Roc 'N Rope - product recall | MSX Resource Center

The recently released Icon Games production Roc 'N Rope - a conversion from the original ColecoVision release - is suffering from one or more bugs, which in some cases can hang the sound or even the entire game. Due to these bug reports, its distributors Bitwise and Matra have decided to stop shipping the game, until these issuess have been resolved. Customers who have already obtained the game, can either chose to return the game and get their money back or to wait for a fixed version in order to later exchange it at no additional cost.

In order to resolve the cause of the problems as quickly as possible, those who experience trouble with the game are encouraged to contact either Bitwise or Matra to supply information on the type of MSX used, the point in the game where the bug occurs and any additional information that could be useful for the developer.

Relevant link: Bitwise
Relevant link: Matra

Comments (24)

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

28-01-2011, 16:15

I don´t know about the sound hanging, but on Toshiba HX-10 game gives title screen and after that, when pressing Spacebar, it flashes red and blue (and it looks like there are lots of colour hues which MSX doesn´t have) in very fast rate for a second and then it gives black screen and that´s it.

I have tested this game on two different televisions.

On Canon V-20 it also gives exactly same red and blue flashing (and lots of red&blue colour hues) for a second just like Toshiba does, but after that there is no black screen, but red-green-yellow flashing in a very fast rate and that´s it.

After several tries I found out, that when that blue-red (on Toshiba) or Canon´s red-green-yellow (after blue-red) screen appears, if I press any cursor key, game starts.

But: Pressing Spacebar has no effect.

After pressing around the keyboard I found out that pressing Z shoots rope and pressing X uses flashlight, not mentioned in the manual. I guess this is some feature from not-finished-yet game port????

When game over hits, computer gives again same very fast red-blue flashing, but there is some text which zooms around the screen on such fast rate there seems to be at least ten copies of the same totally unreadable text. (because of the fast movement and totally corrupted screen)

When I press HOME, game starts again.

On title screen Z and X have same meaning as SPACE.

On Toshiba HX-10 and Canon V-20, game title´s (ROC´n ROPE text) dark yellow in the middle row of the title feels very bad in my eyes.

After those tests, I tried it on Philips 8235 MSX2, same title screen game title now looked good, it doesn´t give any harm to my eyes. There was no errors in the game, everything was ok.

I must say:

Great compatibility - MSX-1 game which works properly only on MSX2s......

It looks like that this game was ported and tested on MSX2 only.

By lionelritchie

Champion (439)

28-01-2011, 23:02

By muffie

Paladin (933)

28-01-2011, 23:12

USE MY OPEN SOURCED FIND RAM ROUTINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gee!

By Vampier

Prophet (2415)

29-01-2011, 03:13

How does one get away with taking a game... Port it ... And sell it... Without having any rights to the game?

By sd_snatcher

Prophet (3675)

29-01-2011, 05:25

@Vampier

But wouldn't that also apply to Bomb Jack, Saizamoon, Night Driver, Operation Wolf and Pengo?

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

29-01-2011, 10:18

....................Traffic Jam (based on board game), The Goonies 'R' Good Enough, Jungle Hunt, Minesx (windows game), Montezuma´s Revenge, Boxboy (Sokoban game, advertising uses Handy Manny cartoon character), Phantomas Saga Infinity.....

Let´s join our forces, inform all copyright owners about all violations and help msx game developing scene to die.

Then everybody´s happy?

By Lord_Zett

Paladin (807)

29-01-2011, 11:40

YES let them al be bound to a pile and tomatoes throw.. damn copyright? yes new stuff thats made for msx got the "copyright" thning but old ideas or ports, no nice that there are new games!

Ontopic.. Sad that theres a error in Roc 'N Rope.

Hope that this will not effect the upcomming ideas/ products

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

29-01-2011, 12:01

yeah, I wish Coleco ports keep coming (without these previous errors though)

And same for all ports and conversions. Keep them coming!!

By Vampier

Prophet (2415)

29-01-2011, 16:01

Those games are made from scratch.... I'm just wondering since Roc'n'rope is a port (with original code partially intact)

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

29-01-2011, 17:47

Vampier, Jungle Hunt and Montezuma´s Revenge have original code too....

.........just like MSX2 Pengo (somehow) have too, I don´t know if Bomb Jack has some original code too?

By Guillian

Prophet (3529)

30-01-2011, 10:15

As far as I know, Pengo and Bomb Jack are made from scratch.

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

30-01-2011, 11:18

Oh, I thought that Pengo was made using some original arcade code somehow? Or the music code at least? Demon/John may confirm/deny the music part.

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5684)

30-01-2011, 13:59

Pengo sound was 100% rearranged starting from 0 bytes, using Vortex Tracker II for the music and ayfxedit for the sound effects.

By kabish

Master (223)

30-01-2011, 16:59

Remember, you *must* test your productions on the real hardware.

By sd_snatcher

Prophet (3675)

30-01-2011, 17:43

Don't get me wrong, but: since when the expression Copyright violation is specific to coding? :)

A lot of fan/indie games get shut down not because of the code, but because of the trademarks they contain.

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

30-01-2011, 18:26

Okay, thank you John. I must have been misunderstood something along the way.

By muffie

Paladin (933)

31-01-2011, 17:55

I can convert Roc'N'Rope (IF) Matra/Bitwise produce carts from my ROMs.
All revenue that would go to the author would be donated to MSXDEV!

By Sander

Founder (1872)

01-02-2011, 13:45

@Muffie: how about you convert some msx1 games to your Franky proto? Check http://little-scale.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-make-32kb-sega-master-system.html
With three times as much sega units sold as msx systems, porting the other way around could probably make you king on most retro events..

By Sander

Founder (1872)

01-02-2011, 13:52

This might be more helpful with porting games to sega: SMS Pro 32M Cart

By muffie

Paladin (933)

01-02-2011, 20:37

@Sander: Sometime ago I received tons of e-mails from someone who seems to be converting SMS games. I thought all the games were already converted.
Anyway, converting games to Franky I would be competing/"doing the same work" with/of some very skilled coders. Trolling Slotman by converting the same roms with additional features IS WAY FUNNIER.

By muffie

Paladin (933)

01-02-2011, 20:40

Ohh, you're saying converting MSX1 games to SMS?
That's interesting.... But I thought most SMS vdps dropped the legacy modes, isnt it?
MSX Basic and BIOS are already converted to Franky 2nd output?

By Sander

Founder (1872)

02-02-2011, 14:16

But I thought most SMS vdps dropped the legacy modes, isnt it?
Nope. Mark III/ SMS1/SMS2 videochips (315-5124 and 315-5246) have MSX1 compatible screen modes.

About adding MSX-Bios code to converted roms: On smspower (http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12769) you can read about just discovered Taiwanese cartridges for the sega SG-1000 (MSX1 videochip but same memory layout and vdp address as the sms and sms is backwards compatible) with converted msx games: Konami's ping pong and Konami's Yie ar Kung Fu. Click on the photo's to see more.

But: Studying those two games and comparing them with the original code: you have your code to run other msx software on sms.

By muffie

Paladin (933)

03-02-2011, 00:51

It would be a lot easier if franky support was added to open or bluemsx.
If you allow me, i would offer my franky prototype to some coder who does that...

By hap

Paragon (2043)

03-02-2011, 11:34

Join the openmsx chat, mayhaps you can make a deal with wouter_ or mth. =)

Roc 'N Rope - product recall

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