M.I.A. - 1988 Data East "Bloody Wolf" Lost Prototype Archival Thread

RetroCJT

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This thread will contain all the information I and any others find on the newly discovered prototype/variation of Data East's 1988 arcade game "Bloody Wolf."

I thought it would be good to make an archival type post for it to keep all of its documentation organized and not at the tail end of the original post where it was discovered.

Full credit to @Mann of Wor for originally discovering the board and notifying me. His original post is here: https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/m-i-a-bloody-wolf-variant.557156/#post-5033766

- Story -
This PCB came out of a decaying warehouse in Brookhaven MS along with many other PCBs. Something to note is, this warehouse seemed to have an outstanding number of foreign/import PCBs outside of the US region. It was loose and not paired with a cabinet. During the process of trying to identify and test all loose PCBs recovered from the warehouse, @Mann of Wor powered this one up on the test bench and saw the M.I.A. title screen. Searching for M.I.A. on the internet only yields results for the 1989 Konami arcade game. After seeing this was not that game, @Mann of Wor discovered the gameplay was identical to 1988 Data East's "Bloody Wolf." This was perplexing because there is no record of M.I.A. being another regions variant for this game. This is what prompted @Mann of Wor to make his original post. This is when @DonPanetta suggested it is likely a prototype, due to Romstar having a dedicated division for making changes to games based on what region they were going to. With this knowledge, I was lent the PCB to inspect it and dump the ROMs. I was able to successfully dump all the ROMs, as well as two extra ROMs that Bloody Wolf does not use on the final PCB. After tweaking the names and file extensions, I was able to get the game to run in MAME's debug mode by placing them in the "battlera" rom folder (Battle Rangers.) I then recorded a playthrough of the entirety of the game to document any potential differences. This playthrough and the ROMs are both linked below if anyone is interested. The ROMs are happily nested back in their spot where they have likely been since 1988, and the PCB will be returned to its owner soon.

- Differences -
These are the differences and oddities I have discovered thus far.
  • M.I.A. PCB has 12 ROMs populated, Bloody Wolf only uses 10.
  • The two additional ROMs are labeled "BACKMAP" and "DATA."
  • Of the 10 ROMs that are comparable, M.I.A. has 3 that have different checksums.
  • The three ROMs whose checksums do not match are: ES-00, ES-02 and ES-10.
  • Written in pencil on each ROM is a date of "12/22/88" (Some poor sap was in a hurry to get this finished so he could take off for Christmas!)
  • Gameplay seems identical apart from the title/attract screen and the credits screen. In both cases, the "Bloody Wolf" title is swapped for "M.I.A."
  • I was able to rename some files and get it to play in MAME under "battlera" (Battle Rangers)
  • Written in sharpie on the PCB is "VCOK16AM92UC046AU691" whatever that means.....
  • The ROMSTAR label has "BW" red penciled in front of the the serial number ("NO. BW 0234")
  • The helicopter sound is much more obnoxious in M.I.A. and is difficult to listen to.
- Gameplay -

- ROM Files -
The files in the main folder are unmodified and are exactly as they were dumped. The naming convention follows the EPROMs in the physical PCB.
The files in the "MIA Mame" folder, are drag and drop replacements to get the game to run in debug mode in the "battlera" folder in MAME until a proper MAME variant can be made.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12rNKc_ZiIuT-fGmnm1xJxnryYCqGr0BN?usp=drive_link

- Overview -
Overall, this is a very cool discovery! (Maybe I am biased because it is the first prototype I have ever had part in archiving.) While it seems like what I would call an "almost final" build, there are some differences, and after all, this is the Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, so I feel they should be recorded regardless how small. I will continue to update this thread if/when I discover more. If you have any information on the subject at all, I would love to hear it. Feel free to share your thoughts as well. Thanks to @Mann of Wor for allowing me to archive this good stuff. Thanks and happy KLOVing!
 
Great thread and great work from you and @Mann of Wor as always. I did have Mame developer Haze's email back from when i helped him fix some CSS issues on his wordpress site. I'm not entirely sure he uses that email address. Haze appears to post frequently on Twitter/X so i had a friend send him this link over there in hopes that he reads it.
 
Great thread and great work from you and @Mann of Wor as always. I did have Mame developer Haze's email back from when i helped him fix some CSS issues on his wordpress site. I'm not entirely sure he uses that email address. Haze appears to post frequently on Twitter/X so i had a friend send him this link over there in hopes that he reads it.
Thanks Don, same to you. I will do some research and see who I can get ahold of. I may see if I can catch him on Twitter. (y)
 
Here we go. MIA now has a discussion page in the MAME repository

Haze still requires two things. He needs confirmation on which names to properly credit for this dump and he needs to know which socket "data.bin" was in and which socket "backmap.bin" were in.

 
Here we go. MIA now has a discussion page in the MAME repository

Haze still requires two things. He needs confirmation on which names to properly credit for this dump and he needs to know which socket "data.bin" was in and which socket "backmap.bin" were in.

MIA ROM Layout.png
According to this photo, it looks like E4 is where "BACKMAP" is and H1 is "DATA" I will verify when I get home.

As far as credit goes, I did all of the dumping and emulating. @Mann of Wor did the physical testing with the PCB on the test bench but did not pull any ROMS.
 
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