Happy New Year!

So much for my hopes to have the game finished by the end of 2010. I haven’t been completely idle over the holidays though.

Spent some time getting the last boss, Wiwi Jumbo,  sorted out. It took a while to figure out why my version was much harder than the arcade original. Had to pause and single step through using MAME to see what was going on. Turns out that quite a few of the objects that are thrown at you by this boss go straight through – and your shots can’t hit a lot of them either! Was slightly pissed off at this turn of events as it meant writing some more code to handle the situation, and this is the only part of the game where it happens.  Have no idea why it was done like this by the original authors.

The last stage is all finished now, apart from some end game actions that need to be performed. However, I found out I now need to redo Stage 9, as for some reason I thought it was exactly the same as Stage 4, which isn’t the case.

Sal has made some improvements to a few of the songs, using 16-bit bass and key changes to avoid some tuning limitations on the Atari.

So things are finally coming together, but I haven’t got round to some of the more complicated items left on the to-do list. I think the saving of high scores to the flash cart will be crossed off the list for now, unless people think it is a really important feature.