I just send an email to the people that have this site with the amiga games,and asked them about this ad and wether the original programers of ultra games can be contacted.In that site in every game that was not published they tried to find the status of the game and an incomplete (or complete version that was not released) and then they ask some questions to the programers.I just hope they can do something about metal gear.Will post all details i have if they contact me back with email.

Didn't know about this ad, but I have not great expectations about it. I mean, concerning the quality of the game if it does exists at least. I remember some years ago, I was very excited when I knew about an Amiga version of Castlevania. I could find it and try it. What a nightmare, it was a real atrocity ! (the same went for the Amiga port of Last Battle (from the Megadrive), a total mess...).

Unfortunately, Amiga port from other system, especially japanese ones (including many arcade ports) were very very bad. They were rushed and never had the quality the deserved.

So each time I want to play good (MSX) games I play them via AmiMSX emulator, they are often well emulated and much more playable and enjoyable than any port you could ever find on Amiga !

About the castlevania,yes i think the amiga port was not good (i have seen a version of it for amiga).However googling in the internet in several articles it seems that ultra games in way said back then that amiga version of metal gear would be the best of all versions,namely the published nes version,the pc version and c64 version.Now it seems that if this was the case that it would not be based upon the msx design (we know that metal gear for msx is much different and better than the nes version).

However wether they took advantage of amiga architecture (there is only one screenshot in the ad) remains to be seen.I just hope that the people from that site can find some info regarding this game.Even if they cant find info about a demo or a preview of the game,then simply asking some questions the original programers would help.I know they have done this for many other games for the amiga that were not published or sold in the end.I would be interested to know.

Actually some minutes ago while writing this reply i visited the konami Hideo Kojima konami webpage and sent an email and i asked about this ad and wether konami ever ported metal gear to amiga.I am not sure they would answer this email,but a little hunting would not be bad.


Best

That's a strange add! I've never seen it before

BTW, Do you know what the IRON GLOVE is for?

Ok, found it! It's just below the name of the item. But it doesn't appear in the MSX version

Actually it only appeared in the nes version and the pc,it is used to break the walls i think
Regards

Update:Today i received an email from the webmaster of http://agtw.abime.net/ Adrian Simpson he said that he will try to track down the team of Ultra Games the ones responsible for the nes,pc,c64 and the advertised amiga port and ask them about the amiga Metal Gear port.

If you look at the mentioned site http://agtw.abime.net/ (amiga games that were not) you will see that they managed to find lots of programing teams and ask them about games that were not released commercially and plenty of times they were given such games to be released and people could find them and download them

I really hope that they can track the original team.
He said he will email me with any other news that he may have regarding the ultra team.

- maybe a little bit off topic -

On 30 august 1990 Metal Gear was released for IBM, anybody ever seen *that* version?

Quote:

- maybe a little bit off topic - On 30 august 1990 Metal Gear was released for IBM, anybody ever seen *that* version?

Well, I actually have it somewhere on my PC, though not original

Hello!I would like to ask a favor from some of you.

I am trying to find out why the disk version of metal gear
from sma international crashes on the elevators with the 6->3 symbol.

I loaded the bluemsx debugger and the fmsx 3.2 debugger.The disk version that is 1mbit version seems to be doing lots of different things than the rom version.Probably because 128kbytes of ram are used and the game is 128kbyte,some data is transfered to/from video ram (that's why in several places the game is a little bit slower)

However sometimes something nasty seems to happen and all registers in the debugger are 0 and the game crashes.If i upload a saved state of that version in bluemsx format or send the disk with the game as an image to some of you,Would you be able to tell me why the crash happens?what is the faulty instruction that causes this crash and what does that 6->3 means ?It is something that has been bothering me for years to find out.

The game CAN be finished,despite being buggy that version i managed to finish the game in fmsx amiga 0.8 some years before.

