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ID Category [?] Severity [?] Reproducibility Date Submitted Last Update
06536 DIP/Input Minor Always Apr 15, 2017, 05:43 Apr 21, 2017, 20:06
Tester ketburai View Status Public Platform MAME (Official Binary)
Assigned To Resolution Open OS
Status [?] Acknowledged Driver
Version 0.184 Fixed in Version Build
Fixed in Git Commit Github Pull Request #
Summary 06536: metafox: This game's entire DIP set seems weird.
Description This website is the best resource ever: http://otokaru.net/contents/dipsw/ma-mo/metafox.html

This seems to indicate that factory defaults for a Japanese release of the game is all off. I'm assuming the settings MAME uses correspond to some American or world release of the game. However, further research outlines a few potential oddities in MAME's labels.

Difficulty: off/off is supposed to be Hard/C while off/on is supposed to be Normal/B. In MAME this is currently the opposite. The difference between all the difficulties isn't noticeable at all to start so I'm guessing it affects increasing rank.

Regions: very confused about these DIPs. On the page they are listed as having no effect. This doesn't make sense, because both off should give the "licensed for US through Romstar" label... for a Japanese release? Perhaps these should be jumpers instead?

Is there a separate Japanese version of the game? That would make the most sense.

Then it gets worse. This is a manual from an American distributor: http://www.crazykong.com/manuals/MetaFox.man.pdf

...all off, again. The region DIPs are once again unused.

TamDB has an unlabeled (likely the IVICS manual above) and a "Japan" flyer, but the site is broken right now and I can't reach the manuals. KLOV has a Japan flyer, and it does indeed use all off. Tafoid even posted it in another bug report for this game: http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/M/Meta%20Fox.pdf

I've also been unable to find the actual settings MAME uses anywhere... where are these coming from?

Is what we currently have some weird world/US version, and there is an undumped US or Japan or even US/Japan version somewhere? Have any other flyers or manuals been found? Does anyone else have more information about this silly old game?

This aside, maybe the order of DIP settings could be switched around to match the manuals. I haven't really looked into other games on this hardware yet, but Arbalester (a similar game on the same hardware in the same year by the same developer, Jordan) also has all DIPs off in factory settings, and in MAME. I don't know if some Romstar manual exists with different DIPs for this game. Its difficulty DIPs are also ordered bit more sanely in the first place: http://otokaru.net/contents/dipsw/a-o/arbalester.html
Steps To Reproduce
Additional Information Considering how thorough this is, I guess it's Minor? The severity system seems weird, looking at other reports etc.
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Affected Sets / Systems metafox
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3
User avatar
No.13784
Haze
Senior Tester
Apr 15, 2017, 18:40
Region dips being listed as "unused" or "don't touch" is perfectly normal as operators weren't meant to change them.

documentation should never be trusted 100%
User avatar
No.13785
ketburai
Tester
Apr 16, 2017, 13:46
I feel that those are two very different things? There's also a big difference between hiding a DIP and a DIP actually being unused. I mean, if you're positive this is the only version of the game, I'm not really questioning that.

What I'm concerned about are the DIP settings MAME currently has. Where are those coming from? If it's from a US manual, should we really be using those over "world" DIPs? Does Arbalester have a similar set of alternate DIPs? I've only ever found the all off ones for either game.
User avatar
No.13786
Haze
Senior Tester
Apr 17, 2017, 20:06
in theory they're different things, in practice hidden features were listed as 'unused' dips all the time.

a lot of the dips in MAME come from testing or code anaylsis, sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong.

sometimes they come from manuals then the manuals are found to be wrong.

sometimes they come from test mode, and test mode is found to be wrong (for at least half the Semicom games this is the case, it's like they programmed one test mode, then wrote a bunch of games without ever changing it)