JOTEGO

JTXMEN Beta (Patreon)

Published:

2024-10-11 19:24:12

Imported:

2026-06

Downloads

Content

We bring a new beta core, JTXMEN, compatible with KONAMI's X-MEN hardware. KONAMI's X-MEN is based on the 1989 US-aired PRYDE OF THE X-MEN cartoon, and the colourful costumes conform to those of the time. The appeal of this title was that players could choose from six main characters, with flashy explosion effects and flying gadgets to keep us hooked. Although there were not many units produced, a six-player cabinet existed, and the cabinet had six coin-op slots. Instead of choosing a character after putting coins into the slot, players put coins into the slot of their favourite character to start the game. If they opened that enclosure, they could also see the character's popularity index based on which input box contained the most coins.

Special moves of each character

CYCLOPS ‘Laser beams’ of optic blasts from the eyes

COLOSSUS ‘Energy Spark' which can attack all enemies in the vicinity at once

WOLVERINE ‘Adamantium laser blade’ that launches several forward-facing, long-reach slash attacks

STORM ‘Lightning Tornado' which sends a huge tornado forward

NIGHT CRAWLER ‘Teleportation’ moving around the screen at high speed

DAZZLER ‘High intensity sonic light blast’ that throws a light projectile forward and spreads energy when it lands on the ground

You can play with your favourite character as usual, or try a character with a different special move, which is also fun!

Technical Trivia

This machine uses an advance PCM chip, which I bet it was designed by Yamaha. It takes the digital stream from Yamaha's FM chip and mixes digitally with the PCM sound. Then, the digital mix is output to an Analog Devices 18-bit DAC. From what I see, the PCM samples used in X-Men are either 8 bits PCM or 4-bit Delta PCM, which means that 18 bits is way more than needed. Although the FM sound is arguably close to 16-bit resolution. Compared to The Simpsons, we went from the relatively rudimentary DACs from Yamaha used in previous games, to this high end DAC. Nice!

The current PCM implementation is still in its early stages. There is an external RAM allegedly used for sound effects. These are not implemented right now. It looks like X-Men does not use this feature, so we will not miss it for now. Note that because of the size of this RAM, the core is not available for small FPGA platforms, such as MiST and SiDi. You will find it attached for MiSTer, Analogue Pocket and SiDi128.

There are a couple of GFX problems in the game, the most noticeable one is that the shadows disappear for a while in a couple of scenes. This should be easy to fix.

This board uses the same sprite chipset as The Simpsons and Vendetta, so improvements done for X-Men are having an effect in these games too. Konami usually made graphic chips in pairs that worked together. But curiously, one of the sprite chips in X-Men is used on Run & Gun, while its pair is not. We hope to find out more about this in the future.