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tumblepj: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Tumble Pop (c) 1991 Data East.

Tumble Pop is an platform game at single screen similar to Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros. Like in these games, the task of the player is to clear the entire screen of all the enemies; after the screen is cleaned, the player is teleported into another screen to cleaning, until he reach to the boss of the stage. When the boss is defeated, the stage is cleared and the player can play the next one. The stages are all setted in various parts of the world, each of them shows different enemies : there are the clowns of Russia, the mummies of Egypt, the robots of France and other different coloured and sympathetic little monsters. At the beginning of the game the player can also choose the nation where he want to start to play. After that all the world is cleaned by the monsters, the players will travelling even into the space(!) for defeating once for all the evil Mad Doctor.

The particularity of Tumble Pop is the ability of capture the enemies (with their special vacuum cleaner that can catch a certain numbers of enemies) and then throw them against the walls for being eliminated, or also they can be thrown against other enemies, like in Snow Bros. Killed enemies will let bonus items for points and power-ups. There are several items hidden in the screen, the player can discover them by throwing the enemies all over the screen or against the corners.

- TECHNICAL -

Game ID : MAP

Main CPU : 68000 (@ 14 Mhz)

Sound CPU : HuC6280 (@ 4.0275 Mhz)

Sound Chips : YM2151 (@ 3.58 Mhz), OKI6295 (@ 6.06 Khz)

Players : 2

Control : 8-way joystick

Buttons : 2

=> [A] Fire, [B] Jump

- TRIVIA -

Released in November 1991.

Tumble Pop is the first of a trilogy of similar games produced by Data East, all with the same gameplay but at least with just few differences : a year after Tumble Pop, in 1992 Data East released "Diet Go Go", similar to Tumble Pop in the game mechanics, but the vacuum cleaner are discarded with special fruits released by the players for pump up the enemies; at this point the enemy will fly up to the screen, and the player spin him against the other enemies simply by touching him while he's flying. In 1994 is released '"Joe & Mac Returns", still similar to Tumble Pop, but the players must first dizzy the enemies with their canes, then capturing them and at least throw against the other enemies.

There are several references with other Data East games with the enemies of Tumble Pop :

* First of all, the fat Arabian-type guy spitting flames from his mouth is, naturally, a retrieval of the good old Karnov, even if it's not too identical to the original in the aesthetics (the eating-fire guy of Tumblepop doesn't have the thin mustache, and even the eyes are different). This enemy appears in the stage of Russia, Egypt and Brazil.

* In the Australia stage, the cavemen and carnivorous plants are the same as those appearing in Caveman Ninja. The end level boss is identical to the Giant Carnivorous Plant of the second stage, still on Caveman Ninja.

* The end level boss of Brazil stage (the fire dragon) is almost identical to the mid boss of the second stage of Chelnov - Atomic Runner (the Giant Dog with iron mask). Some of his patterns are also similar to another boss in Caveman Ninja.

* The 'pain scream' of some bosses was copied from the Dinosaurs growl of Caveman Ninja.

* In the Space stages, one enemy (the alien with white suit and helmet) is exactly identical to Chelnov. Even his fire attacks are identical to one of the power ups of the game Chelnov - Atomic Runner.

In the Brazil stage, in the first scheme there are five special letters hidden (See TIPS AND TRICKS section to learn more about the special letters) that joined together forms the name SENNA,: clearly an homage to the late Brazilian F1 world champion Ayrton Senna.

In 1994 an anonymous Korean software house, Dong Gue La Mi Ltd., made a hack version of this game, named "Pang Pang". This game is simply awful, with all the backgrounds of the original game changed to the backgrounds of Super Pang. Also, you can't catch the enemies with the vacuum cleaner, but you can catch them inside some bubbles, exactly like in Bubble Bobble. The main character of the game controlled by the player is a horrible rip-off of the hero of Tumble Pop.

