Patch Features



Columns

Columns for the MSX2 is a great port of this classic game, deemed by many to be of 16-bit quality.



Well, except for its two title screens. They were just hasty digitizations of the Sega Mega-drive title screens, that looked bland and missed a lot of details. Even the aspect ratio was wrong.



This enhancement patch replaces the two title screens with new ones, made as real Pixel Art, that are even more colorful and detailed than the Mega-drive ones.



As a bonus, this patch also disables the keyboard click and removes the annoying copy protection.





Duck Hunt

The original game is great, but it uses the Sega Light Phaser directly connected to the MSX without any adapter. When plugged this way, the Light Phaser will obtain the ground for its entire circuit from a data pin of the PSG, which is strongly not recommended. In the long run there's a high probability to fry the PSG Port3/bit5. Imagine that for the MSX models that have the PSG integrated into the chipset. With this bit fried, a lot of MSX devices won't work anymore, like the mouse, touchpad, paddles and even the joymega.



This patch implement the following enhancements and fixes:

Change the embedded Lightgun driver to the standard MSX lightgun. The Gunstick support was also dropped (not enough space in a 8KB ROM).

The game now passes all MSX AcidTests

The turbo will be enabled if the CHGCPU routine is present in the BIOS

A better interrupt handler was implemented

Both light guns can now start the game. When the 2nd light gun starts the game, the two player mode will be selected. Note: You can still connect your Sega Light Phaser to the MSX, but now you will have to do it the right way, by connecting it to the gunSMS adapter. And you're now also able use the NES Zapper with the gunNES adapter.



There's still a bug in the game that wasn't fixed: in two player mode, if both players pull the trigger at the same time and player-1 misses his shot, the player-2 sensor won't be checked and will miss his shot too.





Fleet Commander 2

Fixes a race condition that exists on the game boot, that could cause problems on some machine under certain circunstances.

Allows the turbo to be enabled on any machine that has the CHGCPU routine on its BIOS when R is keep pressed on boot. The original routine only allowed the turbo on MSX Turbo-R machines.

Gradius-2 Patches This patch implements many enhancements on Gradius-2: On MSX1 and MSX2: DynamicVsync

On MSX2+ and MSX Turbo-R: SmothScroll and standard TurboFix.

Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot

CoolColors

Many routines were optimized.

King's Valley II Enhancements

On MSX1, MSX2 and MSX2-Gold versions:

DynamicVsync

Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot

Hold TAB to throttle the game speed

Automatically sets the VDP to 60Hz on boot, to play the game at the correct speed even on european machines. If you have an old european TV that doesn't support this, keep SELECT pressed on boot to disable it.

Enhanced sprite multiplexing: if you have a turbo machine, the sprite multiplexing routine will now take advantage of that and the flickering of the sprites will occur at a higher framerate, dynamically adjusted as high as your CPU supports.

Many small optimizations on the jukebox, reducing the CPU usage

Pausing the game don't stop the sprite multiplexer (flickering) anymore

Jukebox fixed to pass the Acid2Test

Specific bugfixes/enhancements for each version:

KV22/KV2G: Much faster routine for picking a tool/weapon. But 128KB of VRAM is now a requirement.

KV22/KV2G: Smarter routine for refreshing objects on screen. It's much faster and the objects don't flicker anymore

KV21/KV22: Now both coldboot and warmboot are supported. This means that the ROM not only boots as a cartridge, but also detects if it was booted from MSX-DOS and boots correctly with disk support on both cases. This allow you to load the games under the MSX-DOS2 using your favorite ROM loader and use the harddisk for loading/saving custom stages.

KV21/KV22: Finally it's possible to set the desired theme for custom stages. The 6 original themes are supported and 2 "new" themes (see below) are supported, which along with the second palette supported for each theme supported by the KV22 version results in 32 different possibilities.

KV22: Two "new" themes were created by combining two of the themes with the palette of each other.

KV21/KV22: Fixed the bug that allowed files with spaces on its name to be saved on disk. This resulted in files that could no be handled properly by the MSX-DOS. The spaces on the filename are now replaced with underlines. The stage title will continue to be shown with spaces.

KV22: Translated the introscreen logo

KV2G: Translated the introscreen logo, certificate screen and the menus

KV21: On the 5th theme, the decorative beetle eyes now blink at the right place.

KV21: Fixed the disk routines, now harddisks are supported for loading/saving stages (KV22 didn't had this bug and supported harddisks from the beginning)

KV21: Removed GameMaster-1 compatibility, because it caused problems on harddisk support. GameMaster-2 compatibility is still present though.

KV21: Fixed the bug that caused the player sprite to appear on the wrong side of the screen for 1 frame on screen changes.

KV21: The TMS9918 palette is loaded on MSX>=2 machines. I decided to use this palette instead of CoolColors because there's already an MSX2 version of the game. So the TMS9918 palette would be more faithful for comparisons between the two versions.

KV22/KV2G: Modified to use the HKEYI hook instead of HTIMI, just like any other Konami game.

KV22/KV2G: Relocated a variable that was placed on the HTIMI hook

Konami's Soccer

Standard TurboFix

Removes some annoying software protection routines to make space for the turbofix routines.

Maze of Galious, The

DynamicVsync

Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot

CoolColors



Hold the TAB key to throttle the game speed

Automatically sets the VDP to 60Hz on boot, to play the game at the correct speed even on european machines. If you have an old european TV that doesn't support this, keep SELECT pressed on boot to disable it.

Metal Gear 1 DynamicVsync

DynamicVsync

Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot

Hold the TAB key to throttle the game speed

SPACE key now speeds up the text dialogs, just like Metal Gear-2

Automatically sets the VDP to 60Hz on boot, to play the game at the correct speed even on european machines. If you have an old european TV that doesn't support this, keep SELECT pressed on boot to disable it.

Removed the annoying region lock. Now it's possible to play the japanese version on non-japanese machines

Enhanced sprite cycling: if you have a turbo machine, the sprite cycling routine will take advantage of that and the flickering of the sprites will occur at a higher framerate.

Improved graphics for the moving parts of the bridge. They now match the non-moving pieces better.

Metal Gear 2 Turbo Fix Standard TurboFix

Enables the turbo via CHGCPU on boot

Jukebox fixed to pass the Acid2Test



Salamander Patches DynamicVsync

CoolColors



Fixed the ripple-laser, which on the MSX version didn't behave as a laser at all. Now it behaves like the arcade version.



Space Manbow

Standard TurboFix

Fixed the bug of the random number generator of the stage-7 boss (the big green head with horns). This bug caused a too long delay between the launch of each bubble, resulting in one of the lamest bosses of the MSX history. After this fix, the boss started to behave as a real stage boss.

Jukebox fixed to pass the Acid2Test

Valis II: The Fantasm Soldier

This patch enhances the drum kit of the game Valis II for the MSX2, both for the FM and PSG soundtracks, plus some extra enhancements:

Some of the sound effects were also enhanced

The PSG volume will be adjusted to match the FM volume, finally fixing the obnoxiously loud PSG volume that this game originally had

Implements a workaround for the sound bug that happens at the 2nd part of the cutscene at the end of act 5

Because this game is so CPU heavy, it also enables the turbo on any machine that has the CHGCPU BIOS function on its BIOS, granting a much smoother experience and shorter loading times. This way the game will play at the same speed as the PC-88 version For an even more pleasant music experience, you can check if your MSX computer needs a hardware sound fix at this page.



