:o) Great, everyone seems up for making MARP more challenging by disallowing clone games. However, it's not going to be a simple change is it?(posted 9780 days ago)We need to build a list of all games which are going to be allowed. This will initially be generated by just removing all the games listed as clones, easy! But MAME is not very reliable with it's definition of what is a clones, there will be exceptions and some games only have a clone version of a game working. Also, the list will have to be updated with every beta release.
Still wanna go ahead with it? I'm still interested so to get things started I suggest we work on three lists. Replacement clones, legal clones and banned originals. I've started the lists below but it's far from definitive. If you disagree with anything or have any suggestions or additions then please post them here. Once we get a near complete list, I'll create a web page with all the suggested changes and an MWR file of the proposed list. I've based the list on MAME 0.35 beta 5 (released today).
List 1: Replacement clones This is where a clone game is used in place of the original, usually because the original doesn't work. These are the games I suggest we replace with the bootleg version.
chplft - chplftbl ddragon - ddragonb firetrap - firetpbl ninjakd2 - ninjak2a (no sound in original) popeye - popeyebl rainbow - jumping renegade - kuniokub slapfigh - slapbtuk superqix - sqixbl tigerh - tigerhb1 tokio - tokiob
List 2: Legal clones There are many clone games with differences in gameplay. A few examples that come to mind are:
Circus Charlie (set 2) - no level selector Trog (Prototype) - completely different gameplay Arkanoid 2 (US) - different screen layouts Donkey Kong (Jap) - different level order & "top of ladder" trick Donkey Kong Jr. (Jap) - different level order Crazy Kong (Alca) - mhorter beams on first level Galaxian Turbo - faster, harder gameplay FHMC Q*Bert - faster, harder gameplay Super Zaxxon - faster Mr.Do (Yukidaruma) - Older version with less features Space Demon - Rapid firing, different attack waves and different shield Star Jacker (Stern) - Only a dip switch setting , but changes gameplay. 600 - Different gameplay and enemies speed up Puck-man - Different maze layout Piranha - This is not a Pac-man clone really is it? Miss Pac-man Plus - Different mazes Hangly-man - Different mazes, invisible mazes
Many of these differences are not significant enough to warrant it legal. If you are champ at the original then it is highly likely that you will also be a master at the clone too. The games I would consider different game on the same hardare and vote as legal clones are:
trogp puckman piranha hangly mspacatk
List 3: Banned originals This list will include games which are essentially clones but listed as originals. It will also list games which don't work and games which have no scoring system. We can probably generate most of this list from the games on MARP which have no score but I'd also like to add:
hyperoly - Hyper Olympic is the European version of Track & Field csprint - Championship Sprint is a two player version of Super Sprint
Finally, a couple of questions to vote on.
Do we allow speed up cheat versions for the pac-man games to be included in leaderboard scores? I vote NO.
Do we still split some games (such as Bowl-O-Rama, 3 Wonders and Invinco/Deep Scan) into several sub-games? I vote YES (there's no other way to do it).
Have I missed anything?
Looking forward to your comments, Dith