The final boss and villain of the game, Mad Doctor, appears also in "Diet Go Go" and "Spin Masters", both still developed by Data East.

Pony Canyon / Scitron released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Wolf Fang, Tumble Pop - PCCB-00084) on 21/03/1992.

- UPDATES -

Bootlegs don't use the HuC6280 @ 4.0275 Mhz :-)

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

To eliminate an enemy, the simple way is to catch him with the vacuum cleaner, and then throw him away before he gets out by himself and kills you. You can also throw an enemy against other one, and especially catch more enemies at a time, in order to create a real "avalanche" that will run over the others. The basic strategy for every scheme is to catch as many enemies as possible, and then throw them against the other enemies, so you can clean up the whole screen and accumulate many points.

Every enemy killed will still release an item that gives you bonus points (coins, gems, diamonds, etc.).

For catch an enemy, press the FIRE button and hold it while the enemy will be sucked inside the vacuum cleaner. However, there is a simple trick to catch them faster, press the fire button ONCE against the enemy, or press the fire button and then turn back to him fast; the enemy will get dizzy for a few seconds. Now, just press again the fire button to immediately suck him inside the vacuum cleaner. Now keep the fire button pressed as long as you don't want to drop him. REMEMBER: You can't hold enemies in your vacuum cleaner for more than 4-5 seconds.

The enemies generally walk around on the screen and jump to different platforms. Especially, there are some kinds of enemies that can turn themselves into a type of tornado before going up or down to the next platform; in this moment these enemies are invincible, you can't catch them and also the 'tornado form' will block eventually enemies that you've thrown against them.

When you fight a boss, you must defeat him by catching the weapons or enemies that he will drop and then throw these against him. If you catch more than three enemies, you'll give more damage to the boss.

In some levels, there are some types of jars, that will release constantly new enemies. The form of these jars changes with the stage's background, but despite this these are all identical to each other. You need to hit these jars throwing enemies against them for two or three times to destroy them. After being destroyed, the jars will release some gems. Sometimes there are two jars in the same level.

You can catch enemies even through walls. This is a great advantage to you, especially against those enemies that can shoot from far distances or when you're near too busy platforms.

There are several bonus items and power ups hidden all over the screen. At the beginning those are not visible; you must first catch some enemies and then throw them in the open space of the level, and especially near the corner where the power-ups are often frequent.

Dropping a single enemy is not effective to discover all the bonuses of a level: the best way is to catch three or more enemies and then throw them in an empty space, which makes them roll over the whole screen and then revealing the bonuses.

The power ups are generally placed in the various corners at the left or right of the screen, and occasionally in the central platforms of the screen. Keep this in mind if you are actually looking for a power up.

There are several power ups :

"Skate" : make the player's character movements faster.

"Star" : Give to the player a barrier that makes him invincible for some time and kill enemies by simple contact.

"Laser Pistol" : Turn your vacuum cleaner in a laser pistol, that kills all the enemies and jars instantly.

"Package ?" : This will recall a large vacuum cleaner above the screen that will clean up the whole screen of every enemy and bonus item: however, the points for the bonus and enemies are still added to the player's score, but you'll not take the benefit of the power ups.

"Tumblepop's Guy" : this is the classical 1UP item, which gives you an extra life. Only available in the bonus stage.

Special letters : these are special items that will appear on screen like the other bonus items. At the bottom of the screen there is the word TUMBLE POP written with the letters placed inside blue balls. You must collect the letters that make the word TUMBLE POP. Once you've completed it, you'll be teleported into a bonus stage where you can collect any type of money and gems and an extra life, before time runs out. If you made it to collect all the items, the time left will become bonus points. After the bonus stage is completed, you'll be teleported into the next level. There are some letters that don't belong to the word TUMBLE POP, which only count as extra points.

In the final stage, before you fight against the final boss (Mad Doctor), you'll fight against the previous bosses. This is the only time that you can find power ups in a boss fight.

