Tiger Electronics Handheld Simulation

For most people, especially with MESS, it's about preserving and emulating the game play experience. Just like the artwork on the label of a 2600 game cartridge never represents the actual game play, what ever is printed on the back of the box should just be 'box art'. Replicate the LCD exactly as it sits in the game.

That being said, with MESS you can do whatever you want. You can have an overlay, underlay, transparency layer, texture layer (like the screen of a CRT or something). For the LCD games, you should make a clear scan (if possible) or high-res photo of the artwork behind the LCD uncovered. The LCD sprites will be put in place by MESS, and the artwork can be 'darkened' by adding a polarizing filter layer to it (that's what those two dark pieces of plastic are, they make the LCD visible. Tinting is just a side-effect...). That's all very easy to do. And, if someone wants, they can turn of the darkening layer, and even swap out the background with the scanned box art (or any image they want). You can make the characters in the LCD full-color... Hell, they could be photographs of actual people in costume if someone really wanted to go that far... (Which would actually be kind of fun to do, now that I think about it... )

Scan and photograph everything, it can all be put to use somewhere... You can never preserve too much.

 

So much done. What image format should I make the images to be compatible with MESS/MAME. The pallet project is next after all this scanning. I have over 200GB but this should chance when everything is scaled down and converted. I do have other concerns like VRT-X games have a hologram how is this captured how is this reproduced. I know for a fact that its been done on a futurepinball game that had a working hologram reproduced.

 

I have yet to get a Tiger R video game system.It works just like the virtual boy and is a ripoff of it however I like it better for some reason.

 

I only skimmed this thread but OP, have you spoken to MADrigal? http://www.madrigaldesign.it/sim/

I only just got into these simulators through RetroArch and Pica Pic , but noticed MADrigal also made some simulators and takes requests.

From his FAQ (doesn't mention he collects Tiger electronics, but worth a try):

"5. games requests
-----------------
Q: I noticed that you didn't make the simulator of my favourite game, that is
"Bla bla bla". Why don't you make that simulator?

A: Possible reasons:

1. I don't have that game in my hands. I can't even think of making a
simulator of a game I don't have access to or I've never seen before.
I need at least to play the actual game before starting the simulation
process, otherwise the simulator won't be accurate at all!
Also, I can't always afford the expense of buying games to be simulated.
Since I program "freeware" games, I don't get a single cent from my
products - and I don't even want to!

2. ...maybe I'm not interested into that game. =)
I'm mainly interested into Nintendo, Mattel, Tomy, Gakken, Bandai, Casio,
VTech and Coleco games.

3. If you're willing to contribute, you can lend/present me with your
favourite game, so I will study it and then code the simulator as accurate
as possible."

 

I have a tiger r-zone with almost all games ever produced for this handheld. Yo make me wanna try it again, and it s near me,but it s the first version,the one that stay in your head with the game projected to a mirror in front of one of your eyes. After 2 ! minutes of gaming you go crazy and I always switch to my game gear with 80 games. Best games for the r-zone are vitua fighter and Daytona USA

 

Oh yeah, I know him! I've supplied games and artwork for many of his projects...
But his are just simulators- Meaning he sits there and plays the game over and over and analyzes what it does, then reproduces that in his programming. It is a fairly accurate way of doing it, but it's not true emulation or preservation of the game.

The MESS project (well, I guess it's just MAME now) is actually emulating the CPUs and running the code in the game. So, if there's a weird bug that only happens when you kill bad guy #10 with a score of 1250 that does _something_ it's not supposed to, it will do that in MAME... It won't in a simulator unless the programmer happened to notice that bug. (In that sense, it might make the simulation better, but still not truly accurate to what was originally released...)

There's a place for both of course, and I think the OP was talking about simulation at first, but then we migrated to emulation...

 

Hello! I was very happy to find this thread. Can you please share if there is any progress regarding this? I'm mostly interested into MK Tiger HandHeld LCD/Barcodzz/VRT games.

I also read it is possible to capture footage in HD from it via camera device, how is that looking?

Thanks.

 

I know the difference between emulation and simulation but in this case, if it means taking the game apart and possibly damaging it or its value, simulations would be the way to do it. If it's done well, you wouldn't know the difference and if it's enjoyable, that's all that really matters. I was going to start one for a shitty Simpsons LCD game, but couldn't get over the hurdle of capturing the sprites no matter which way I tried.

 

A emulator would be pretty cool. With savestates and cheats some of those games could actually be beatable.

 

well to answer some questions I have over 400Gb of information as of right now.

But this is only because I scanned everything at 1200dpi

I have not abandoned this project and have talked to many members of the community. currently im scanning the rest of the booklets. The games and cards are scanned. I have chosen the option of emulation over the orginal simulation

I have contacted MADrigal and did get a reply from him. Infact the reason I have such a high scanning quality is because of him he pointed me in the direction of the 3D object scanner. I have and use the same exact scanner as him. To be honest is works like a charm. As far as him helping with simulating he decined he use to work on LCD games in the past and has even designed and written the code for some of the original tigers I did get a good glimps into his past and it was amazing to hear to say the least. I asked how much he would charge pre game to simulate and he said over $1000 each which would make my total bill atleast $300,000 total which is needless to say out of my price range.

But there is hope I was able to get in contact with Sean Riddle and he is excited to help and has explained the process to me witch will completely destroy my collection. Luckily I am more concerned about preserving these little gems instead of being a greedy collector. We have to extract the CPU's of each game and ive done this with my copy of The Little Mermaid and have seen the beautiful CPU that lays within. The CPU must then be put under a micro scope of comething like x9000 zoom and the code must be decipher luckly there is an automated program that can guess the 1's and 0's in the end we just have to double check the code and the game will be ready for emulation.

