Released: Irritating Maze working with regular controllers

If you want the rom go ask Dion.

 

Nice work, however I am curious.... is the game also actually playable/enjoyable with a regular joystick?

 

The original game won't work with regular joystick, the regular motherboard, reguar bios.

This hack make it work without the need of the unibios and without the need of the trackball.
You can make your own AES cart insert into a unmodded AES and it will be playable.

I haven't tested it on real hardware but other people have.

 

It's already been done.

Irritating Maze: Standard Joystick Version




This was a special version we received from SNK for our exclusive and licensed USA release from 12 years ago.
Works without the need for special bios. Just plug it into any system and play with a regular controller or control pad.
The game ROM files were dumped years ago.

I'm happy to see you mention and share new ROM links with everyone because I've always thought Irritating Maze
was a great game that was over looked. Too bad snk never released the part 2 version; Irritating Maze Returns.

Thanks for sharing the ROM link for other people who may have not played or even heard of Irritating Maze.


**UPDATE
I received a number of emails after my reply.
It seems many people were unaware NGF had an official and licensed release of The Irritating Maze: Standard Joystick Version.
Extremely rare.
Based on the last few public sales on eBay, the market value is estimated at $1600-$1800.
The price may be significantly more with the way aes prices have been skyrocketing lately.

 

I digged hard on the web and couldn't find it. The Irritating Maze rom present on the mame set isn't playable because it's a direct dump of the original cartridge.

So, I'm happy someone did it.

It's a shame the same won't apply for other games such as Warlock of Fates (that will come out via NCI) and Last Odyssey.
The rom of Warlock of Fates is in the hands of a selected group for almost 5 years now, maybe more.
Crossed Swords 2 suffers from the same problem.

We just have to wait a little bit longer for all those 3 to pop up.
I can say that according to some people with high level technical detail of the NeoGeo system, Crossed Swords 2 can be acchieved via cartridge using flash memory and a little bit of hacking.

I know that I'm a small figure in all this but in a single year with help of tons of people we fixed the Super MVS Converter.

We showed to everybody a converter can be made using a connector and a single donor cartridge.

Disassembled the 138 in 1 to let it be played with converters and consolized systems via dipswitch.

And now this that has been made but wasn't public at all.

So, yeah, free knowledge is awesome

 

Irritating maze has had unibios support for a while

The unibios support is way more accurate than the hacked version.

 

Did you tested this one I posted? Can yu show a picture of the cartridge you used?

Can you name the differences?

EDIT based on Dion edit.
Not $1600 at all. It's the printing price plus the donor price plus your profit.
More like $120. Since you make this yourself this can't be valued by the market.

 

Veg I have tried the standard rom with unibios in emulator it works excellent, Razoola did a great job on the IM support for v3.0 of unibios. Ill try the hacked version and come back with some screen caps

 

Thanks, dude.

I know razoola's work he's awesome, I'm a big unibios fan with it in everything, AES, MVS, dish washer.

If this rom has some problem some feedback would be great to fix it.

 

IM was an arcade only release with its own unique cabinet design, trackball and even lighting and fog controls. Any IM aes version is a conversion.

 

I'm guessing Dion meant that the NGF 'licensed' version is currently going for $1600 on eBay at present, not that the original market cost and parts costing was $1600.

In any case: do you think someone should do a comparison between the 'new' version and the 'NGF' version, to confirm that this person hasn't reinvented the wheel and the two are actually the same? I'd prefer if there wasn't multiple hacks to do the same thing.

 

To me it's like printing money if it's based on ebay prices.

There's no multiple hacks.
There's the Razoola unibios solution and the hack I posted.

The joystick version in that picture was never released to the public. If it were, it would be part of the mame set by now.

If the rom from the cartridge in the picture was public we would have by now Warlock of Fates, Crossed Swords II (cartridge version) and Last Odyssey.

 

Irritating maze home conversions are valued between $200-$250 same as any other

 

kenshir0: Please don't prompt *another* discussion about NGF on this board. There are roughly a bajillion posts on this forum arguing ad infinitum about NGF, NG:USA's position on NGF, that in court Dion won over NG:USA, that every quote from the family than ran NG:USA about NGF is way out of date, the cost of NGF carts, how many people approve, how many people disapprove, etc. etc. Any thoughts you have about NGF have likely already been discussed. This is about Irritating Maze, not about licensing issues.

That depends in part on how many were sold, and if the price means that people are unwilling to dump it.

