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fghthist: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Fighter's History (c) 1993 Data East.

Fighter's History is the first attempt of Data East to enter in competition with Capcom and its omnipresent Street Fighter II. Because the many similarities shared by the game with the Capcom masterpiece (like the character select screen, the vs and winner/loser screens, the controls and the design and moves of some characters), Fighter's History was at least simply stamped by most of the players like another SFII clone, and in this way remained ignored and obscured to the mass audience.

Although time after, the many beat'em up fans learnt to appreciate this maybe too underestimated fighting game, especially for its combo system, quite simple to execute even for those players not so able with timing and button pressing, and for its fast gameplay: at this purpose most of the contribution was made by the updated version released in 1994, Fighter's History Dynamite (known as Karnov's Revenge in USA and Europe) that made the gameplay more polished. Despite this at least Fighter's History never reached that great success that maybe Data East still tried to achieve.

Players choose one of 9 international fighters and battle to be the best in the world. Every character has his ending sequence and his own stage. There are also two not-selectable bosses to challenge for reach the end, and the last one of them is real surprising!

- TECHNICAL -

Game ID : MBF

Main CPU : ARM (@ 7 Mhz), HuC6280 (@ 4.0275 Mhz)

Sound Chips : YM2151 (@ 3.58 Mhz), OKI6295 (@ 7.627 Khz), OKI6295 (@ 15.255 Khz)

Players : 2

Control per player: 8-way joystick

Buttons per player: 6

=> Light Punch, Medium Punch, Strong Punch, Light Kick, Medium Kick, Strong Kick

- TRIVIA -

Released in March 1993.

In 1993 Capcom sued Data East for the similarities between Fighter's History & "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior". Despite Data East successfully defending itself in the lawsuit, Fighter's History was not rid of its reputation as a 'shameless Street Fighter rip-off' and went ignored by many gamers. Its sequels, which added little to the series, helped cement this reputation.

In a bit of payback, Capcom added most of the moves of Lee into the characters Yang and Yun in Street Fighter 3.

This is one of the rare Japanese-made fighting games where the characters yell out the names of their moves in their native language. Most Japanese-made fighting games, including "Street Fighter II - The World Warrior", have the Asian characters (usually comprised of East Asians) speak Japanese while all the other characters speak English or Japanese, regardless of their nationality.

Also, every character has several winning quotes displayed in the win/lose screen : these changes depending the defeated opponent.

Another particular feature of the Fighter's History saga is the presence of characters of other Data East games in the cast of the game: in fact, the final boss of Fighter's History and Fighter's History Dynamite is actually Karnov, the hero of the homonimous platform game of Data East released in 1987. While in Fighter's History - Mizoguchi Kiki Ippatsu!! (released only for Super Famicom in Japan) the final boss is even Chelnov, the hero of Chelnov - Atomic Runner (1988) still released by Data East.

About Ryoko : This character seems somehow inspired by Ryoko Tamura, famous female judo champion that started her judo career at the age of 16 (the same age of Ryoko on the game) on the Barcelona Olympics on 1992, and winner of several medals and prizes in every judo contests all over the world. Other inspiration for Ryoko could be from the heroine of the manga "Yawara", based on the story of a young female judoka. There is also another curious thing to know about Ryoko: in the same year (1993), ADK released World Heroes 2, sequel of the previous World Heroes released in 1992, and inside his innovative character rooster appeared a new female fighter named Ryoko, that is very similar to the one of Fighter's History, especially in the physical appearance (the only difference is the colour of her Kimono: white for Ryoko of Fighter's History, light blue for Ryoko of World Heroes 2; also, Ryoko of Fighter's History has a red headband, while Ryoko of World Heroes 2 does not), but however the moves of the two characters are totally different, even if the fighting style is judo for both of them. At least the two "Ryokos" are admittedly inspired by the real Ryoko Tamura as well.

Both Ryoko and Jean's endings mention the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Different to Street Fighter II, some stages of Fighter's History show locations actually existing in the world :

* The stage of Ray (USA) takes place in front the gates of the White House, that is clearly visible in the middle of the screen.

* The stage of Marstorius (Italy) takes place in front the 'Fontana di Trevi' of Rome, one of the most famous fountains of the world. The fountain is not only celebrated for its excellent water but for the legend that whoever drinks it or throws a coin in the fountain, will assure his return to Rome.

Mizoguchi makes a cameo in Joe e Mac Returns (1994) as enemy character. Also Mizoguchi later appeared as a selectable character in the Sony PlayStation 2 game "KOF - Maximum Impact Regulation A".

A bootleg of this game, titled 'The History of Martial Arts' (199?) was made by an unknown producer.

A Fighter's History unit appears in the 1998 movie 'The Replacement Killers'.

- UPDATES -

The US version is slightly different, it has the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

Weak Points : one of the features of the Fighter's History gameplay is the introduction of the weak points for all the characters of the game : these weak points consists basically in a single part of the suit of every character, that begin to flash while taking some strong hits : after the last strong hit making fly away the weak point, the character will get dizzy. In this way every character can get dizzy once time for round, and pop off the weak point of the opponent will become an essential strategy during the fight. In the next round, weak points are restored for both players.