I am in contact with one of the biggest Tiger collectors I want to say in the world because I ahvent found anyone who has shared the same interest as me in purchasing all these gems. I myself have probally spent $7,000 collecting the games I have. My friend in this has spend upwards of $60,000. There is a good chunk of money in this and it is painfully hard to find the rarer titles.

if anyone wants to help or see any scans id be happy to upload them it will be awhile till all the games I have are playable since the process is so tedious more to come soon. I hope you are well Psycho.

 

if anyone wants to share any contribution here are the games we are missing

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Generic Tiger style:
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Conan
Bonkers
Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home
Saved by the Bell
StarTrek: Deep Space Nine
Lion King [yellow version]
Toe Jam and Earl
New Kids on the Block
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VRT-X:
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NBA Jam VRT-X
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99x:
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Street Fighter 99x
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Talking:
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Street Fighter [Blue version]
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watches:
DarkwingDuck Watch
Lion King Watch
Battletoads Watch
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Barcodzz:
Gargoyles Barcodzz
TMNT Barcodzz
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

we pretty much have EVERYTHING else PM or post here to help

 

Wow, great update! Looking forward to seeing the fruits of your labor. Glad to hear things are moving forward well.

 

Sean Riddle is an AWESOME guy, it's a privilege he's willing to help

 

Awesome, handheldme! Can you please post some hi-res scans/screenshots from the Mortal Kombat games?

 

good to see some progress!in 2016 its still criminal to not have one of htse tiger handhled emulated.yes madrigal had done some ,but not on the tiger handhelds we're talking about.

i really hope they can fidn their way on MESS,since managing artwork and whatnot its easier then.beside, the only one playable on pica-pic its just a scanned\photographed picture of the handheld with the lcd program stamped on it, so i think it would be totally doable this way as well

 

I'm a primarily a java programmer, and am very interested in lcd handheld simulation. What exactly is being worked on at this point? You have a list, but is that list simulations that are currently done, or just ones you have resources for. I myself own a tiger megaman 2 handheld, but I think its a bit complicated to start as my first go around. I was kind of interested in looking into the TMNT handheld from Konami
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3410/3245300498_bc6faac94d.jpg

Unfortunately I've never actually played it. It seemed like it would be fairly simple to do on the back-end, though. Anyone working on that one?

There was a Spyro game made a while back as a fast food release. It was a Spyro 3d maze game that I was also looking into making, as it seemed fairly simple as well.

 

I don't usually answer so quickly but Ringman the games will all be emulated I assure you and friend I think I have a extra TMNT Konami I also have every Burger King, MacDonalds, and Wendys LCD games including the Spyro the dragon set I have all 4 LCD I don't just collect tigers I collect all LCD everything will be emulated thru MESS mame I assure you no game left out I have a lot of rare games my collection is 400+

I could use a good Java friend for simulation I understand you are interested and LCD and most of us are the games fascinate us so simple but endless hours of fun what I require simulation for is not LCD but the community should praise you the same for the release I enjoy the fact that so many 1 posters have made accounts and came to my topic it makes me happy

The simulation I require are for my favorite games of all time

Milton Bradely Waterfuls



Take into account that there are only 6 Milton Bradely Waterfuls games however Tomy has much more but luckily the simulation could be the same for each game since they are all water based and the images and hit blocks could be moved? I don't know much about coding or actually getting the game done but I do know data and can provide accurate pictures and scans for the actual simulation all my Waterfuls games are brand new in the box so I have nice scans for everything I know its not exactly what you are looking for but I would be happy to send you some LCD's to play for the trouble I could also pay you for you work

something a bit different

 

Oh ok. I read through the thread a bit more thoroughly and I see that what Sean is doing. That's pretty cool. However, I do find this Waterfuls idea interesting. It would be pretty easy to make one simulation and then tweak it for just about every game they've created. It would be a simple matter of making a 3d water jet physics simulation. Not exactly EASY, but compact enough that I just may be interested in such a coding exercise. Once you've got the collision detection and gravity physics worked out, its a matter of getting the jet flow right, based on the pressure applied to the button. Not sure the best way to simulate pressure applied to the button using normal computer input, but you you could use things like analog sticks or a few other devices that register infinite incrimental movement on the user. I'll look into the physics involved and get back to you.

Liquid fun library seems like a good place to start.
https://github.com/google/liquidfun/releases
You could even mess with variables like the water level, the position, and orientation of the tank, the size, shape, and number of objects in the tank, etc.

Of course this is 2d, but I don't see how it would be too difficult to extend it to 3d, however, I think 2d would be a good first step.

 

Firas4D worked on something in 2012 that is exactly like what we would need

I looked into the Liquid fun and it seems to do exactly the same thing but 2D I would like to see the possibilities since the water would be clear and it would have objects floating in it however without 3D objects being available for liquid fun it would take away from the realness of the simulation



looking at this video which came out also in 2012 I wonder if Firas4D might have used the source code and applied it to a 3D environment

if were able to apply 3D objects to Liquid fun source code that would be amazing

regarding the jet pressure I can film each game fully loaded with water and see how high the objects can go like a long hold would render a higher flow of pressure while a short push would make a lower flow like a 3 second click puts max pressure while a 1 second click would apply a much lower pressure

just sharing another one


with the right placement of images it would appear 3D but the 3D object floating around is my only concern since the fish in Pocahontas and the money bags in Batman are all the fun when seeing them flop around the best part about these games are some are 2-player

if we ever do make it to the 3D field I can break open the top of these games and scan the floating objects to create accurate 3D remakes

totally looking forward to what you come up with

 

going back on lcd topic, do you think it would be possible to have those digimon lcd on mess?they were kind of tamagotchi like,i think it would be pretty easy to convert for mess,as there isn't really any artwork,its just a blank bakground with the monsters on them