- STAFF -

Planner : Makoto Kikuchi

Programmers : Hidemi Hamada, Kei Ichikawa, M. Sano

Designers : Atsushi Takahashi, Ryohey Hirakata, Touma Arakawa, Sanomi Kiyota, Chie Kitahara, Oguri, Noriyuki Morita, Yasuko Kurohiji, Hiroshi Tada

Sound : Tomoyoshi Sato (Tom Sato), Seila, Tatsuya Kiuchi (Mr.K)

Hardware : T. Kanayama

Special Thanks : Masanori Tokoro, Honda Yoshiaki, Tomoo Adachi

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Nintendo Game Boy [JP] (November 20, 1992) [Model DMG-T6J]

Nintendo Game Boy [US] (March ??, 1993) [Model DMG-T6]

Nintendo 3DS [JP] (April 12, 2012, "Virtual Console")

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.36b8 [Bryan McPhail, Chris Hardy]

0.35b8 [Bryan McPhail]

WIP:

- 0.136u4: Fabio Priuli converted Tumble Pop to use the device-fied video chips and added driver data struct and save states.

- 15th August 2009: Guru - From Korea thanks to gp-lee we got Tumble Pop (Data East 1991 bootleg).

- 0.124u5: Andrew Gardner merged memory maps for Tumble Pop.

- 0.105u1: David Haywood added simulated PIC16C57/OKI6295 sound for clone Tumble Pop (bootleg set 2). Fixed OKI6295 clock speed to 6060 Hz in clones (bootleg set 1/2).

- 0.104u5: Changed visible area to 319x240.

- 0.100: Fixed gfx2 rom address to $1. Renamed (tumblepb) to (tumbleb) and (tumblep2) to (tumbleb2).

- 0.61: Added '2 Coins to Start, 1 to Continue' dipswitch. Removed 3rd coin slot.

- 0.54: Fixed clone Tumble Pop (bootleg set 1) crashes only in MAMEW.

- 0.53: Removed gfx1 roms (thumbpop.18/.19) and swapped gfx2 roms ($0, 80000).

- 15th July 2001: Nicola Salmoria decrypted the graphics in the original version of Tumble Pop.

- 14th March 2001: Nicola changed Tumblepop to use better graphics ROMs, however one of the new ROMs is encrypted.

- 12th April 2000: Bryan McPhail fixed some bugs in the Tumblepop driver.

- 0.37b14: Rebuild gfx1 and gfx2 roms.

- 0.36RC1: Added clone Tumble Pop (Japan). Changed 68000 CPU1 clock speed from 14MHz.

- 0.36b13: Changed VSync to 58Hz and YM2151 clock speed to 3580000 Hz and OKI6295 to 7757 Hz.

- 0.36b9: Fixed sound1 rom length from 524288 to 131072.

- 6th November 1999: Bryan McPhail added the sample rom to Tumble Pop.

- 0.36b8: Bryan McPhail added Tumble Pop (World). Renamed (tumblep) to (tumblepb). Added H6280 (4027500 Hz) CPU2 + rom, YM-2151 (3.7MHz) sound and changed OKI6295 clock speed to 8055 Hz.

- 24th October 1999: Bryan McPhail added an original Tumblepop romset (with correct YM2151 sounds) to the driver.

- 0.35b8: Bryan McPhail added Tumble Pop (bootleg set 1) (1991) and clone (bootleg set 2). Known issues: Original romset would be nice. There is music in the top half of the sample rom. Don't know how it's accessed. Sound is not quite correct yet (Nothing on bootleg 2). Dipswitches are totally wrong. They seem different to usual Deco dips.

- 15th March 1999: Bryan McPhail has submitted a driver for Tumble Pop, a rare game from Data East.

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Romset: 2240 kb / 7 files / 1.00 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Tumble Pop (Japan)</description>

<manufacturer>Data East Corporation</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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