As several Toaplan boards have an internal company serial# I figured it would be nice to have a list for all of them. Here's what I got so far. Hellfire doesn't have a number but it should be TP-014 considering the timeline. Any guess on Daisenpuu? A different arcade board (Taito X System) has been used for this one. Also does anyone know if those numbers appear anywhere else than on the PCBs?
Daisenpu was released around the same time window as Truxton/Tatsujin and Zero Wing, so it would also fit into the TP-014 slot just as nicely, from what little info I've seen online. This thread has a good scan of a Twin Hawk board, though I don't see any TP-### markings on it, upon a cursory glance:
With some luck, you may be able to find some more in MAME source code comments. They mention TP-009 for instance (wardner.cpp). Nothing on Daisenpu (taito_x.cpp) from what I have seen.
I think Daisenpu will be different since the board/game was made under the request from Taito. Unlike the other games where Toaplan made the boards and Taito handled the sales.
Thanks guys, some interesting input. I'll check with MAME this weekend and see if I can find anything.
I'll add Hellfire as TP-014 for now. At least some sites do mention it to have this cat. number.
Muchi Muchi Spork wrote:That does appear to be the case. TP-031 is Enma Daio.
Any source on that?
EDIT: OK, found it. Seems to come from MAME too.
dynamic trial 7 and distopia may account for 28 and 29 respectively. distopia title screen says 94 so would put development around the time of batsugun, and the flyer for dynamic says 93.
snow bros 1 and 2?
my money would be on snow bros 1 and twin hawk being the 2 lower and dynamic and distopia the later 2
also wasn't twin cobra 2 pretty far in development when toaplan closed? with this and snow bros 2 potentially not being on the list it may be a post/late dev cataloguing system when games go to proto/location testing rather than when they commenced development i.e. they only get an internal product number when they are at near finished product quality.
Sorry to bump this thread so many years later but it’s come to my attention that some Snow Bros 2 boards have TP-033 on the ADPCM and/or graphics ROMs, which seems like a pretty good indicator of that game’s development code.