Shock Troopers Mathematics 301

General discussion on MAME, MARP, or whatever else that doesn't belong in any of the other forums

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GHEMANT
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Re: Shock Troopers Mathematics 301

Post by GHEMANT »

News about WR.

In according with my document, I explain about the actual top hi-scores in this game:

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The old top score on Gamest magazine is played on shocktro romset (set 1), this romset have 1 life only. If you play in team (3 characters), you have a single life bar in common, I think this is the only romset available in Japan about this game.

The last BBH top score is played on shocktra romset (set 2), I think this romset is available out of Japan (however is difficult find correct informations). If you play in team you have 3 lives (1 life bar for each character in the team).

Because these 2 romset have strong differences in hi-score I split the in 2 categories.
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Re: Shock Troopers Mathematics 301

Post by mahlemiut »

I remember BBH saying that he never saw set 1 in the US. Would seem odd to have a different romset specifically for non-Japanese regions for a Neo Geo game, especially when it can check the BIOS region and run the game based on that, as pretty much every other Neo Geo game does (albeit, most only differ in choice of language). But then, there are all those even more censored than usual Korean versions of some games, so who knows what's going on. My guess would be that Europe/Asia/US got a more recent revision than Japan, although it would be odd to not find a Japanese version containing the later code.
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Re: Shock Troopers Mathematics 301

Post by BBH »

I own an original Japanese cartridge of Shock Troopers (or at least it came with Japanese label and Japanese mini-marquee...), and it boots up as set 2.

This reminds me that there's an episode of Game Center CX where Arino plays Shock Troopers outside a convenience store. It's definitely the 3 lives version. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnf030 ... ulgccx_fun (approx 13:30 into it, poor cabinet had broken buttons...)

Therefore I don't think you can say that Set 1 is "Japanese only" when clearly Set 2 got distribution in Japan as well.

However, looking at scans of a Neo-Geo Freak article about the game: http://bbh.marpirc.net/shock/ngf1.jpg

There is no "HERO" counter on the character select, and the other screenshot clearly shows the grayed out character icon boxes that only appear in Set 1. This seems to lend credence to the theory that Set 1 is an earlier revision of the game, as they would need the earliest possible version of the game to be able to take all those screenshots in time for the article. So of course it's possible this version was made available in Japan as well. The other reason I believe Set 2 to be a later and more common revision is based on the serial numbers on the cartridges - I've owned two English copies of the game with serial numbers 10883 and 11640, which would definitely be later in the production run. (The Japanese cartridge doesn't have a serial number for some reason)

The official flyer distributed for the game is even more baffling: http://bbh.marpirc.net/shock/flyer2.jpg

Going by the character icons at the top you can see that screenshots 1 and 2 are of Set 2, but the third screenshot has the grayed out icons of Set 1! Bizarre.

As to where the rom dumps originated from, I know that Set 1 was originally dumped by ROMLIST, which I believe were two guys based out of Sweden? Where they got their cartridge from is anyone's guess, but chances are it was a European distributor. I made a thread a while back on the Neo-Geo forums asking if anyone had actually played Set 1 in an arcade, and someone mentioned that they specifically remember playing it at an arcade in Italy... so maybe this version did get some sort of European distribution...?!

So after all this time, we still don't have a concrete answer as to why there's two different versions of the game, and where they originated from. Yes I do think it's important that a distinction be made between scores done on Set 1 and Set 2, since more points are possible on Set 2 through suiciding team members to gain additional time. But by the same token, I don't see why JKP-ACE's score should automatically be classified as "Set 1" when we have no proof of what version of the game he played. A timeframe of June 1998 doesn't make things any clearer - Set 2 of the game was definitely around in arcades way before then. I distinctly remember the first time I played Shock Troopers in an arcade called Diversions in San Antonio, Texas in February 1998, and it was most definitely Set 2. Unless you have some other proof of what version he played, but I don't think anyone was taking down this information since barely anybody knew there were two different versions of the game back then...

also the info you put about my score is wrong. It's Jungle -> Valley, not Jungle -> Mountain :)
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Re: Shock Troopers Mathematics 301

Post by GHEMANT »

In web is impossible find 100% sure informations. In Micom magazine there aren't infos about the version. But I'm sure about one thing: in japan there is 1 version only, not both. I must check infos from Gamest 1997~1998 if there is a comment about the number lives (but I doubt). Impossible find JKP-ACE to ask him... Thanks for the notes about jungle, I fix.
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Re: Shock Troopers Mathematics 301

Post by BBH »

GHEMANT wrote:But I'm sure about one thing: in japan there is 1 version only, not both.
What makes you sure of this? We still don't have any concrete proof on when/where Set 1 was distributed, it's possible that it existed in some Japanese arcades before Set 2 was released. I mean, the game was made in Japan so logically it was released there first... but I don't know of anyone from Japan who's come forward to say that they did play Set 1 in an arcade. I do think that JKP-ACE's score should be preserved, but at the same time we will never be 100% sure of what settings it was played on.

Since I kinda forgot to keep posting in this thread, I will say that back in 2008 I did get a score on an actual cabinet that came fairly close to my MAME record.

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US Bios, Set 2, defaults with blood on (that score was done right after the scores on that Neo-Geo had gotten reset for some reason...). I still don't think there are any gameplay differences across any of the bioses, save for the Euro bios defaulting to blood off. That machine is no longer at Ground Kontrol but has been moved to a game store, where AFAIK the score is still there.

There's also a retro arcade that opened up in Salem called The Coin Jam that has a 4-slot Neo-Geo with Shock Troopers in it, so I started playing again to leave some scores behind on the machine. Sadly I can't even break 32 million anymore, my best on that machine is 31.8 :(
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