3rd buttons
- On the MSX joystick, press the trigger-2 to
select the next weapon, and the triggers 1 and
2 simultaneously to select the previous weapon
- Added joyMega support: button-A = next weapon,
button-C = previous weapon, START = pause
- Implemented support for quick weapon changes
on single-player mode. This allows the secondary
weapon to be changed while the older is still on
screen. This will also solves the bug where the
Condor missile got stuck on bosses
- Improved the Merry weapon: when no direction
is selected, it will fire forward like Zanac's
weapon-0
- Adjusted the launch point of the "Double"
weapon on horizontal stages, to match the place
on the ship were it is launched on vertical
stages. This also makes it more effective.
- Replaced ESC with STOP to pause the game on
the keyboard
- Fixed a bug that allowed line interrupts to
happen during disk I/O (it was a miracle that it
didn't freeze very often)
- Implemented frame skipping and dynamic vsync
for a much smoother gaming experience. This also
considerably reduced the tearing that happened
in screen flashing and palette fading effects,
and the glitches that happened on the sprites on
the MSX Turbo-R at the top of the screen.
- Enhanced the shield gauge to show when the
shield power is overboosted
- Bugfix: Corrected the player-2 energy bar
position, since it was misaligned
- Fixed a bug that corrupted the fixed point
damage under some occasions
- Fixed a glitch that caused spurious sprites to
be shown when the boss ship stage was being
loaded
Note: Only after I finished the patch that I noticed
that there's a different title screen if you boot
the disk-2 of the game. I won't have time to remake
that screen too, so if someone feels compelled to do
that, just send me the finished image and I can
include it on a newer version of the patch.
TL;DR: Besides the bugfixes and new title screen,
the difficulty isn't watered down by this patch. In
fact, what it does now is to reward skilful players
that know how/when to balance the risks of playing
offensive versus defensive, and that master the
sub-weapons available in the game. The docking power
now has a very important role in the game, so use it
wisely. And yes, there's turbo and joyMega support
now.
|
|
Maze of Galious, The
|
- DynamicVsync
- Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot
- CoolColors
- Hold the TAB key to throttle the game speed
- Automatically sets the VDP to 60Hz on boot, to play
the game at the correct speed even on european machines.
If you have an old european TV that doesn't support
this, keep SELECT pressed on boot to disable it.
|
Metal Gear 1
DynamicVsync
|
- DynamicVsync
- Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot
- Hold the TAB key to throttle the game speed
- SPACE key now speeds up the text dialogs, just like
Metal Gear-2
- Automatically sets the VDP to 60Hz on boot, to play
the game at the correct speed even on european machines.
If you have an old european TV that doesn't support
this, keep SELECT pressed on boot to disable it.
- Removed the annoying region lock. Now it's possible to
play the japanese version on non-japanese machines
- Enhanced sprite cycling: if you have a turbo machine,
the sprite cycling routine will take advantage of that
and the flickering of the sprites will occur at a higher
framerate.
- Improved graphics for the moving parts of the bridge.
They now match the non-moving pieces better.
|
| Metal Gear 2 Turbo Fix |
- Standard TurboFix
- Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot
- Jukebox fixed to pass the Acid2Test
|
Mon Mon Monster
|
- Turfofixed the game
- Faster screen-change routine
- The game now passes the Acid2test. This also means
that the FM soundtrack can now be heard on the MSX-Audio
BIOS v1.3
- New interrupt handler: quicker and more compliant
- Enable the turbo on machines that have the CHGCPU
routine on BIOS
- The PSG can be redirected to the PSG emulator
(requires MSX-Audio BIOS v1.3b, yet to be released).
When this feature is enabled, the turbo will also be
enabled automatically on Panasonic MSX2+ machines
- Configuration keys that can be pressed on boot:
- R = Enable the hidden F1 cheat to advance stages
- 5 = Force 50Hz refresh rate, otherwise it will
select 60Hz
- P = Force PSG mode (don't detect MSX-Music or
MSX-Audio)
- O = Use PSG driver only (Allows PSG soundtrack on
PSGemu)
- M = Ignore internal MSX-Music
- Added joyMega support:
- START = pause
- A button = throws rocks
- Fixed a bug that caused writes to the OPLL to happen
even when no MSX-Music was present
- Fixed the "CONTENUE" typo of the game over screen
|
Quarth
|
- TurboFix: The game can now be run on turbo machines
without any glitch
- Fixed the splitscreen routine
- Fixed the places where the CPU didn't wait for the
blitter to finish
- The turbo will be enabled via CHGCPU BIOS call on
machines that support this
- Correct handling of non-VDP interrupts, that are now
passed along to the interrupt chain.
