[Christuserloeser]

I initially posted this at romhacking.net, but I thought that some of you guys might be capable and interested too.


The SegaCD version of Golden Axe as included to the Sega Arcade Collection is the best home conversion of Golden Axe to date. It features the original Mega Drive / Genesis port with a great remastered CDDA version of the original Arcade soundtrack. It has only one major flaw: For some odd reason they decided to deactivate the 2 player mode:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Axe#Ot...ts_and_versions

"Wikipedia" said:

The Sega CD version featured new background music and voice-overs. Almost all of the game's Redbook background music can be listened to on a regular CD player. The graphics were identical, but the version had a higher frame rate for the characters' animations. Perhaps strangely, this version of the game is only one player even though Streets of Rage, which can also be found on the same CD, retains its two player co-op mode.

That is a fact. Although the game seems to be identical to the cartridge version, it can't be played with 2 Players.

On the cart, the 2nd player presses START on Controller #2 to active the 2 player mode. On SCD it just doesn't work. If you press START on Controller #2, nothing happens. If you press START on Controller #1, it starts with the regular 1 player mode.


SEGA CD conversion in KEGA Fusion:


original Cartridge version:



I tried it with all versions of the SEGA Arcade Collection that I could get my hands on, both via emulation and on real hardware (my X'Eye): My original EU PAL copy (via Tototek MegaCart), two different US copies, and I even ordered the Japanese version (which on an interesting side note is based on the US version it seems, as it includes "Streets of Rage" which is listed as "Bare Knuckle US" in the manual).

Here are the versions currently indexed in TOSEC:
Sega Classics Arcade Collection (1992)(Sega)(NTSC)(US)[!][compilation - 4 games][SEGA-4126RE2 R1C]
Sega Classics Arcade Collection (1992)(Sega)(NTSC)(US)[!][compilation - 4 games][SEGA4126RE R1D]
Sega Classics Arcade Collection (1992)(Sega)(NTSC)(US)[!][compilation - 5 games][CDAC-056800 2]
Sega Classics Arcade Collection - Limited Edition (1992)(Sega)(PAL)[!][compilation][6105411P-00036A-R1M]
Sega Classics Arcade Collection - Limited Edition (1993)(Sega)(PAL)[!][compilation][610-5411P-00036A 2]

- All suffering from the same problem.


Now, my request is if someone with knowledge of 68k assembler (and a little love for the MD/G port of Golden Axe) could look into it and compare the cart with the CD conversion to see if it's an intentional modification (or -unlikely- a bug), and if the 2 player routines are still there somewhere in the code, so that they could be re-enabled, at least in theory.

[ICEknight]

It might have to do with the Sega-CD having to load all of the players' graphics into the VRAM, since it can't directly stream them from the cartridge... But you can always look for a "2 PLAYERS" text inside the files, in case there's any leftovers of this mode.

[Christuserloeser]

Thanks, I tried that but without success.


---- I also wonder if it's possible to disable the SMPS music in Streets of Rage CD and add CDDA playback