Let's play Ibara Special ver.

[Dave_K.]

Random question, is stuff like this typically found in arcade games or is it mostly in Yagawa shmups?

Just Yagawa stuff...since Batrider apparently.

Some more strange/cool things:
- all have ability to take over control of either ship and play during the demo cycle (weird!)
- Ibara and Pink Sweets have different colored asterisks just before the @ load graph, indicating sprite/background buffering
- Holding B button at title screen in Pink Sweets pops up a menu in upper left to turn on/off collision boxes for a variety of things like your ship hitbox, your ship item collection, items, enemy, bullets, backgrounds (trees), etc. This is pretty cool!

[rtw]

Excellent effort all of you and especially Dave_K

Would it be possible to make a short summary of the buttons and options available ? I.e. what changes the rank, what is the pause button, how do you select the level and how to decipher the on screen display etc ?

Yagawa obviously brought his codebase over from Raizing when he started working at CAVE. The amount of
debug and test code shows that we are dealing with a very dedicated programmer.

[Udderdude]

Excellent effort all of you and especially Dave_K

Would it be possible to make a short summary of the buttons and options available ? I.e. what changes the rank, what is the pause button, how do you select the level and how to decipher the on screen display etc ?

Yagawa obviously brought his codebase over from Raizing when he started working at CAVE. The amount of
debug and test code shows that we are dealing with a very dedicated programmer.

Most games have a similar level of debug/support tools available during development. It's the only way to test the game out and not go bonkers in the process. The biggest difference is that most of the time, they are removed before the game is released. I guess Yagawa didn't feel the need to? Clearly it's intentional, as it's been left in more than one of his games ..

[spadgy]

Wow! I only just noticed this thread. This is a all really amazing!

And I sold my Ibara PCB.

[brentsg]

No dice on Ibara Kuro. My board (IB-045) goes straight to the normal Test Mode screen when following these steps.

Edit: Also, could Cave make those dip switches any smaller?

[rtw]

No dice on Ibara Kuro. My board (IB-045) goes straight to the normal Test Mode screen when following these steps.

Edit: Also, could Cave make those dip switches any smaller?

Did you try holding A+B+C ?

[dorakyura]

Tiny update: Holding A+B while powering up does the trick too (in other words: no need to go through the test menu). Releasing A+B once the loading screen displays is just fine. Only tested this with MMP though.

[brentsg]

No dice on Ibara Kuro. My board (IB-045) goes straight to the normal Test Mode screen when following these steps.

Edit: Also, could Cave make those dip switches any smaller?

Did you try holding A+B+C ?

I did not, but I can try this later.

[professor ganson]

Strange coincidence that this would come up right now. Playing my Ibara PCB has been my main gaming obsession over the past week. Since I'm still trying to figure out how to trigger the different formations (A-D?), I probably can wait to test out this new mode. The main game still somehow seems new to me, even though I've playing it here and there since the PS2 version arrived. I guess this is the first time I've really focused on the game.

[Platypus Stan]

Wow, nice work, and very interesting details (particularly by Dave K). I wish I still had these PCBs to fool around with this stuff. Rank meter in Pink Sweets would be particularly helpful in planning an optimal infinite lives run, and a stage select in MMP is a dream come true.

And yes, someone needs to find a displayable destructible bullets/enemy counter in Pink Sweets. That would break the game wide open.

Feel free to hit me up if you're ever in my neck of the woods and want to take a look at some of this stuff. I have all the Yagawa SH3 boards at the moment.

[Dave_K.]

I just found the in-game debug settings:

- In Ibara, pause game (with start button), then hold C button and press up or down to scroll through 11 pages of registers and debug info (including some more @ bar graphs)
- Do the same with Pink Sweets and scroll through 17 pages worth (WTF!) of debug information. I'm sure destructable item count is here somewhere.
- While viewing debug info, you can press start to resume playing while keeping the debug screen overlayed
- No in-game debug screens for MMP
- Rank counter continues to count down, even while game is paused

I also noticed while in pause mode (or input test mode on the operator menu) pressing to many buttons rapidly or at same time (A+B+C+Left) can sometimes crash the PCB causing it to reboot.

Would it be possible to make a short summary of the buttons and options available ? I.e. what changes the rank, what is the pause button, how do you select the level and how to decipher the on screen display etc ?

It may take awhile to confirm and digest all this new info.

[update] You can hold C with up/down to bring up the debug screens at any time, not just in pause mode [/update]

[brentsg]

Hey guys, still nothing on Ibara Black Label.

I double-checked the dip switch and tried A+B, A+B+C, and every other combination of buttons along with Test. I even tried both P1 and P2 side.

It looks like it's not here for Kuro.

[EOJ]

Kuro had a different programmer. Clearly, he was no match for Yagawa's debuggerificness.

[GaijinPunch]

Gives me a reason to bring my MMP out of retirement!

[rtw]

Kuro had a different programmer. Clearly, he was no match for Yagawa's debuggerificness.