These are the weak points for every character of the game :

Ray : lightning bolt (on the shirt)

Feilin : breastplate

Ryoko : headband

Matlok : headgear

Samchay : armband

Lee : knees (some parts of the pants near the knees)

Mizoguchi : headband

Jean : leg band

Marstorius : leg warmers

Clown : mask

Karnov : hat

- SERIES -

1. Fighter's History (1993)

2. Karnov's Revenge [Model NGM-066] (1994)

3. Fighter's History - Mizoguchi Kiki Ippatsu!! (1995, Nintendo Super Famicom)

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Nintendo Super Famicom [JP] (May 27, 1994; "Fighter's History [Model SHVC-YH]")

Nintendo Super Famicom [US] (August ??, 1994; "Fighter's History [Model SNS-YH]")

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.105u1 [Bryan McPhail, Guru]

0.74u2 [Bryan McPhail, Guru]

0.58 [Bryan McPhail, Guru]

TEST MODE:

- Reset with both start buttons held down for test mode. Reset with P1 start held for Pattern Editor.

Bugs:

- Final bosses protection issues (Clown and Karnov). Lemmy Levesque (ID 00420)

WIP:

- 15th August 2009: Guru - From Smitdogg/The Dumping Union we got protection chips from Fighter's History.

- 0.133u1: Renamed (fghthstu) to (fghthistu), (fghthsta) to (fghthista) and (fghthstj) to (fghthistj).

- 8th June 2009: Guru - Chips for decapping from Fighter's History arrived. Thanks to Smitdogg.

- 0.130: Pierpaolo Prazzoli fixed some Fighter's History priority problems in Ryoko's stage. Namely, the old man, the cat and the kid.

- 0.119u2: Team Japum added clone Fighter's History (Japan ver 42-03). Fixed rom names.

- 0.114: Aaron Giles fixed crash in Fighter's History.

- 0.111u2: Aaron Giles improved cycle timings in the ARM CPU core. Altered the DECO32 CPU clocks to be more realistic. Changed ARM CPU1 clock speed to 7MHz.

- 0.105u1: Bryan McPhail fixed Fighter's History - Game now playable. Changed 'Fighter's History (US)' to clone 'Fighter's History (US ver 42-03)', 'Fighter's History (World)' to parent 'Fighter's History (World ver 43-07)' and clone 'Fighter's History (US Alternate Hardware)' to 'Fighter's History (US ver 42-05, alternate hardware )'. Renamed (fghthist) to (fghthstu) and (fghthstw) to (fghthist).

- 9th April 2006: Bryan McPhail - Fighter's History finally emulated, a long, long time after I first started examining it (7 years?). The breakthrough came because I was able to map the use of the protection chip (Deco 146) on the Fghthist board to that of the Nitro Ball board which I had managed to attach the PCB target manager to. In the end it turns out it is a 'simple' address line swap, but I had to check the possibilities such as data line swapping, different address swap for read & write data (which sounds strange, but makes perfect sense for this chip) or even the possibility the chip has different hardware configurations that mean there may be no mapping.

- 0.74u2: Added Fighter's History (US) (Data East 1993) and clones (US Alternate Hardware) and (World).

- 0.67: Added clone Fighter's History (US Alternate Hardware) (Testdriver).

- 0.58: Bryan McPhail added (Testdrivers) Fighter's History (US) and clone (World). ARM CPU emulation [Bryan McPhail, Phil Stroffolino].

- 4th December 2000: Guru - Dumped Fighter's History (Alt).

LEVELS: 11

Recommended Games (Fighter):

Street Smart

Violence Fight

Solitary Fighter

Art of Fighting

Art of Fighting 2

Art of Fighting 3

Fit of Fighting

Burning Rival

World Heroes

World Heroes 2

World Heroes 2 Jet

World Heroes Perfect

The History of Martial Arts

Fighter's History

Karnov's Revenge / Fighter's History Dynamite

Martial Champion

Power Instinct / Gouketsuji Ichizoku

Power Instinct 2

Groove on Fight - Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3

Gogetsuji Legends

Tao Taido

Aggressors of Dark Kombat

Alien Challenge

Best Of Best

Kaiser Knuckle

Dragoon Might

Savage Reign

Breakers

Breakers Revenge

Kizuna Encounter

SD Fighters

Touki Denshou -Angel Eyes-

JoJo's Venture

JoJo no Kimyouna Bouken: Miraie no Isan

Garou

Matrimelee

Rage of the Dragons

Fist Of The North Star

Melty Blood Act Cadenza

Melty Blood Actress Again

Akatsuki Blitzkampf Ausf Achse

Romset: 12353 kb / 12 files / 5.27 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Fighter's History (World ver 43-07)</description>

<manufacturer>Data East Corporation</manufacturer>

</input>

</game>

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