Golden Era Game of the Week 8/12/06: Kangaroo

Marco Marocco · Post by **Marco Marocco** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 4:30 am

the first time I've played Kangaroo was more than 20 years ago in a bar of my city.
It was an Atari version and in the first four stages I'm sure there were no gorillas, so the only leeching was got punching monkeys.
I don't remember if gorilla appeared from 5th stage, I think so but I'm not sure

destructor · Post by **destructor** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 11:00 am

I tested Atari and bootleg version. All are identical as original romset Kangaroo. The same patterns, and the same leeching on gorilla. Maybe at funspot was strange version.

The TJT · Post by **The TJT** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 12:04 pm

dbh wrote:With no free men after 390K and the scoring rate that des showed, a 900K+ score is about what you would expect just from leeching with no mistakes.

Sounds like monkey business to me.

What are mame default settings?
If they're same as TG: 5men, no bonus, easy...Then I will be very tempted to add these settings for marp play. Des can of course submit hes score to TG still.

destructor · Post by **destructor** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 12:37 pm

MAME default settings are 3 man, no bonus, easy.

The TJT · Post by **The TJT** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 1:17 pm

destructor wrote:MAME default settings are 3 man, no bonus, easy.

Uh, that figures.
TG has 3 different kind of settings for the game:

mame -Difficulty=easy, starting lives=3, 1st extra life at 20K then every 40K

arcade tournament -5 Kangaroo Lives
No Bonus Kangaroos
Easy Difficulty

arcade marathon-10k, 30k, and every 30k after
Easy Difficulty
---------

I suggest using mame default for marp submissions, since most marp submissions and atleast other of vertex-b's recordings + gegotw uses those settings. OK?

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 9:47 pm

Tuesday's bonus points to MarcoMarocco@AIVA

Looks like Don's 4-2 is still the highest level/round reached so far.

dbh · Post by **dbh** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 11:44 pm

First guess would be that we're looking at a situation where a disproportionate number of the still-existing machines are a later ROM version in which the problem was fixed. Like with the Joust pterodactyl-hunting thing, but less well-known.

Yes, that could be the case.

So less, in fact that the later ROM version is not even documented in MAME, which beggars belief, but if your observations, which agree with Greg Erway's, are correct, there would seem to be no other explanation than a different ROM version from the ones in MAME.

Well, one other possible explanation I can think of is that there is some bug with MAME itself when emulating this game. MAME is good but it's not perfect.

I'm going to try and have the Crams dump the rom chips from the Kangaroo board that they have. I want to see what the differences are. Another possible test would be to burn roms from MAME and put them on the board they have to see the behavior.

I also happened to download the Kangaroo manual. Here's what it says on page 1-10. I find the fourth bullet to be the one of interest:

5. Hints for Game Play

o Ring the bell for extra points. New fruit with higher point value will appear in place of the old fruit.

o Avoid walking into a monkey.

o Punch monkeys for 200-400 points each.

o Do not let Big Ape take mother Kangaroo's glove (it reappears after 10 seconds).

o Mother Kangaroo must duck, leap, or punch to avoid being killed by thrown or dropped fruit.

Post by **mahlemiut** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 12:15 am

Kangaroo (with the exception of the bootleg version) has a custom MB8841 microcontroller, which isn't emulated. It's certainly possible that it could be responsible for gameplay aspects, like with the Bubble Bobble MCU, but it's also possible that it doesn't. The microcontroller code is dumped, and loaded, but not used.

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 1:05 am

dbh wrote:Well, one other possible explanation I can think of is that there is some bug with MAME itself when emulating this game. MAME is good but it's not perfect.

I would have said that seemed unlikey until:

mahlemiut wrote:Kangaroo (with the exception of the bootleg version) has a custom MB8841 microcontroller, which isn't emulated. It's certainly possible that it could be responsible for gameplay aspects, like with the Bubble Bobble MCU, but it's also possible that it doesn't. The microcontroller code is dumped, and loaded, but not used.

But then destructor said the bootleg behaves the same as the other two, so that still doesn't seem likely to be the difference.

And now for something completely different - a kangaroo playing real-life Frogger:

http://m90.org/index.php?id=20226

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 9:45 pm

Thursday's bonus points to Sampras@AIVA

Eligible for the random prize:

destructor@HotTeam.pl
Don Hayes
Gerhard Schindler
Greg Erway
MarcoMarocco@AIVA
MJSTY
Potante
Sampras@AIVA

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:35 am

MARP scripts appear not to be running.

If the site is still non-functional at deadline, I will accept submissions attached to posts here in this thread, or emailed to

.

If the site is back up before deadline I will require that all entries have been submitted to MARP.

In either case, all entries must be made prior to midnight GMT.

The TJT · Post by **The TJT** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 4:07 pm

Also a note here: I will edit the parent +clowns rules when marp is up, rules will be: mame default settings: 3men, no extras, easy

sampras · Post by **sampras** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 6:49 pm

MARP is still down...

I Made 309.700

Ciao Sampras

The TJT · Post by **The TJT** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:37 pm

Believe it or not, marp was up a short while ago for atleast 15 minutes, but now is down again.

Weehawk · Post by **Weehawk** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:38 pm

I'll be accepting scores emailed or posted here as attachments.

Must be done prior to midnight GMT. (Less than an hour as I post this.)