I got my hands on some dumps of random chips from Interplay games, and I believe that some of these chips are from a prototype of the 32x version of Blackthorne. Now, I know almost nothing about the makeup of 32x games (I'm a SNES guy), but it appears that the ROM is interleaved in a strange way. For instance, I found the following string in the ROM: I don't think the chips are corrupt. I actually found a section that appears to have the game script, and comparing it with the script from the final version, it definitely looks like it is interleaved. Is there anyone who knows about 32x stuff who might be able to give me an idea of what is going on with this?
It's normal text for any 68k-based system ROM. EAMG = GAME etc. You can try to load these in Kega Fusion first.
It's interleaved at a byte level, pretty standard for Mega Drive EEPROMs. You have the odd byte set in that particular ROM you posted the string from. You're seeing part of the text from the ROM header data. The full text from the first portion for example is "SEGA MEGA DRIVE". In order to reconstruct the games, you need to try and match up which EEPROM's go with what, and combining the odd/even data into a combined ROM file. The easiest way to do match up the EEPROMs is usually by looking at the ROM header.
If you can't match them up, and you're planning to post them publically anyway, just release them here and I or someone else can help figure out what goes with what, or I can help you privately if you want, just send me a PM. Even if you have some odd EEPROM's left afterwards that you don't have a matching set for, it should be possible to at least identify what game they're for, and get an idea about how early the prototype is.
This is what I could come up with: (Replaced with image link because of formatting) http://i.imgur.com/csnX3.png It goes a bit funky around the "ktho" in Blackthorne, perhaps there's a typo there, either "Blacktorne" or "Blackhorne". But yeah, as has been mentioned multiple times, it's just interleaved byte for byte. Trivial to put back together once you have both halves available. EDIT: GRRRRR, how do i stop it taking out multiple spaces? that is annoying...
It doesn't look like I have the other half. I'll be releasing these, as soon as I can find someone in the Sega community who will make an article for it to go along with the release.