Gradius III/ NGP saving and more

Lots of things for today, including a core with a 3 in the name.

Gradius 3

Skutis prepared the schematics for Gradius 3 a while ago and Fulvio put together a quick version of the core that was good enough to play it. Then my assistant spent two weeks making that initial version compliant with the framework and the reverse engineered schematics and chips. As a result, we proudly present Gradius 3 today, joining Gradius 2 and Parodius da! as a JTCORE.

Note: this core is only available on large FPGA devices (MiSTer, Pocket and SiDi128)

NeoGeo Pocket Game Saves

After much testing we think the NeoGeo Pocket core is now saving games reliably on the MiSTer version. This took a lot of work to develop and test, really a lot!

The Pocket FPGA is a completely different framework for saving so we need to study that one next.

Bug Fixes

Golfing Greats demo overhead view applies the correct zoom at all distances
Skykiddx: score missing fixed
Improved CRT signal to Caliber 50
Improve spinner sensitivity on Caliber 50
Pocket FPGA: pressing L+R+Start sends 1P Start + 2P start to the game. This was needed in Alien vs Predator to save the configuration

Ghosts'n Goblins KAI

Our two interns have finished another cool graphics patch. This time to Ghosts'n Goblins. Apart from a lot of new graphic assets, they have also fixed some problems in the original tiles, like the bridge ropes not being drawn before sir Arthur. This is really a cool one to try out. Look for it in the attached KAI zip file.

Public Releases

JTTHUNDR (compatible with Rolling Thunder and more) promoted to public: There is one more game that could possible work on the system, but we haven't been able to make it display correct graphics yet and the core has been on beta for too long so we are promoting it
JTRUNGUN (compatible with Run'n Gun): although the sound chip is still missing many features, we will not hold it on beta any more

CPS3 Update

I am still fighting with this core to make it boot. Getting the 32-bit CPU with encryption to work with 16/32 bit devices on paths that may or may not have encryption is proving a bit of a headache. But I am working non-stop on it as you see in the git commit log. Please bear with me

That's all for this today!

Note: CPS1 core has been reverted to the previous version and the comments about the changes have been removed from this Patreon post.