Question to Dion: How many did you sell, or was this a prototype?

 

Keep this about Irritating Maze and not a personal attack on Chris, myself, or NeoGeoFreak.

Obvious fake post
Anyone believing that post was made by Alicia Barone from SNK-USA is dreaming.
That was just another fake post made years ago by someone who is probably a member at ng.com.


NeoGeoFreak: Irritating Maze: Standard Joystick Version
Yes, the NGF version is official, authorized, and fully licensed.
SNK-Japan sent us a special version 12 years ago for our licensed AES release.

Many people have seen the photos of myself with the former snk-usa president with the
NGF Irritating Maze AES cartridge, and also a photo of us standing with the Irritating Maze dedicated cabinet.
(I'll post them if I can find them). (I'm sure some people have the pics saved)



Special licensed edition - not a conversion
Some people ask if it is a conversion, but it's simply not the case.
SNK never released Irritating Maze: Standard Joystick Version to the public, so how can people possibly think it's a conversion?
NeoGeoFreak received a special reprogrammed version direct from SNK-Japan for our exclusive and licensed release 12 years ago.


Counters and Conspiracies
I do enjoy reading people's posts and conspiracy theories on this unique release.
Some people have wild imaginations and even create fake accounts, make arguments,
and even pretended to be snk-usa employees in an attempt to counter NeoGeoFreak releases.
It's all very entertaining and adds more mystique to this and other AES licensed releases from NGF.



Back to Irritating Maze and the trackball cabinet games.
I've always liked Irritating Maze and I had high hopes for the trackball cabinet.
SNK had originally intended to start releasing special games for use on their trackball cabinet.


here's a quote from a reply I made in the proto talk thread:
**quote

SNK press release material

The printed material from snk-usa and was a New Release news letter (promo/sale pitch) for arcade operators
to invest in the neogeo trackball cabinet (with Irritating Maze) and/or to invest in the trackball conversion kit.

Leaflet advert promised:
"As with the original neogeo convertible video game system with over 100 software titles, operators can
easily swap out and plug in new cartridges designed specifically for use with the new neogeo trackball controller.
6 new titles are currently lined up."


Mentions by name
Irritating Maze, Bowling Revolutions, and Irritating Maze Returns.
It also says "New games such as Golf, Pool, New Progressive Shooting, and many more titles currently in development."

It further states
"SNK Corporation of America has released test samples throughout the country and the reports have been extremely positive.
Reports are provided herewith for you to review and evaluate with your sales staff."


Granted, this all could have been part of the sales pitch. But I'm sure snk wouldn't invest tons of money into such a nice/high priced
cabinet without having a plan for many more titles to be released. We're all curious as to where/what happened to all the trackball games?
The only thing that has surfaced is Irritating Maze and an very early/pre-alpha Neo Pool Masters.
**end quote

 

Moose, Irritating Maze was a coinop only release. IM aes is a conversion. Thats my point.

 

I would be happy with two things in this thread:

1. Not flaming NGF or Dion.

2. And on the other side, no self proclaming, braging about yourself.

If you want to talk about the rom and the game, that's great.
If you want to do the same and share more unreleased material, that's also fine.

So let's keep the personal part of this out of this thread.

 

veggav: Thanks for sharing. Incidentally, NGF did release the pictured cart years ago. Not saying it wasn't a conversion, just that they did sell it. If someone wanted to buy it back then and dump it, they could have. I think there was some debate over whether their release actually worked with the standard pad or not, IIRC.

kenshir0: It's been said before - please don't go off topic for the purpose of having a go at Dion. If you want to mention his antics, go and do so in the NGF thread. Basically, we're sick to death with NG.com members registering here just to spout the same shit on every post that Dion posts in, so keep any complaints to that one thread. So, you've said it once... don't keep going on about it here and taking this thread off topic. Oh, and there's an edit button (just as there is on NG.com - both vBulletin forums) - please use it instead of triple posting.

 

You've got to know your audience. They want to hear what Dion's opinion is on a subject period. The member's here have read what you have to say many times before and are tired of it. I know you're doing what you feel is right and feel it's your right but some longtime members here are asking you to drop it. You're bringing unnecessary heat to NG.com by doing this too.

"so deal with it, buddy." The mods here will deal with that kind of attitude...I'm serious.

I'm just saying pick your spots.

 

So does the NGF home release have a different NGH number to the standard MVS version, what with it being a slightly different ROM set?