And now for something completely different: our midyear MAME release. The most notable new working machines are beloved Game & Watch titles Donkey Kong Jr. (new wide screen) and Mario Bros., and the ultra-rare Kaneko prototype Jump Kun (thanks ShouTime). There are also some newly supported clones of existing systems, like additional versions of DECO Cassette games (including the more Puck-Man-like Japanese version of Lock’n’Chase), Spanish bootlegs of Rally X and Scramble, a Korean release of Macross II with Japanese text removed (to meet “cultural import” restrictions), and a simplified version of Operation Thunderbolt for smaller cabinets in shopping centres aimed at younger children.

Another very exciting development in this release is support for running original protection programs for a number of games using MC68705P5 microcontrollers. A technique to exploit glitches and read the programs out of a protected MC68705P5 with reasonable success rate was discovered, and brizzo built a device implementing it. Games now using real protection programs include Get Star, Chack’n Pop, Rumba Lumber, Onna Sanshirou (Typhoon Gal), Field Day, Prebillian and others. Some of these games were known to be using poor simulation, so improvements to gameplay can be expected.

Other improvements include support for a MIDI output card on the Sharp X68000 (allows game soundtracks to be played through an external synthesiser), English BIOS support for the Sega VMU, fixes for several xBR shaders with bgfx, working Dragon 64 Plus and Goupil G1/G2 support, Tandy CoCo Speech/Sound Cartridge support, and a big update to the Interpro driver.

Of course there’s more, which you can read about in the whatsnew.txt file, or experience when you get the source/Windows binaries from the download page. Thanks for being part of the MAME community.