TGM1 data

Possibly leftovers from the Street Fighter series produced by Capcom and Arika.

 

Ghett0: Pazhitnov doesn't fully own the rights to Tetris. Henk Rogers of TTC does. Further, he has no reason to 'steal' them either, since he is already deeply involved in TTC (and appears to be satisfied with it judging from various interviews), not to mention the fact that Pazhitnov had been a close personal friend of Rogers since the late 80s as well.

 

So, Pajitnov supports the SRS?


[CENSORED!!]

 

LOst,


I noticed that the palettes in many/most of the 8-bit images in your RAR are farkled. Have you tried the "TIM Viewer v1.03b" extraction/convertion utility ( http://www.zophar.net/utilities/psxutil.html -> http://www.zophar.net/utilities/downloa ... er103b.rar )? The resulting extracted and converted pics come out perfectly

 

Thank you. I have converted them:

http://www.logotypes.se/TypeY/tgm1_gfx.rar

 

Any new info on what those pictures might be for?

Code:

SEX
PLO
PIS
PEE
OSI
KKK
IRA
HIV
FUK
FUC
ETA
DIE
AUM
ASS
AHO
666
AAA
AA 

 

I highly doubt that they're used for anything; if there were any "secret levels" or anything like that, then I'm pretty sure that Mihara would have dropped some pretty strong hints about it by now, seeing as the game has been out for over a decade. Also, they just look like raw SEM photos which haven't been processed in any way, unlike the rest of the artwork, so it's more than likely that they're just leftovers.

I'm wondering if anyone remembers this one: in addition to the list of censored initials, there's another list of initials that are considered "special", and which flash gold on the ranking screen. The only one I can remember is "AYA". Does anyone remember the others, or even where I read it from originally?

 

This is the first time I read about this. I have found 2 others, "MEG" and "J99". All 3 initials can be found in the game's Staff Roll. They're the initials of the Sound Staff. TGM's music is composed by Shinji Hosoe (MEGaten), Ayako Saso (AYA) and Takayuki Aihara (J99).



I tried other names from the credit roll, but nothing else has the same effect.

 

I'd say the winners don't use drugs screen is confirmation that the game was originally intended for export. Mihara has not been shy about the fact that he wishes his vision of Tetris to be spread to the world. In fact he personally told me in email that he tried to get it into the Guideline as an option, and was told by TTC that they aren't going to do that, because clones that implement it already exist. TTCs argument is they don't have to put TGM into the Guideline as an option because people can just download the TGM clones anyway.

So yeah... Not only do we have the standard japanese hate for unliscensed emulation (the companies want their cut, and that's understandable) , TTC being a dick is the reason for Mihara's seething hatred of TGM clones, and why Arika is so aggressive about getting the videos pulled.

I'm not saying the heavy handed DMCAing of all clone videos and emulation captures is the right thing to do. But having actually contacted Mihara himself, i can totally see where he's coming from.

TTC has just screwed Arika over again and again here, but Mihara realises it would be hypocritical of him not to respect the current copyright holders of Tetris's wishes, when he expects people to respect his own, no matter how much it bugs him. (believe me, he was PISSED when Sega was allowed to make Sega Ages Tetris Collection, and get THEIR old arcade games onto the ps2, when he was denied TAP) Even Microsoft is treating him better.

 

So that's why Mihara hates clones so much. I was a bit disturbed when I realized that Arika was using the same tactics as Scientology to try to censor the internet. It turns out that it was all TTC's fault after all.

I'm not sure if that makes me feel any better about it, though.

 

Oh cool, so they can stop making games period since people can just download clones of guideline games too then, right? What a flimsy fucking argument.

 

Quick! Let's make NullpoMino include as much guideline as possible! This is our chance to kill guideline games dead once and for all! FOR TGM~~~!

Hahaha, that seriously is retarded...

 

yes, it is. even Mihara knows it's retarded, and that the clones are around because people can't buy the original. But he's not really being given a choice...

 

So, thanks to someone in the online arcade community getting curious and poking at it again, we finally know how to change the region of TGM1 from Japan to USA (bringing the English attract mode instruction text and Winners Don't Do Drugs splash screens along with it ). It's very simple in retrospect! If you have access to the region ROMs (it's the one labeled with a "04", a 3 letter abbreviation for the game name, and a region letter like J, U, E, A, etc.) region from some other ZN-2 games and diff them (for example, Street Fighter EX2), I'm sure you'll figure it out pretty quick.

...

OK, need a hint? Change byte 0x7FFFF of ATEJ 04 from 00 to 01. That's it! Enjoy your English text and 90's American PSA nostalgia.

(If you want your English text but didn't grow up in the US and have no need to relive this US-centric anti-drug campaign, the rest of the non-Japanese regions should give you what you're looking for.)

Here is the list of region codes. These are likely the same as in the Street Fighter EX games:

Code:

00: Japan
01: USA
02: Asia
03: Europe
04: Hispanic
05: Brazil
06: Nigata (Japan region; used for censoring violent moves in Street Fighter EX, no known effect on TGM)
07: Odawara (Japan region; used for censoring violent moves in Street Fighter EX, no known effect on TGM)
08: Pub Ver (crashes)

 

I'd like to thank you for giving this information away but I had to create this account solely to make an important question that probably will sound annoying since I am not a coding grandmaster (lol):

What do I use to open the atej_04 file?

 

Use a hex editor; if you're on Windows, try programs like HxD and XVI32.

Navigate to 0x7FFFF (last byte in the file) in the hexadecimal window pane and overwrite that byte with 01.

 

I suppose you mean like this. Personally, I've got no results, it just plays like if it was a Japanese ROM. Or maybe I am the wrong-est person in the world

 

Yeah, that looks right. I guess just make sure to repack the original .zip file or move it elsewhere, I'm not sure whether programs like MAME give priority to a .zip or a romset folder if both are in the same directory. Also, if MAME gives any complaint about incorrect checksums on the modified file, I think you can force it to use it anyway just by running from the command line, i.e.:

Code:

mame.exe tgmj

I have it burned on an EPROM for use on real hardware, so I can assure you this region configuration does work.

 

YMMV with checksumming. I have an older build which doesn't check anything, I've seen builds that actually specify the checksum mismatch, but this is the first I've heard of it straight up saying the file is missing.

Time for everyone to get EPROM programmers I guess.