Time Crisis Series: Reviewed!

"People that believe these games to be shallow, too linear, too short or any of the other disparagements they are regularly labelled with are completely missing the point and are playing the game with a completely in-appropriate mindset. They are also probably poor players of this type of game. If you place a coin in a Time Crisis machine and walk away, defeated, 4 minutes later, it isn’t surprising you aren’t seeing the attraction...."

- shin_nikon_kikaku

»» Click Here to Read the Review!

»» Reviews and Rants Forum

ZiNc - 3D Arcade Emulator

Release 1.0 - October 23, 2004

 

Emulator by The_Author and DynaChicken

1.0 enhancements by R. Belmont and smf

 

Renderers by Pete Bernert and Lewpy

Sound by Pete Bernert

Namco C7x sound simulator by Cap / Team VivaNonno

=================================================

 

What's this?

------------

ZiNc is an emulator for various arcade games which ran on

modified Sony PlayStation hardware.  It does not emulate

any other games, including other 3D games.

 

What's it play?

---------------

To see a complete list of supported games, run ZiNc with the "--list-games" parameter.

 

ZiNc attempts to provide the fullest possible emulation for each of

these games while also running on relatively low-spec PCs.  However,

we don't guarantee perfect emulation for any of the games.  Sound

and/or music in particular may be incomplete or incorrect for certain

types of games.

 

ZiNc is not flexible enough to support games with analog controls.  As a

result, some games on supported hardware that you may have seen in

MAME (such as Crypt Killer) are not included.

 

What's new since ZiNc 0.9?

--------------------------

- True ZN decryption instead of ZiNc's old hacks.  Some Capcom games may take

  a little longer to start up than they did under previous ZiNc versions.  This

  is completely normal

- Story text in Kikaioh / Tech Romancer now works

- Support for Tecmo TPS, Atlus PS, Raizing/Eighting PS Arcade 95, Konami GV,

  and Namco System 12

- Sound simulation for System 11 games, thanks to Team VivaNonno

- Fixed graphics for Tekken and Tekken 2

- MAME-style parent/clone support

- All ROM sets now match MAME 0.87u5 (not a public version)

- CHD support.  These may go either in your ROM folder or in a subdirectory

  of your ROM folder, the same as MAME

 

What's wrong with it?

---------------------

Sound is not accurate in System 11 games although the simulator does

an excellent job in many cases.

 

Game speed is wrong in many System 11 games.

 

Sound is not accurate in System 12 games.

 

The external sound board is not supported for the Raizing games,

Cool Boarders, or the Taito FX-1b games.

 

 

How to use?

-----------

Put roms in the roms/ dir where the emulator is (or the directory

specified by the --roms-directory switch, see below).

Make sure a cfg/ dir exists.

 

NOTE: for Linux, it's still best to put the 3 plugins somewhere in your

LD path.  E.g. become root, copy them to one of the directories listed

in your /etc/ld.so.conf file (/usr/lib is a reasonable default that

should work on most systems if you can't figure out something better),

run ldconfig, then drop back to being a normal user and run ZiNc.

 

For the renderer and controller plugins you may use the --renderer=

and --controller= switches as long as you give an absolute path.

Example:./zinc 12 --controller=./libcontrolznc.so.

 

type zinc --help to get help

type zinc --list-games to see games

type zinc x - where x is a game nr to start game

 

type zinc by itself to see all the available options.

 

Options are:

--help shows help

--list-games lists all games supported

--list-sets  lists the ROM info for all games supported

--version shows the version info

--verify verifies a ROM set

--use-config-file=<value> gets Zinc config info from the filename specified.

--use-renderer-cfg-file=<value> gets renderer config info from the filename

                                specified.

  A sample renderer config file is provided as "renderer.cfg".

--roms-directory=<value> sets the directory to load ROMs from

--use-sound=<yes|no>            def: yes  turns sound on/off

--renderer=<value>    def: renderer.znc  choose renderer to use

--controller=<value>   def: controller.znc  choose controller plugin

--use-controller-cfg-file=<value>  def: N/A  gets controller config info from

                                   the specified file.  the default

                                   keyboard plugin ignores this.

--sound-filter-enable=<yes|no>  def: no   turns the sound filter on/off,

                                          provides a quality increase

                                          with a tiny amount more CPU.

--sound-filter-cutoff=<value>   def: 22050   sets the filter cutoff

                                             frequency.

--sound-surround-lite-enable=<yes|no> def: no  Enables "Lite-Surround".  Try

                                               it and listen

--sound-surround_lite-multiplier=<value> def:  40  Adjusts how powerful the

                                                   lite-surround is.

--sound-stereo-exciter=<yes|no> def: no   enables "stereo exciter" which

                                          widens the stereo image.  Try it

                                          and listen

--use-slow-geometry=<yes|no>    def: no   uses slower but more accurate

                                          geometry calculations.  if you see

       errors, try this as a fix. 

