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GOD BOY
RELEASE 3
"SUPER MARIO LAND"
NINTARI GAMEBOY EMULATOR
- HISTORY ----------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1990 three hand held consoles were released.
There was the Atari Lynx - 4096 colours, sprite scaling and rotation
stereo sound and even a left handed mode. It rocked.
Sega created their "GameGear". Crap name. Basically just a Master
System in a smaller box. Not very exciting.
The third machine was the infamous Nintendo gameboy. Its mono graphics
and 8x8 sprites looked weak in comparison with the opposition.
And guess which one sold the most?
In 1997 the Reservoir Gods were working on a new game to follow up
their previous smash hit releases.
Whist searching the internet for information on this new game, they
inadvertedly came across documentation for a Nintendo Gameboy emulator.
Cogs wheeled slowly in their tiny brains and light bulb popped up:
"Why don't we do this on the Falcon ?"
The Siliconvention - Bremen, Germany, Easter 1997. God-Boy was taking shape,
although there was not much for an inquisitive public to see as the video
routines hadn't been completed.
Agent T's flat, Hamburg, two days later. God-Boy finally ran its first
game, ironically enough it was "Bubble Bobble" a game the Gods had brought
to Atari screens two years earlier.
The Atari Show, Birmingham, April 1997. A preview release of God-Boy
was shown with a fully playable version of "Bubble Bobble". It was
almost ready, The public held their breath.
MSG's palace, Bolton, May 1997. The finishing touches to "Bubble Bobble"
were made. Scores of nice samples were included. It did, in a very real
sense, rock.
The same location, three weeks later. The second release for God-Boy,
"BombJack" was completed. It was, in a very real sense, the bomb.
Before BombJack was completed, work had already started on the legendary
"Super Mario Land". It used a fiddly timer interrupt to do screen scrolling
so the video cacheing system had to be tweaked. MSG slavered for hours over
a hot protracker creating a banging new tune to complement the enhanced
graphics, whilst thirdEYE painted some ace graphics for the intro.
A fornight after GodBoy had decided to jack, it was time for the "Italian
Job".
- IMPORTANT --------------------------------------------------------------------
God-Boy is specially designed just to run the included game.
You cannot load other gameboy files into God-Boy!
We will be releasing other gameboy games, but only after we have composed
tracker music for them, created hordes of sampled sound effects and bolted a
nice trainer mode on the front end.
So just sit back and enjoy "Super Mario Land". And in the fullness of time
another GodBoy release will pop out onto the earth. Like a little lamb
in spring.
- LOADING ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Use your mouse implement to click twice on "GOD_BOY.TOS".
Make sure the file "MARIO1.GB" is in the same directory.
Via the magic of GEM, the program will now load.
Incredible.
- FRONT-END --------------------------------------------------------------------
The front end of God-Boy includes a series of options for controlling
the emulator. The menu is controlled with cursor keys and space.
* START *
Begins the game. No, really.
* CREDITS *
Prints up the usual guff.
* TRAINER *
Allows you to cheat quite blatantly.
Use arrow keys to move between options and space to toggle them
on and off.
() Infinite Lives
This gives you a not inconsiderable number of lives.
() Invulnerability
This prevents unwanted deaths from contacts with baddies.
() Infinite Time
Defy the laws of physics by causing time to quite literally
stand still.
() Select Start Level
Use left and right arrow keys to changed the level.
* OPTIONS *
DSP TRACKER - turning this off will completely disable the DSP tracker,
useful if you have some crazy sped up falcon which doesn't like DSP
stuff. You may also notice some small speed increase with the emulator.
The Music and Sound Effects can also be toggled on and off.
You may notice a small difference with your ears.
If the DSP TRACKER is off, these options have no effect.
The control method can be toggled between Keys and a Jaguar Powerpad
plugged into port a.
Keys used:
CURSOR UP.....Up
CURSOR DOWN...Down
CURSOR LEFT...Left
CURSOR RIGHT..Right
ALTERNATE.....Jump
SHIFT.........Run/Fire Weapon
HELP..........Start Button
Jagpad:
Directions and Fire A as on the gameboy.
PAUSE.........Start Button
- PLAYING ----------------------------------------------------------------------
The aim of the game is to rescue Daisy.
Kill baddies by jumping on their feeble heads.
Eat magic mushrooms to grow bigger and gain special powers.
Hold down shift (JAGPAD B) to run and do big jumps.
Marvel at the baroque bit in the middle of MSG's tune.
- SCREEN SHOTS -----------------------------------------------------------------
If you press F9 during the game then the current screen will be saved into the
current directory under the filename "GBSCREEN.PI1".
This is a standard 32034 byte degas file.
- DEBUGGING --------------------------------------------------------------------
We have created a full Gameboy debugger for God-Boy.
"Mon-GB" allows you to trace through the Z80 code, set breakpoints and alter
memory in exactly the same way as MON-ST on the Atari.
This is an additional extra which is not included with this release, but if you
are a coder or a hacker who fancies messing around with gameboy games, adding
trainer modes etc. then drop us a line and we will send you Mon-GB.
- CREDITS ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coding Mr. Pink
Graphics thirdEYE
Music MSG
DSP Tracker TAT
All code was written in 100% 68030 assembly language.
If there is a lot of demand I may do an ST port, probably
STE only as the Blitter is used quite heavily.
- THANKS -----------------------------------------------------------------------
For all the gameboy documention, additional info and general help:
Marcel De Kogel, Marat Fayzullin, Jens.
Big thanks for supplying gameboy related files to:
Daniel Hedberg, Antonio Lillo, Reine Larsson, Daryl Harkin,
and Phil Cann.
Thanks also to:
Tat - for moral support and the DSP replay.
MSG - for playtesting.
Flinny - for laughing at the early version of God-Boy.
- GREETS -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Absence. Aggression. Avena. Black Scorpion Software. Chaos Engine. Cream.
Cobra. Dead Hackers Society. Escape. EKO. EXA. Fun. Impulse. Inter. Lazer.
Maggie Team. Misfits. MJJ Productions. New Beat Development. Pandemonium.
RDT. Scarface. Senior Dads. Shadows. Therapy. TNB. Tool 8. Toons. Toxic.
Toys. TSCC. WRC.
Special Greets to: Billy Bunter
- CONTACT US -------------------------------------------------------------------
Write to:
Leon O'Reilly
Cwm Isaf
Abermule
Montgomery
Powys
SY15 6JL
E-Mail:
leon@powys.tec.org.uk ( Mr. Pink )
msg1css@bolton.ac.uk ( MSG )
Homepage:
http://www.acs.bolton.ac.uk/~msg1css/maison.htm
- FUTURE -----------------------------------------------------------------------
We will be releasing more Gameboy games for God-Boy.
There aren't going to be bunged out production line style like on the nasty PC.
We put care and attention into the releases and they will feature nice music
and stereo samples and good colours.
If you have any bug reports or additional features you would like to see added
to God-Boy, please get in touch.
- LEGAL ------------------------------------------------------------------------
God-Boy is freeware.
Please copy it everywhere.
But don't forget, if you don't own a gameboy and the cartridges, then please
laugh long and hard at Nintendo as you blatantly rip them off.
If Nintendo do go bankrupt because of God-Boy, we will be kind enough to set
up a special Nintendo charity featuring bring-and-buy jumble sales and
coffee mornings. When you see the Nintendo employees on the street flogging
copies of the big issue, you know who to blame.
See you next time.
------------------------------------------------------ (c) 1997 Reservoir Gods -