M.I.A. Bloody Wolf Variant

Mann of Wor

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Was messing with this board and when I went to look at the manual for the dip switch settings I realized this is not what I thought it was. This is bloody wolf under the title MIA. Was this just a different region board? It has the exact same layout as a normal bloody wolf board. The Romstar tag has BW written on it. Everything MIA related on the internet is about the Konami game. Even went to MAME ROM dumps and found no pictures of the game under the title MIA. Scratching my head on this one…IMG_2113.jpgIMG_2114.jpg
 
Never seen this until now. interesting. Perhaps this was the title originally planned for Bloody Wolf only for them to realize the title was already used for another game?
 
I just checked Bloody Wolf in mame and see nothing in the dip switches that triggers this. I even triggered all of the different 'unused' dip switches and they do nothing. There's also nothing on The Cutting Room Floor about the M.I.A. title screen but does mention cut M.I.A. dialog.

A little bit of interesting history when it comes to Bloody Wolf, this is one of the few titles of that era that Data East licensed for distribution outside of their immediate circle. All other Data East titles were being distributed exclusively by 3-KOAM and had their own custom cabinets manufactured by WSI and 3-KOAM. Bloody Wolf was distributed by Romstar and had a very small run of dedicated cabinets in Dynamo HS-7 cabinets. We know Romstar had a staff who's sole job was to play games, translate and alter titles for more western sensibilities. It's probably there where changes were encouraged to M.I.A. into the Bloody Wolf we have today.

This is either a proto or MAME never set the dip switches correctly because they have no idea the title screen exists.
 
I can mess with the dip switches on the actual board after I get the ROMs dumped and report back. I find it funny that instead of saying "Unused", Data East just marked them as "Don't Change".
 
This game came out in 88, Konami filed the trademark for MIA in Jan of 89 (I could not find any other regions for this TM). It is possible that that Data East was aware of Konami's MIA game being developed and did not want to get into any fights over the title (especially since Konami was a lot larger than DE).

Who knows... but great that this rarity has been found!

p
 
This game came out in 88, Konami filed the trademark for MIA in Jan of 89 (I could not find any other regions for this TM). It is possible that that Data East was aware of Konami's MIA game being developed and did not want to get into any fights over the title (especially since Konami was a lot larger than DE).

Who knows... but great that this rarity has been found!

p

Interesting, I thought they came out in the same year.
 
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All right... So I was able to dump the ROMs for this game and here is what I found.
  • 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 (yes, I played through the whole game.)
  • 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")
Overall, VERY COOL. Thanks to my brother for lending me his board and letting me take the time and archive all this.

I have recorded and posted the entirety of the gameplay to YouTube for archival purposes. Feel free to watch and share, as well as look for differences.

Gameplay:

Here is the ROM dump for anybody interested. The files in the main folder are dumped and named exactly as they sit in the PCB. The files in "MIA Mame" are renamed drag and drop replacements for the files in the "battlera" folder in MAME. You will have to run it in debug mode though as MAME will not run otherwise due to invalid checksums. Enjoy!

ROM dump: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12rNKc_ZiIuT-fGmnm1xJxnryYCqGr0BN?usp=drive_link
 
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All right... So I was able to dump the ROMs for this game and here is what I found.
  • 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 (yes, I played through the whole game.)
  • 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")
Overall, VERY COOL. Thanks to my brother for lending me his board and letting me take the time and archive all this.

I have recorded and posted the entirety of the gameplay to YouTube for archival purposes. Feel free to watch and share, as well as look for differences.

Gameplay:

Here is the ROM dump for anybody interested. The files in the main folder are dumped and named exactly as they sit in the PCB. The files in "MIA Mame" are renamed drag and drop replacements for the files in the "battlera" folder in MAME. You will have to run it in debug mode though as MAME will not run otherwise due to invalid checksums. Enjoy!

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

Awesome news. Have you submitted this to the mame team? Also the download link is not working.
 
Awesome work. I wasn't paying a ton of attention but one difference that I did notice is that in the ending "cutscene", the helicopter sound is different than Bloody Wolf's. Ever so slightly more painful on the ears...
 
Awesome work. I wasn't paying a ton of attention but one difference that I did notice is that in the ending "cutscene", the helicopter sound is different than Bloody Wolf's. Ever so slightly more painful on the ears...
Thanks bro! I will have to check that out.
 
All right... So I was able to dump the ROMs for this game and here is what I found.
  • 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 (yes, I played through the whole game.)
  • 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")
Overall, VERY COOL. Thanks to my brother for lending me his board and letting me take the time and archive all this.

I have recorded and posted the entirety of the gameplay to YouTube for archival purposes. Feel free to watch and share, as well as look for differences.

Gameplay:

Here is the ROM dump for anybody interested. The files in the main folder are dumped and named exactly as they sit in the PCB. The files in "MIA Mame" are renamed drag and drop replacements for the files in the "battlera" folder in MAME. You will have to run it in debug mode though as MAME will not run otherwise due to invalid checksums. Enjoy!

ROM dump: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12rNKc_ZiIuT-fGmnm1xJxnryYCqGr0BN?usp=drive_link
awesome. Another piece of arcade history preserved
 
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