- The game now passes the MSX Acid2Test: fixed routines
on the Jukebox and battle-mode splitscreen
- 50Hz video mode can be forced at boot by keeping the
"5" key pressed.
- The Button-2 of the joysticks can now be used to pause
the game.
- Partial Game Master 2 support. The ingame Game Master
menu functions are glitchy, but the rest work fine.
|
| Salamander Patches |
- DynamicVsync
- CoolColors
- Fixed the ripple-laser, which on the MSX version
didn't behave as a laser at all. Now it behaves like the
arcade version.
|
Space Manbow
|
- Standard TurboFix
- Fixed the bug of the random number generator of the
stage-7 boss (the big green head with horns). This bug
caused a too long delay between the launch of each
bubble, resulting in one of the lamest bosses of the MSX
history. After this fix, the boss started to behave as a
real stage boss.
- Jukebox fixed to pass the Acid2Test
|
Valis II: The Fantasm Soldier
|
This is the enhancement patch v3 for the game Valis
II
for the MSX2, with the following features:
- Full support for the MSX turbo R, with a proper
turbofix of the game, cutscenes and music replayer
- 3rd version of the enhanced drumkit, improving its
quality yet even more
- Better multiplexing of the PSG between the SFX and
BGM, including on the cutscenes
- The PSG volume has been adjusted to match the FM
volume
- *Lots* of optimizations. All blitting and
keyboard/joystick routines have been rewritten. The MSX2
with Z80A now runs the areas with scroll as fast as the
R800 did on the original game, beats the PC-88 version
running at 4MHz, coming very close to the PC-88 turbo at
8MHz. And with much less noticeable tearing than the
PC-88/8MHz too. A 7.14MHz turbo MSX2 runs the game with
almost no slowdown (tested on a CIEL Expert3)
- In a nutshell, the game now runs ~53% faster on the
Z80, and ~88% faster on the R800
- Replaced the game barely functional dynamicVsync
routine with my own, that keeps a much steadier frame
rate, fixing the issues of the original that went from
sluggish to peaks of enemy speed frenzy when Yuko wasn't
moving
- Greatly improved the keyboard/joystick responsiveness.
Fixed the constant missing of button presses and key
combination misses
- The compatibility with the NEOS MA-20 "version up
adapter" was restored
- The opening cutscene was almost entirely rewritten
from scratch. All of its takes now run smooth, and it
was entirely synchronized with its respective BGM.
- The cropping of the ominous moon was also fixed, so
the MSX version now also has a truly ominous moon like
the versions of the game for other platforms
- The Reno and Title screen animations have been fixed
and all their animations run smooth now and can be
skipped at any time.
- The title screen now loops back to the opening
cutscene after the title music has ended, like the
majority of native MSX games do.
- The other cutscenes received a turbofix. But they
still need a lot of work in terms of optimizations (all
cutscenes are horribly coded)
- Lots of bugfixes on the game and its cutscenes.
- Some keyboard keys were changed:
- The pause key was changed to the STOP key instead of
ESC/CAPS LOCK
- ESC can now be used to escape menu selections
- Z/X were remapped to SPACE/GRAPH to avoid key
ghosting
- The "Engrish" messages were all rewritten
- This patch enables the turbo on any machine that has
the CHGCPU BIOS function on its BIOS, granting an even
much smoother experience and shorter loading times.
Read the changelog in the included README file for more
detailed descriptions.
For an even more pleasant music experience, you can check if
your MSX computer needs a hardware sound fix at this page.
|
Vampire
Killer /
Akumajo Dracula
|
- DynamicVsync (it also Fixed the 50Hz speed bug, as
even the Z80A/3.57MHz was too fast to run the game at
50Hz)
- Enhanced sprite cycling
- Page flipping for the sprites
- Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot
- Hold the TAB key to throttle the game speed
- Automatically sets the VDP to 60Hz on boot, to play
the game at the correct speed even on european machines.
If you have an old european TV that doesn't support
this, keep SELECT pressed on boot to disable it.
- Correct handling of non-VDP interrupts, which are now
passed along to the interrupt chain.
- Removed the internal pseudo GameMaster-1 to release
space for the enhancements. You can use GameMaster-2
with this game instead.
- Fixed inconsistent keyboard vs joystick interface: now
when playing on the keyboard the player also jumps by
pressing the secondary trigger (M or N key). The UP key
is now only used to climb stairs. This solves the
frustrating jumping-instead-of-climbing situations that
happened before.
- Added support for the Megadrive 3-button joypad
connected though a joymega
adapter. (START = pause, A-button = MAP). Don't
connect the joypad directly to the MSX! The adapter
*MUST* be used.
|