Play your favorite classic games and more with the GameEx front end. Read more.

gsword: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Great Swordsman (c) 1984 Taito.

Great Swordsman is a 1-on-1, side view, sword fighting game that spans 3 types of sword fighting : Fencing, Kendo, and gladiator-style combat.

- TECHNICAL -

Board Number : M6100032A

Prom Stickers : AC#/AC#/AA

Main CPU : (2x) Z80

Sound CPU : Z80

Sound Chips : (2x) AY8910, MSM5205

Players : 2

Control : 2-way joystick

Buttons : 3

- TRIVIA -

Released in September 1984 in Japan.

There are a total of 3 stages in Great Swordsman, with a total of 15 opponents. Once you finish the last opponent, the game starts over from the beginning at a much harder skill level (you keep your points, however). Between each stage, there's a bonus stage that allows you to rack up points by blocking an archer's arrows. Following are the stage and opponent names :

* Stage 1 - Fencing

Opponent 1 : Appels

Opponent 2 : Redon

Opponent 3 : Fantin

* Bonus Stage 1 - Block the Archer's Arrows

* Stage 2 - Kendo

Opponent 1 : Senpou

Opponent 2 : Jihou

Opponent 3 : Chuken

Opponent 4 : Fukusho

Opponent 5 : Taisho

* Bonus Stage 2 - Block the Archer's Arrows

* Stage 3 - Roman

Opponent 1 : Mars

Opponent 2 : Hermes

Opponent 3 : Apollo

Opponent 4 : Helios

Opponent 5 : Orion

Opponent 6 : Uranus

Opponent 7 : Zeus

The names of the opponents in this game are interesting in that each stage's names are terms/names used either in that art form, country of origin, or era in which the art form was related to. Following are reasons (and perhaps guesses) as to why they used the names they did :

Appels - A quick stamp of the foot used in fencing as a feint to produce an opening.

Redon - Redon, Odilon (1840-1916). French painter and graphic artist, one of the outstanding figures of Symbolism.

Fantin - Fantin-Latour, Henri (1836-1904). French painter and lithographer.

Senpou - The first 'player' in a Kenpo match-style competition to line up (also spelled "Senpo").

Jihou - The second 'player' in a Kenpo match-style competition to line up (also spelled "Jiho").

Chuken - The third 'player' in a Kenpo match-style competition to line up.

Fukusho - The fourth 'player' in a Kenpo match-style competition to line up.

Taisho - The last 'player' in a Kenpo match-style competition to line up.

Mars - God of war

Hermes - God of boundaries and of the travellers who cross them (such as bringing newly-dead souls to the underworld, Hades)

Apollo - God of music, archery, healing, light, truth, etc...

Helios - God of the Sun

Orion - God, the hunter

Uranus - God of the Sky

Zeus - God of the Earth and Ruler of Mount Olympus

On stages 1 and 2, any 2 out-of-bounds results in a loss of a point. It is impossible to go out-of-bounds on stage 3. Stage 1 requires 5 points per match, with 3 matches. Stage 2 requires 2 points per match, with 5 matches. Stage 3 requires 1 point per match with 7 matches. Simultaneous hits do not count for either player. On Stage 1, a tie results in a win for you! (It is impossible to tie on stages 2 and 3, based on their point structures).

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* Trick : By continually hitting your opponents sword, you can cause them to lose their sword. Their sword ends up impaling their head!

* Trick : Killing your opponent very quickly with a strike to the head can cause their helmet to fly off.

* Tip : High and mid strikes in succession can easily force your opponent out-of-bounds.

* Tip : On stage 1, holding away from your opponent while striking increases your weapon return speed.

* Tip : On stage 3, use the far right wall as a defense, since you can't step out-of-bounds.

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Taito Legends") (US & Europe)

Microsoft XBOX (2005, "Taito Legends") (US & Europe)

Sony PlayStation 2 [JP] (2007, "Taito Memories II Gekan [Model SLPM-66713]")

* Computers :

PC [MS Windows] (2005, "Taito Legends") (US & Europe)

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

MAME Info:

0.95u3 [Corrado Tomaselli, Nicola Salmoria]

0.34b1 [Steve Ellenoff]

WIP:

- 0.146: hap fixed broken colors in Great Swordsman.

- 0.123u1: Zsolt Vasvari removed color tables from Great Swordsman. Added RESNET color computations where appropriate. Changed palettesize to 512 colors.

