Do you think it would be possible to make a Punch-Out!!/Super Punch-Out!! multigame for Super Punch-Out!! boardsets?
YES !
Or maybe a better question would be whether or not it would be possible to make something like that in a form which is easily installed by an end user...?
No.. not really
It's actually quite do-able.. however you'd need several plug-ins to implement. Which would be the real pain of it.
The CPU & ROM wouldn't be a big issue as that could all fit on a single board with a CPLD to emulate the dongle. I don't know if the modified ROMs which removed the dongle checks were release, that would make it easier.
I'll clean up the SPO dongle board I did and release the schems & demo layout, the VHDL code for the dongle is already published. The modified ROMs would remove the need for this board tho'.
The GFX roms on the video board are the real pain, there were 3 separate data busses so the plug in would need to catch the enables for 11 ROMs plus the 3 databusses and the address bus ( at least that's shared ). That would just be an unpleasant board to do as an all-in-one. But 3 separate plug-ins would be easier to handle at least.
The "BAK" board only needs 2 ROMs swapped, small plug in there, but the 6 color ROMs all need replacing, unless there was some code hacking to get SPO to use the same colors as the original. That's the odd thing the colors between the games don't seem that radically different so why a new set of color PROMs between games (?!?!?) Oh well, nintendo. Again here an all-in-one plug in wouldn't be as bad as the GFX ROMs as the PROMs are small and spaced closely together. 3 separate boards would still probably be easier tho'.
However.. in the end it is a tiny market for an upgrade kit like that and unless you got the boards made really really cheaply, it's unlikely cover expenses, ALSO... any PO owners would need to add the duck button, which isn't trivial,
and you probably don't want to go cutting up the SPO control panel to add an extra button.
It is something that you could shortcut any plug-in style upgrades by using larger EPROMs, putting both SPO and PO imaged in there, then just bending out the high address line to a switch to change between two ROM images.
The color PROMs are still a problem but... bend out one of the enables then piggyback the SPO color PROM on top and run to the switch. You'd still need 6 color PROMs.
Cheesy. yes.. will it work..absolutley
- James
