For the most part, what's needed (in order of importance) is: - Someone with the technical know-how to write test code that can be run on actual hardware. - Someone with the actual hardware to burn ROMs for this test code and run it on the hardware. Ideally, this could be the same person. - Someone who can turn the results provided from that test code into working emulation code. The person who writes the test cases, the person who runs the test cases, and the person who writes the emulation code dono't have to be the same person, but in that case they'd have to coordinate closely together. But that's the reality of it - Model 2 isn't happening unless this dream-trio assembles. There was some movement from this one person with access to a Model 2 board-stack and calling themselves something-Freeman (as an HL2 reference, I forget the exact nickname), but they burnt out when they kept trying to hit above their proverbial punching weight as far as code changes go, and were rebuffed for it. At the end of the day, Model 2 needs a hardware wonk, a software wonk, and someone with hardware access, all of whom need to lack an ego enough to understand that there are no "eureka!" moments to be had, and that progress only comes via a slow and taxing grind.

About that...

@@mogemulation ?

It's an auspicious evening, in that case - I have Crisis Zone booting. It looks like Namco completely revamped the interface for the graphics hardware, although the exact functional details remain largely the same. I currently have the game running through attract mode although there's no visible 3D. I guess the problem to solve is pretty clear!

@@mogemulationI’m so excited to hear this! You’re my hero 🤩

Not enough SS23 games boot to have made much progress on that front, but the one game that does boot (500GP) seems to indicate that the texturing system is different, at minimum.

I see, but on the cpu side, should be atleast the same fro what I've heard.

@@ivojankov7811 Sure, but the CPU side doesn't matter much anymore. System 23 uses the IDT VR4650, which is a MIPS derivative that has a simplified memory-management unit (MMU). The only reason I bring it up is that Time Crisis 2, Final Furlong, and Rapid River all crashed after about 30-60 seconds until I noticed last year that the VR4650 is configured in a way that stops NULL-pointer crashes from crashing, unlike every other MIPS chip, but MAME was still trying to emulate the same MMU as most MIPS chips. Super System 23 having the same CPU as Gorgon and System 23, other than the clock rate, is now a solved problem, and the clock rate won't affect most things due to the instant nature of the GPU emulation. It's true, but it's a distinction without a difference. The issue is and always has been the rest of the surrounding hardware.

The controls are weird as hell to map onto PC controls, not gonna lie.

Sure thing, do you want fries with that, or onion rings?

i thought time crisis 2 was playable already on mame

@@lesliegibson5964 Barely, and with graphical issues that make some stages difficult due to enemies being sorted behind stage geometry.

oh ok well im sure youl get it up and running im waiting for the day when someone makes the nerf arcade also playable in emulation that would be awesome ​@@mogemulation

I'll have to look into it a bit more. At least as far as the Input Test menu is concerned, the I/O board doesn't try to do any sort of filtering, but I'm not quite sure if the game logic itself performs any rejection along those lines.

Jeez, I only wish I had as many old-school monitors/TVs as she seems to. Since moving across the Atlantic about a decade ago, I'm rocking a total of 0 tube-based displays.

It requires a lot of professional detachment in some circumstances. There's this one pub-quiz game which MAME supports that I love to point out, because it happens to be an extreme example: I forget the exact name of the romset, but from a hardware standpoint, it's a pretty basic setup that just has a tilemap or two so that it can display text. It's a quiz game, after all. The thing about this game in particular is that it has a whole bunch of "questions" that are pretty much a carbon copy of "Grandpa's Stereotpical Book of 'Jokes' About Minorities", if such a book ever existed. It's a detestable piece of media. But it's preserved in MAME anyway, because to omit it would be to give a false impression of the state of the world at the time. On a personal level, I don't care if a game or a piece of interactive media runs counter to literally everything I stand for, it still deserves to be preserved - without omission, without favor, without skew or agenda. It's the historians' jobs to try to derive some meaning from all this, not mine.

I also love to bring up that ^ game because it neatly contradicts the small (but vocal) cadre of people who act like the world was so much better back in the day. Nah, it still sucked, just not as equally.

I completely agree. The main reason I had to leave the previous comment is since I'm a bit biased. I'm a game dev that has worked two games that unfortunately was canned POST release. No way of buying them or play them today if one didn't get them on release. OTWD was one of them... not a "great game" prehaps but a game on a good path to become lost media. :(

@@TheThigoron Jeez, you worked at Overkill? Do you at least happen to have archived copies of OTWD and the other title?

​@@mogemulation I did work there. Nothing archived on my side. I do own my steam copies tho' and I'm fortunately still able to download through steam. But I'm just a level-designer so I'm not too skilled with the techy wizardry u emulator ppl are up to haha.😅

Right. It's very much Point Blank with different controls. In real life half the fun is trying to shove your friend out of the way, which makes it a bit like digital arm wrestling.

​@@MESSDrivers Right! The mini-games themselves are fun, but the genius stroke is creating that physical conflict on the other side of the monitor.