Today's release for the Analogue Pocket and MiSTerFPGA platforms is the next entry on the DECO-16 platform. Crude Buster, known in North America and Europe as Two Crude, is a side-scrolling beat 'em up built on Data East's 16-bit custom hardware.
Kuhga / Vapor Trail (1989)Crude Buster / Two Crude (1990)Dark Seal / Gate of Doom (1990)The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy (1990)Super Burger Time (1990)Death Brade / Mutant Fighter (1991)Tatakae Genshijin: Joe & Mac / Caveman Ninja (1991)Robocop 2 (1991)Thunder Zone / Desert Assault (1991)Wolf Fang: Kuhga 2001 / Rohga (1991)Tumble Pop (1991)Dark Seal II / Wizard Fire (1992)Funky Jet (1992)Gun Ball / Nitro Ball (1992)Diet Go Go (1992)The Great Ragtime Show / Boogie Wings (1992)
Crude Buster is the first Data East board to use the DECO 52 sprite engine, the sprite chip that the rest of the DECO-16 library is built on. It pairs that sprite engine with two DECO 55 tilemap generators and leans on the work already done for Vapor Trail, sharing the same 68000 main CPU, HuC6280 sound CPU, and audio section.
This post covers a technical overview of Crude Buster on DECO-16, the work the board required, and the game itself.
Licensing:
Crude Buster is distributed through the Coin-Op Collection licensing portal, which serves both MiSTerFPGA and Pocket from the same dashboard.
Pocket patrons need to register their device and generate a key before launching the core. Step-by-step instructions and the FAQ are available on the Help page. More information can be found by clicking here and here.
Overview:
Crude Buster runs on Data East's DECO-16 hardware (PCB DE-0333-3), driven by a Motorola MC68000 (DECO Custom 59) at 12 MHz with no second processor on the main bus. The sound system is the platform's standard DECO-16 audio setup, a HuC6280 (DECO Custom 45) at 6 MHz driving a YM2203 (OPN) at 4.0275 MHz for FM and PSG, a YM2151 (OPM) at 3.58 MHz for additional FM synthesis, and two OKI M6295 ADPCM samplers, one at 1.007 MHz and the other at 2.014 MHz. Audio output is mono.
The video system outputs 256x240 at 58.239 Hz. Graphics are rendered by three Data East custom ICs: a pair of DECO 55 tilemap generators drive four 16x16 playfields between them, and a DECO 52 handles sprites at 16x16 with multi-width and multi-height support. Layer priority is set through software rather than a priority PROM. The palette holds 2048 entries in 24-bit RGB, eight bits per channel, split across two RAM banks, with the analog white level clamped at the output to match the original board.
Development Challenges:
Crude Buster is where the DECO 52 sprite engine was first brought up. The DECO 52 draws 16x16 sprites with multiple heights, double width, per-sprite flip, and a flash attribute, reading its display list from a DMA buffer once per frame. The same engine goes on to drive sprites across the rest of the DECO-16 library, so getting it correct here set the pattern the later boards reuse. It runs alongside two DECO 55 tilemap generators, with all four of their playfields configured for 16x16 tiles, and the sprites composited against those layers through a per-sprite priority bit that places each one either in front of or behind the middle tile layers.
The board has no dedicated protection chip. Instead it uses a small registered PAL, a PAL16R8 labeled TC-4, sitting on the I/O bus. It is stateful: the game writes an unlock value, then reads back a result that depends on what was written, and the program checks that result before it will run. The same PAL also carries the layer priority. There is no separate priority register anywhere on the board, so the order the four playfields draw in comes out of the values written to and read back from the protection device. Working out the unlock sequence and the priority behavior from the hardware was what it took to get the board booting and the layers stacking in the right order.
The palette is the board's other oddity. The digital palette is the usual eight bits per channel, but the analog white level on the original hardware is set well below full scale, clamped at the final resistors before the video output rather than at the full 255. The game is authored against that clamped range, so reproducing the board's exact colors means applying the same clamp at the core's output. Without it the image would read brighter than the original. The clamp is matched to the hardware so the core's colors land where they should.
Crude Buster also turned up a sound quirk worth noting. During the stage one sub-boss fight, when the enemy's flamethrower attack plays its YM2203 FM sound, one of the OKI sample channels speeds up. The same acceleration shows up in other emulations of the board, but it does not happen on original hardware.
