Metal Slug 2 Overclocked Neo Geo MVS Retro Arcade Nazca Shooter

[karadanianoI]

mame emulates the neo geo slowdowns, but you can overclock the neo-geo emulated cpu and the games plays perfectly

[getpagesize]

How did you perform this hack? Replace the 12 MHz crystal with a 16 MHz? Anything else?

[SupremeJudge]

I kept the stock and put a switch instead to flip between both speeds.

[dbozan99]

So does this mean that if you were to get a pirate copy of MS2 it would most likely have faster chips and probably run smoother?

[SupremeJudge]

I looked further into the issue and it turns out that SNK programed MS2 incorrectly. Apparently the graphics and game logic are at different refresh rates. Game logic is at 30 fps while graphics are at 60 fps meaning game logic was updating twice every cycle while the graphics were trying to catch up.

[dbozan99]

Wow, that's a pretty big fail on their part, especially because MS is such a popular game...

O well....at least it's still playable...I just got MS for the Saturn and it's got quite a slowdown too but I'm perfectly fine with that. (even though the Saturn is such a 2d freak... If it were ported better, the Saturn would be easily be able to run it, and have CPU power to spare...)

[mooney12345678910]

dude your the best

[alecjahn]

Fantastic! Physically, how did you go about overclocking the Neo? Does it just have a simple crystal (or otherwise) clock generator?

[SupremeJudge]

You just need to lift pin 15 on the 68k which is the clock input pin. Then you can send the new speed via an external crystal. On the 2 slot I did this video with I have 3 speeds - 12mhz, 14.3mhz and 16mhz. Very simple mod. I have a guide on my site.

[alecjahn]

Excellent. I assume the standard adverse effects of upping the clock on old 'consoles' shows up - do some things run too fast?

[SupremeJudge]

Yes. On the Neo usually you will see the spinning Neo Geo intro is messed up looking. On some older games like Fatal Fury 2 there are some graphical glitches.

[alecjahn]

Definitely sounds like a quick switch I'll need to add. *starts ordering parts*

[lukemorse1]

This was awesome bro! I love stuff like this and you with your Neo skills, total A+

Great stuff man. Huge difference between 12 and 16 no doubt about it.

[CRAKIZGOOD]

OMG lol

wait i thought it was supposed to be laggy

i played this game on the wii and its still laggy i swear

[SupremeJudge]

Well the VC is emulation so it depends on the Wii hardware. This was done on actual hardware. I'm thinking about making a Metal Slug 2 cart using faster chips just to see the difference.

[quoth09]

Interesting, wasn't aware that they used faster chips on MSX to remedy the slow down issues compared to part 2. Always wondered why X ran so fast compared to part 2; thought that they possibly did some optimizing in the code, or that there is less going on and it just looks about the same visually. Definitely would like to know how using the faster chips works out.

[SupremeJudge]

Ya, I actually tried MSX at 16mhz and I did not notice any difference from 12mhz. So if there was it was minimal.

I did find out that Captain Tomaday has the same slowdown problems as MS2 even at 16mhz so I think they use the same chips.

[SupremeJudge]

One thing they could have done as well was change the game logic to 30fps instead of 60fps. But I haven't confirmed that yet. So if that was true then that would be the problem, the sprites are going at 60fps but the game logic is updating at 30 fps.