The GHZ Forum

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/sh ... ber=363236

Cosmo Fighter has been dumped!

OHMYGOD!!!

Hurry, someone email GG! like it says in the Cosmo Fighter museum page!

It's done!

12 long years ago, I came to this website on a quest. That quest was to beat every non-hack, non-beta Sonic game ever made (Sonic '06 became the cutoff point for obvious reasons). About a year earlier I had gotten into emulation and decided that it would be fun to play every game in one of the series that I'd grown up with. There were too many Mario games and not enough Zelda games, so I went with Sonic. After much web surfing and emulator debugging I got through the likes of Sonic Eraser, Sonic the Fighters, and Sonic Pocket Adventure, and with a little eBaying I managed to conquer such obscurities as the Pico games, Sonic Schoolhouse, Sonic Jam on the Game.com, and even all those Tiger handhelds (I wish I'd known the DU existed back then; I would've sent them off to be dumped instead of giving them away!). After a few years SegaSonic Arcade's emulation was improved enough to make the game completable, but then I hit a wall: the kiddy rides. Given the unique hardware I wasn't sure that emulation was even possible, and if it was I never dreamed that anyone would care enough spend time trying, let alone fork out thousands of dollars to obtain the PCBs, and I wasn't OCD enough about it to travel to Japan looking for a working cabinet to play on (even ol' Gibs didn't go that far), so I thought I would have to content myself with 99%. Then came Will Medved out of nowhere with Waku Waku Patrol Car and Shoutime with Popcorn Machine, and now they've brought us the gem of the set: Cosmo Fighter Galaxy Patrol! And now it's finally, FINALLY OVER,* and I can PUT THAT LAST CHECK MARK IN THAT DAMN TEXT FILE and NEVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER AGAIN!!!

...or at least I can as soon as I find the ROM. Does anyone know what their usual process is for passing these out? Because if it's going to take 2 months for me to find it like last time I'm just going to email Smitty.

*Technically I haven't played Sonic Cafe, but I'm not counting that for the totally valid reason of screw mobile games.

Oh, what's the DU? I'm aware of MADrigal and Hipopotam, but not really anyone else concerned with preserving/recreating LCD/LSI handhelds. I really am concerned that an entire branch of the medium's family tree is endangered. Even Nintendo is mishandling its own Game & Watch history. Why if it wasn't for obscure fansites like this, I'd never known there are Yoichi Kotabe illustrations exclusive to the Game & Watch version of Super Mario Bros.!

(etc.)

I mean, holy shit. Do they assume fans don't care?

The Dumping Union. Right below the thread you linked to they posted a link to this video, which has several random handhelds that were successfully emulated on MAME last year, so I assume they dump those as well or are at least affiliated with someone who does.

It's out now, apparently! Footage!

Must be on a Spanish site somewhere, though "Sonic Cosmo" still doesn't come up with anything on Google from the last 3 days. Even if you had it, though, you'd either have to compile the latest MAME source code yourself or wait until the 22nd for MAME v0.183 to come out. I can wait another 2 weeks, I guess.

EDIT: Found it, but need a password. Grr.

Ok, here. I'll host that until it shows up on this page. Still don't feel like installing the build tools though.

Welp!

I actually never counted Popcorn Machine as a game, though I do hope that gets found someday. Any appearance of the Tornado is noteworthy. Was this just recently discovered? Anyone reaching out to the owner?

Well apart from these links, I'm clueless!

Ah, I don't think Cotton Candy Shop and SegaSonic Bros. are considered official releases by Sega anway, considering they aren't mentioned at all in the three major compilations. So I wouldn't sweat it.

https://youtu.be/SYxkRSODwlw

- There are 4 inputs: left/right (not 4 directions like the Museum says), shoot, change weapon, and turbo boost.
- You can't cycle your weapons backward. Once you get to Punch, the change weapon button doesn't do anything. Taking damage will cycle you back by 1, but that's the only way.
- If there's any difference in weapon strength, it's nominal. It takes about 18 seconds to kill the boss no matter which one you use. He seems to take a slightly different number of hits, but it's hard to tell if some are hitting during invincibility frames or if multiple shots hitting together do more damage.
- Boosting has no effect on how fast the game goes or how the enemies move in relation to you. All it does is make the background scroll faster, bring Eggman onto the screen so you can hit him, and prevent you from changing weapons until you stop. If you're really good at it, it looks like you could juggle Eggman the whole way through.
- Unlike Patrol Car, your rank isn't just based on how fast you finish. There actually appears to be a hidden points system. I'm not sure if crashing into enemies counts as killing them (it appears to), but I can confirm that they aren't worth a whole lot by themselves. If you kill every enemy but don't kill the boss, you get 2 stars. Killing phase 2 of the boss will get you 3 stars just by itself. Boosting and hitting Eggman seems to be the next biggest way to score, especially if you can juggle him. If you kill every enemy and ALSO boost constantly to hit Eggman but ignore the boss, you'll get 4 stars instead of 2.
- Looks like GG's friend was either not paying attention or making stuff up 20 years ago! There is NOT a new weapon that you unlock for beating the game, even if you get 100% perfect 5 star with no damage (I even got 5 star using only the normal gun just to see if it was possible). Which makes much more sense. I always wondered how that would even work. Would it stay unlocked until the software was reset? Be usable by the next person who plays but go away if they didn't win? It would've been a silly design for a kiddy ride. Then again, not being able to cycle the weapons was pretty silly.

I probably won't ever play this, but I gotta thank you for giving it a full investigation. Somehow this knowledge is going to help me in the future, I know it.

Hey, after 12 years of waiting, I had to find some way of getting more than 3 minutes of fun out of it.