I am pretty sure that I found a special menu in Kuro back in the day. But the activation was not the same as Pink Sweets. And the activation could be done without changing SW2. Try:

. START+A then TEST
. START+A+B then TEST
. START+A+B+C then TEST
. A+B+C then TEST
. A+B then TEST
. A then TEST

[spadgy]

Great work Dave_K!

Are hidden de-bug menus at all common outside of Cave PCBs? I'm guessing not as arcade operators just need the service menus.

[cools]

Tiny update: Holding A+B while powering up does the trick too (in other words: no need to go through the test menu). Releasing A+B once the loading screen displays is just fine. Only tested this with MMP though.

Excellent! Thanks. Anyone tried with Ibara?

[Dave_K.]

Tiny update: Holding A+B while powering up does the trick too (in other words: no need to go through the test menu). Releasing A+B once the loading screen displays is just fine. Only tested this with MMP though.

Excellent! Thanks. Anyone tried with Ibara?

Nice dorakyura! Yes confirmed, A+B at power-on (dip #2 still needs to be flipped) goes straight into special ver on all three boards.

Slight correction on the debug screens, you can bring them up at anytime, no need to be in pause mode first. You can even watch the debug info for the demo play.

Are hidden de-bug menus at all common outside of Cave PCBs? I'm guessing not as arcade operators just need the service menus.

I think udderdude answered this question already.

Most games have a similar level of debug/support tools available during development. It's the only way to test the game out and not go bonkers in the process. The biggest difference is that most of the time, they are removed before the game is released. I guess Yagawa didn't feel the need to? Clearly it's intentional, as it's been left in more than one of his games ..

My thinking is Yagawa left these special modes in for the hardcore fans (and operators) who own the PCB, to take apart his complicated scoring/ranking systems and learn all the abundant secrets since these aren't typically published (at least not everything), and is a big part of the allure of Yagawa games.

[ShmupSamurai]

Interesting

[brentsg]

Interesting

Grr somehow I managed to clear all my high scores for IBL, while trying to get this to work.

[Plasmo]

Grr somehow I managed to clear all my high scores for IBL, while trying to get this to work.

Everytime you change something in the testmenu all your highscores get deleted. This goes for all Yagawa games, so watch out.

[msm]

Everytime you change something in the testmenu all your highscores get deleted. This goes for all Yagawa games, so watch out.

Thanks, that's good to know, recently got an ibara board and its full of letter scores and i struggle to get ~2m so maybe i'll delete them.

[cools]

Grr somehow I managed to clear all my high scores for IBL, while trying to get this to work.

Everytime you change something in the testmenu all your highscores get deleted. This goes for all Yagawa games, so watch out.

It does? I changed the number of continues recently and didn't lose my scores.

[Dave_K.]

I also noticed while in pause mode (or input test mode on the operator menu) pressing to many buttons rapidly or at same time (A+B+C+Left) can sometimes crash the PCB causing it to reboot.

Clarifying this previous comment. It seems this is a quick reset command for Special Version. Just hold A+B+C for 2 seconds and the game will reboot. You can do this at anytime, during the test menu, before starting a game (in the demo cycle), or in pause mode of an active game, but it will not work (thankfully) while you are acutally playing the game. You can also hold A+B immediately after this to boot right back into Special Mode.

[yetterben]

I noticed if i start the game with a+b held the bomb is different. Its a red cyclone. Maybe this was known before but i just figured it out.

[dorakyura]

I noticed if i start the game with a+b held the bomb is different. Its a red cyclone. Maybe this was known before but i just figured it out.

Holding A, B or A+B when starting the game will decide your ship type. See http://world-of-arcades.net/Cave/Ibara/System.htm for more details.

Grr somehow I managed to clear all my high scores for IBL, while trying to get this to work.

Everytime you change something in the testmenu all your highscores get deleted. This goes for all Yagawa games, so watch out.

It does? I changed the number of continues recently and didn't lose my scores.

Same here (on MMP). I’d be rather puzzled if this was true since it would make the "Initialize ranking" option in test mode redundant.

[Plasmo]

Maybe it was just Pink Sweets. I remember that I got quite frustrated when I changed something in the menu and all my scores were deleted.
Must've mixed something up then?! Sorry...

[dorakyura]

Maybe it was just Pink Sweets. I remember that I got quite frustrated when I changed something in the menu and all my scores were deleted.
Must've mixed something up then?! Sorry...

Hm, maybe the board is faulty somehow? My Ibara board will not remember scores no matter what and I strongly suspect that it is broken (luckily this doesn't influence gameplay in any way

[TLB]

Incredible. I'm tempted to throw all my current ventures out the window just to go back to Ibara with these new weapons for practice...Alas, I mustn't. Infinite thanks to luca and rtw for this information. I cannot thank you two enough :P I was going to buy the port and a JPS2 to ease practicing sometime in the future, but now I don't think I'll need to :)

[Jockel]

Gives me a reason to bring my MMP out of retirement!

MMP? Retirement? Does not compute.