The cause traces back to how the sound CPU paces its audio routines around the YM2203, which the core handles through x2203, the in-house OPN. With the timing of the YM2203 worked out on x2203, the core has been adjusted so the affected channel plays back at the correct speed, matching the original board rather than the emulated behavior.
Core Options:
The MiSTer core includes video settings for aspect ratio, vertical scaling and cropping, scandoubler effects, and H/V positioning and sync adjustments.
Audio settings provide separate OPN FM, OPN PSG, OPM, and two M6295 PCM toggles, each with its own volume control, covering the full sound section. Arcade dip switches are directly accessible from the OSD. Game settings include per-player auto-fire with adjustable rates, mapping options for Player 1 and Player 2, and a synced mapping mode that mirrors Player 1's layout to Player 2.
Cheats are accessible from the OSD and include infinite time, a one-hit enemy kill, and per-player infinite lives, infinite energy, and invincibility. A stage select cheat will be added in a future update.
The Pocket core provides auto-fire with per-button targeting and adjustable rates. Its cheat set is infinite time, infinite lives, infinite energy, and invincibility. Arcade dip switches available on Pocket are Lives, Difficulty, Allow Continue, and Demo Sounds.
History, Gameplay, and Regional Information:
Crude Buster was developed and published by Data East, reaching Japanese arcades in February 1990 and overseas through that spring, with a North American release on April 1, 1990 and a European release later the same month. It was produced by Iwao Hotta and designed by Akira Otani, with Takaaki Inoue and Soichi Akiyama programming. The soundtrack came from Data East's in-house sound team, Gamadelic, with Azusa Hara, Hiroaki Yoshida, and Tatsuya Kiuchi credited on music and sound. Hara had already scored a run of Data East boards leading up to this one, and Crude Buster continues that line of work.
The game is set in a New York City left in ruins. Years after a nuclear and chemical disaster devastates the city and mutates its survivors, a figure builds the criminal organization Big Valley out of those mutants and seizes what is left of the streets. The government sends in two super-powered mercenaries to clear the city block by block. It is a straightforward setup that exists to hand the player a wrecked city to fight through, and the game leans into that with a tongue-in-cheek tone throughout.
The gameplay is a side-scrolling beat 'em up for one or two players at once. Alongside the usual punches, kicks, and jumps, the hook is that the two mercenaries can pick up and throw objects far beyond their own weight, cars, telephone poles, signs, barrels, and the enemies themselves, and in co-op a player can pick up and throw their partner. Each player has a life bar that drains when hit and is refilled between stages in a short cutscene where the character punches a vending machine and drinks what falls out. In the Japanese Crude Buster release the machine dispensed "Budtmiser" beer, an unsubtle Budweiser parody complete with a matching seal, and for the overseas Two Crude release it was rebranded to a "Power Cola" soda machine with the seal redrawn as an arm lifting weights next to the word "POW." The fixed-strength throws and the volume of objects scattered through each stage give the game its identity.
Crude Buster earned a strong reception. Computer and Video Games scored it 95%, with Julian Rignall calling it "one of the best beat 'em ups I've seen in years," and Sinclair User rated it 94%, praising its humor as that of an interactive cartoon. It performed well commercially in Asia, placing seventh on Game Machine's April 15, 1990 chart of the most-successful table arcade units in Japan and topping the Bondeal conversion-kit chart in Hong Kong across March and April 1990.
Updates:
The next entries for the DECO-16 platform will be Dark Seal and Diet Go Go. Once those games are released, we will see RoboCop 2, Wolf Fang, and Boogie Wings. Crude Buster is where the DECO 52 sprite engine was first stood up, and that same sprite hardware carries through the rest of the DECO-16 library, so the work done here applies to the boards already released as well as the ones still to come.
Disclaimer: All product names, trademarks, and registered trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "Analogue", "Analogue Pocket", "MiSTer", "MiSTerFPGA", "OpenFPGA", "Data East", "NEC", "Hudson Soft", "Motorola", "Yamaha", "OKI", "Budweiser", "Anheuser-Busch", and all derivative works are trademarks, registered trademarks, or copyrighted materials of their respective holders. Use of these names does not imply endorsement or association with this post. All rights reserved to their respective owners. This post is for educational and research purposes only.