       Gallop Racer 3 in particular

       benefits from using the "slow"

       geometry - the ground breaks up

       otherwise.

 

 

KEYS:

 

1 - Start player 1

2 - Start player 2

4 - Test switch (enters test mode in most games)

5 - Coin player 1

6 - Coin player 2

7 - Service switch

 

Cursor Keys - player 1 directions

A,S,D,Z,X,C - player 1 buttons

 

B, H, N, M - player 2 directions

U,I,O,J,K,L - player 2 buttons

 

ESC - exits the emulator

 

F5 - take a snapshot (may depend on the renderer)

 

The renderers also make use of the insert/home/pageup/delete/end/pagedown

keys for various functions.  These should work approximately the same as

in popular PlayStation emulators.

 

Troubleshooting

---------------

 

The first time you run Psychic Force you may go into the test menu.

Select "Factory Defaults" then "Yes" then "Exit".  The screen will say

"RESET" and just sit there.  Wait a second or two then quit the

emulator and restart it.  Psychic Force will then play correctly.

 

Enjoy and have fun!

© 1997-2004 The_Author and DynaChicken.  All Rights reserved.

This emulator may be freely distributed as long as the ROM files are not

included and the executable is not modified in any way.

October 25, 2004

 

ZiNc 1.0.1 update: This update fixes a crash in "Susume! Taisen Puzzle-dama" on the Windows version, disables two games that weren´t working, adds the US version of Street Fighter EX, removes the obsolete --verify option, and adds a --rotate option for people with rotatable LCD or arcade monitors. Additionally the Linux version will now run on non-Pentium 4 CPUs. The ROM sets have all been synced to the latest MAME 0.88 - thanks to Brian Troha for pointing out the differences.

>> Offical Site

You can also download it from the 1Emulation Download section.

>> Download ZiNc 1.0.1

Another fine WIP release.

NOTE: While this WIP fixes the flickering in Star Fox 2, it still has major problems. NO EMULATOR CURRENTLY PLAYS STAR FOX 2 PERFECTLY.

General Code Cleanup [pagefault]

Fixed a strange crashing bug in 239 line games when interpolation is

enabled [pagefault]

More accurate way of calculating timing for CPU cycles [pagefault]

Remove warning about 32 bpp since it is no longer an issue [pagefault]

Starfox 2 flickering Fixed [pagefault]

Made battery for SFX more meaningful, fixed SRAM not being cleared. [Nach]

SuperFX 20mhz timing fix [pagefault]

Fixed GUI laggyness problems hopefully. (Linux) [pagefault]

Reset now doesn't reset parts of RAM that shouldn't be. [Nach]

Begin work of socket server for automation [pagefault]

Update copyright date and change text to 'ZSNES Team' on startup [pagefault, ipher]

-z now disables stereo sound insted of enabling it, because it is on by default anyway [pagefault]

Updated -m in help to be more specific [pagefault]

SDL port is now way more CPU usage friendly, no longer uses 100% [kode54, pagefault]

Removed breakpoints for Mario Chip 1 and GSU-1. [Nach]

Fixed the DSP-1 not getting unloaded error. [Nach]

Get it here.

http://haze.mame.net/

have put together 0.87u4. I wasn't really happy with u3 due to the number of broken Atari/Midway drivers so here is a u4 update which corrects that amongst other things.

 

0.87u4

 

General Improvements

--------------------

 

Fixed bugs introduced in u3 causing Atari / Midway drivers to crash [Olivier Galibert]

 

Changed where source filename based config files are stored to avoid conflicts with

set name configs [René Single]

 

Changes the static function implementations in memory.h to inline [brad Oliver]

 

Improvements to Hyper Neogeo 64 rendering, 3d graphics can now be seen although

emulation is still incomplete and Fatal Fury WA still needs a hack to boot

[Andrew Gardner, Rasterizing code provided in part by Andrew Zaferakis]

 

Code to decrypt FD1094 CPU 317-0092 in states 0x00-0xff (0x00 is reset, 0x10 is IRQ)

this is the CPU used by tetris, code is not hooked up yet [Nicola Salmoria]

 

Changed instr86.c based on comment below:

In the cpu/i86 code emulating the CMPSW instruction there is what seems to

be a cut+paste bug: It calls the SUBB() macro where it should call SUBW().

Line 524 of instr86.c.

[Juergen Buchmueller]

 

 

New Games supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:

-------------------------------------------------------------

 

Puzzle Club (Yun Sung) [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

Pop Bingo [David Haywood]

 

New Clones supported or promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING status:

--------------------------------------------------------------

 

Explosive Breaker (parent of bakubrkr) [David Haywood]

Street Fighter 2 EX (USA) [brian Troha]

Top Racer (bootleg, set 2) [Pierpaolo Prazzoli]

 

New Non-Working games / clones supported

----------------------------------------

 

Funny Strip [David Haywood]

unemulated protection?

 

Ping Pong Masters '93

Twin Brats

Twins

Mighty Warriors

these four drivers are still being worked on