Massive Gaming League

 

Using new technology that allows for the placement of cameras within an actual videogame, DIRECTV will produce a videogame tournament and cover it as a sporting event, complete with producer, director and technical crew. Stories of the competitors will be told via interviews and features, complemented with coverage of their exploits in actual competition. DIRECTV plans to launch the Massive Gaming League in 2006.

New CPS-2 algo related discovery.

 

While playing around coding on a dead CPS-2 board I have today I found that the encryption algo is still fully in place even after the CPS-2 board has suicided. That said, on examining values the number do not match those of the expected game. This almost certainly confirms that their is only _one_ algo over all CPS-2 games with the only difference being key data (like Kabuki on CPS-1).

 

I passed some test code onto Charles MacDonald so that he can see the values he gets there on his dead SFA3 board. That should match what I see here and to be honest it looks just a formality. When you consider the watchdog on a suicide board is 0xFFFF,0xFFFF,0xFFFF (MOVE.L #$FFFFFFFF,$FFFF0000 will trigger it) it all starts to make sence.

 

There was a big debate over this going back to when we first broke past the protection. The worry voiced by some DEVs was that all boards would be needed again to get the algo for each game. This new discovery certainly confirms that once the algo is known for one game all the others can be brute forced using the XOR tables as templates.

 

As for figuring out the algo itsself whats needed now is a complete dump of tables (8gig) of the algo executing in this default state. Using this the algo should be easier to understand because any key data used for math should be 0xFFFF. I have quickly dumped a complete table for a couple of addresses and while it still looks a mess there are certinally more patterns compared to a normal game.

http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/

Update.

 

I've got word back from Charles and after some work (over irc) he has managed to get the same data I was seeing. This basically confirms what I mentioned above.

 

There were some initial problems with his transfer system (which is far superior to mine) giving different results. It turned out that at some point during the process the protected RAM was being reprogrammed!!! The exact way this is happening is not yet known but it opens up some large posibilities if the cause can be found and understood. This situation did not happen when he was dumping games that were non suicide.

Emu#dreams reports that Charles MacDonald has been working on adding hardware support to MAME. Below is what he has posted on his homepage.

Some information is needed about the M37702 MCUs used in various Namco games. If anyone can help, the following needs to be determined:

 

- Which games use the C71, C72, or C73 chips.

- Which games use the C77 (or higher numbered) chip.

 

What we know so far is:

 

C69  = World Court Tennis (NA-1)

C70  = Quiztou (NA-2)

C73  = Found on a test board, but used in any games?

C74  = System 22

C75  = NB-1 and NB-2

C76  = System 11

 

In the interim I've been examining the BIOS and working on a better trojan as well as figuring out how hardware on the MCU side works.

You can visit Charles MacDonald's homepage here.

NAMCO HOMETEK INC. and Bandai Games Inc. today announced that the integration of their two companies is now complete.  The two companies are now officially known as NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. in North America.  The company now operates out of the Santa Clara, California facility, formerly held by NAMCO HOMETEK INC.

 

Effective January 2, 2006, NAMCO BANDAI Holdings (USA) Inc. (formerly called NAMCO HOLDING CORP.) owns all of the BANDAI NAMCO Group US subsidiaries including Bandai America Inc. (Toy), Bandai Entertainment, Inc.(Visual/DVD), NAMCO AMERICA INC. (Arcade machine), NAMCO CYBERTAINMENT INC.(Arcade facility), NAMCO NETWORKS AMERICA INC. (Mobile games) and NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc.(Video games).

 

“We are thrilled that the integration of the two North American entities is now complete and we are all now under one roof,” said Genichi Ito, the new President and CEO of NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. “We are proud to be part of the new NAMCO BANDAI Games America family and look forward to a successful year ahead."

 

“The integration of our two companies has been a team effort over the last several months,” said Naruo Uchida, who is joining from Bandai Games Inc. and now serving as the Corporate Planning Senior Vice President of NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. “We have worked together to fuse the many strengths each of our companies have to form one strong North American operation.”

 

The integration brings together two of the most well-respected Japanese-owned interactive entertainment companies. With brands including Pac-Man®, Tamagotchi®, SoulCalibur®, Naruto and Tekken®,  NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. ’s separate brands now fall under one strong brand, with many new properties and offerings also on the horizon.

 

Bandai Games Inc. is a subsidiary of Bandai America Inc. and a leading publisher of interactive entertainment software for next generation game consoles. Unique characters and stimulating game experiences highlight Bandai Games Inc. distinctive product lineup which include hit properties such as Inuyasha and Digimon. The company was formerly headquartered in Cypress, California.  NAMCO HOMETEK INC. is the U.S. consumer division of NAMCO LIMITED, a Tokyo-based world leader in the

 

high-tech entertainment industry, and is an award-winning video games publisher for next generation game consoles.