I managed to locate the piece of instuctions that lift the elevetor up and down (if you nop those elevator stops),plus i managed to find some random things like what causes the sprites to move left and right(if you nop some instructions then if the enemy soldiers see you then they only move up/down or left right).But i have not managed to find the reason the crash happens.

nikoder if you have a philips MSX try running this version with vdp(10)=255 before starting the game..... it worked for me

(yeah I know strange solution)

I found out several interesting addresses for this version of the game.Example the most interesting is 82c3(hex) there is a RRA instruction there, if i nop this instruction then something magic happens,the user controlled sprite no longer find obstacles.

I suspect that this turn collision detection off in the sense that background sprites like a tank or crates no longer are an obstacle to the player.However if the enemy spots you then the same applies to the enemies,they can freely walk to get you over tank crates or anything else.

Now on elevators something seems to happen,it is the only place where this does not apply,somehow i can't walk whenever i want (eg skip the elevator and go wherever i want with this nop instruction).It seems that character only walks left right with no up and down.

So my questions are :is it possible to somehow make this trick but only to my sprite and not the enemy controlled ones?

Second on bluemsx,open msx and any other emulator the game frequently frezees on elevators even with the vdp(10)=255 trick (less frequently maybe?).On fmsx i can't reproduce that bug,there you can go up/down as many times as possible without any crash,so i suspect that there must be something else going on.

using this trick i managed to go to the last set of elevators that lead to metal gear basement.

I uploaded the save state from blue msx.If anyone could tell me what is wrong i would be so happy.

http://rapidshare.com/files/32170558/metal_gear_elevator_bug.sta.html

on address 82c3$ now in that save state there is a nop,if you edit this and place 1f instead (the original rra) instruction then the obstacles (should i say sprite collision with objects in the background is enabled again). (in case there is no nop,just pause resume.pause resume till that page shows up.

UPDATE:I think i found a way to make it not crash on elevators.On address f978 there is a EI command,knowing that sometimes interrupts could be the problem i nop this instruction and no more crashes on bluemsx!.The elevator can go up and down 100 times with no crash at all.However what happens is that the music is slowed down.

Now i remember that on metal gear rom when executed on emulators the elevators go up and down VERY fast.In the cracked version by sma international the elevator goes up very slowly but the music seems to be at the same speed as the rom version.Now by doing a nop at the EI instruction the music seems to slow down too.Could it be that the enable interrupts instruction was the reason for the crash?

Sorry for double posting,i just could not edit my original reply.Yes as i suspected the EI instruction is probably the reason that the disk version of sma international could not be played on msx with 128kbyte memory mapper.After nopping this instruction i am able to go in a real msx2 nms8280 (will try the philips vg8235 model later) up and down the elevators without crashes right now i did over 15 times.It seems that the key is to make the slow lift of elevator to sync with the music.

Like i said in the rom version when you go up and down it goes instantly on the disk version it slows down a lot (probably some copying to/from video ram) but audio seems to play without slowdowns,by noping the ei instruction at f978 i made the music to slow down when the elevator is lifting.when the elevator is on the floor again the speed of music and movement resumes.So i think part of the mystery is solved-(a mystery that has been haunting me for years,i was 8 years old when i first played that game,it has crashed on elevator so many times that even now that i fixed it i am afraid it might crash again).I always wondered why it crashes.A simple change of a byte on the disk file from fb to 00 made all the difference.

I am going to see what else could be happening.

After having it for almost half and hour to be running on my nms8280,i can safely say that this was the reason of the disk version crashing on msx when someone uses the elevators.Half an hour going up and down and not a single crash.I did it for more than 80 times.

Maybe this was a protection from konami so the cracked version would not run?
With the interrupt enable instruction on f978$ address,crash is just a matter of some ups and down,with a single nop there the game no longer crashes.

Nice work, that bug cost me a lot of frustration back then... until i bought the original cardrige.
Metal Gear II has a similar bug, if you go underwater in the basement sewers the game crashes too. ( I believe it was the Matros Crack )