- 0.122u6: Corrado Tomaselli verified and changed CPU frequencies in Great Swordsman. Changed MSM5205 clock speed to 3MHz.

- 0.104u9: Tatsuyuki Satoh fixed Great Swordsman, which was broken in an earlier update.

- 3rd July 2005: Guru - I received a Great Swordsman PCB which was hoped to be an English version, but it turned out the dump from it was the same as the existing dump in MAME.

- 0.95u4: Nicola Salmoria fixed Great Swordsman descriptions and added documentation on the 8741s. Changed description of 'Great Swordsman (Japan?)' to '(World?)' and clone '(World?)' to '(Japan?)'.

- 0.95u3: Corrado Tomaselli and Nicola Salmoria added Great Swordsman (Japan?). Nicola Salmoria fixed Great Swordsman sprite palettes. Changed 'Great Swordsman' to clone 'Great Swordsman (World?)'. Changed palettesize to 256 colors. Renamed (gsword) to (gsword2).

- 14th April 2005: Corrado Tomaselli dumped Great Swordsman (World?).

- 11th April 2005: Nicola Salmoria - Sprite colors in Great Swordsman have been one of the longest standing and most elusive emulation imperfections to date. It was hardly noticeable, because a manually crafted lookup table had been crafted in the driver, so colors looked ok. Finally, thanks to Kold666's invaluable help, the emulation is now perfect. As you can see in the shots, the difference is subtle but it's there. It is probably most evident on the pulsing logo, whose color changes are now slightly smoother. The way how I achieved this is worth of mention. Kold (Corrado Tomaselli) kindly provided some pictures of the PCB (parts side and solder side). I x-flipped the solder side, overlapped them in a gfx editing program, and carefully aligned them so I could see both layers at once. Then started tracing from the color lookup PROM, to see what the board does with the data. In the end, it turned out that the sprite palette data comes from a row of the character palette, the tricky part being that the order of the 4 bits coming out from the lookup PROM is reversed. This is something that could have been noticed before, but it always eluded me.

- 0.93u2: Nicola Salmoria fixed dipswitches and description in Great Swordsman. Changed palettesize to 272 colors. Added dipswitches 'Fencing Difficulty', 'Kendo Difficulty', 'Roman Difficulty', 'Lives', 'First Stage' and 5x 'Unused'.

- 0.78u5: Fixed Great Swordsman bad ram message (0.78u2 memory rewrite).

- 0.36b1: Jarek Parchanski and Charlie Miltenberger improved sprite colors in Great Swordsman. Changed Z80 CPU3 clock speed to 3MHz and MSM5205 to 384000 Hz.

- 13th July 1999: Jarek Parchanski sent in an update to Great Swordsman driver, with almost correct sprite lookup table, and better sound.

- 0.35RC1: Sound in Great Swordsman, fixed ADPCM playback in Great Swordsman [Tatsuyuki Satoh]. Fixed background colors in Great Swordsman [Jarek Parchanski]. Changed Z80 CPU1/2 clock speeds to 3MHz and Z80 CPU3 to 2.8MHz and removed 2nd MSM5205.

- 1st June 1999: Jarek Parchanski made the background colors accurate in Great Swordsman, added 2nd player controls and fixed sound speed. Nicola worked on the Great Swordsman ADPCM sound.

- 31st May 1999: Tatsuyuki Satoh fixed Great Swordsman, and the sound works now.

- 0.34b5: Added proms (300, 320, 340 - address decoder? not used).

- 0.34b1: Steve Ellenoff added Great Swordsman (Taito 1984). Known issues: Colors are a mess. Communication to/from sound CPU(s) not yet hooked up. CPU speed may not be accurate.

LEVELS: 16

Recommended Games (Sports):

Track & Field

Track & Field (PlayChoice-10)

Great Swordsman

Hunchback Olympic

Hyper Sports

Water Match

Clash-Road

'88 Games

Gold Medalist

Recordbreaker

California Games (Mega-Tech)

Numan Athletics

Hyper Athlete

Nagano Winter Olympics '98

Sports Jam

Virtua Athletics

Romset: 125 kb / 22 files / 66.2 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Great Swordsman (World?)</description>

<manufacturer>Taito Corporation</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

Developed by: Spesoft Headsoft Terms of use Privacy Advertise