The NeoGeo 2 we never got - IGS PGM Arcade Hardware | MVG

foreign they say that the best form of flattery is imitation and that statement Rings true particularly when we talk about Arcade Hardware this obscure piece of Hardware is known as the IGS PGM short for polygame master and for all intents and purposes looks to be very similar to a one slot Neo Geo mvs right down to the cartridge system and exact same Motorola 68000 and xylog z80 processors powering the hardware now you may have guessed like the Neo Geo the IGS PGM is a 2d Powerhouse but while there are similarities there's also quite a few differences and in today's episode we are going to take a closer look at the world of the IGS PGM and what makes the hardware so unique and such a love letter to the original Neo Geo the taiwan-based IGS PGM is an intriguing piece of Hardware that has seen over the years some of its games brought to home consoles including ones you may not be familiar with the hardware would originally release in 1997 and that's seven years after the Neo Geo and this would mark an interesting time in arcade games you see when it came to arcade games in Western countries 3D was all the rage and 2D was well and truly on the way out this would seem on paper to be a very odd design Choice around the same time as the launch of the IGS PGM arcade Hardware the PlayStation based Namco system 11 and 12 Hardware were dominating the arcades with games like Tekken 3. not to mention the Sega model 2 Hardware that powers the legendary Daytona USA but the IGS PGM would be released in 1997 and the question is why in the USA it would have been a disaster however in Asian markets like Taiwan arcades would host many MBs and Capcom cps2 games and IGS would take inspiration from the neogeo hardware but improve upon it in certain areas the Neo Geo houses a Motorola 68000 running at 12 megahertz as well as a xylog z80 at 4 megahertz it also has a resolution of 320x224 as well as 4096 colors on screen with a 16-bit color palette and finally the legendary Yamaha ym 206010 is the sound chip now let's compare that to the IGS PGM it houses the exact same Motorola 68 000 but this time running at 20 megahertz the same xylog z80 running at 8.5 megahertz but this time controls a wavefront ics-2115 chip which runs up to 32 sample audio channels this particular chip was used in quite a few isobase sound cards back in the day as well as wave table synthesizer daughter cards and I gotta say it sounds impressive as a comparison let's take a listen to some Neo geoym 206010 goodness [Music] and then take a listen to the wavefront chip [Music] both sound great in their own right and I suspect that IGS decided to use the wave friendship over the Yamaha chip to reduce overall cost of manufacturing we also need to mention the screen resolution on the IGS PGM it's running at 448 by 224 this slight increase in horizontal resolution stretches out the screen pixels ever so slightly and rather than a 4x3 aspect ratio it's a two by one aspect ratio interesting choice and of course if we side by side the IGS PGM and a slot 1 mvs neogeo board you can see the immediate similarities between the two pieces right down to the cartridge slot which is very similar and even offer the same dual pcbs as the Neo Geo on top of this the IGS PGM also features the same four button Jammer pin out so there is no additional kick harness required this is very much in line with the Neo Geo now when it comes to the cartridges there are similarities however the p AGM is slightly larger with a beveled Edge so you can't just put a game in around the wrong way and I should also note here that there is no compatibility between the IGS PGM and the Neo Geo while very similar they aren't the same in fact the IGS PGM has a lot more going on that meets the eye now when it comes to the graphics I did mention that the IGS PGM is a 2d Powerhouse and it absolutely is not only does it run faster with more clocks than the Neo Geo it also comes with some enhancements for example the Neo Geo is not capable of zooming Sprites but it can scale them the PGM can handle zooming just fine it also features 32 color Sprites that can be any size this is in comparison to the Neo Geo which can only handle 16 color Sprites there's also 32 pixel by 32 pixel scrolling tile maps that supports individual line scrolling and the result of all this cool 2D Hardware is that many 2D games on the IGS PGM look very colorful and very vibrant and don't suffer from the same slowdowns as the neogeo hardware now based on everything that we've said so far other than the sound chip it seems like the igsp GM is pretty much a replica of the Neo Geo and that's where it gets its reputation however there is more that makes up the DNA of the IGS PGM and that has to do with an arm7 co-processor that runs at around 20 megahertz now those with a good eye and know what they're looking for will notice there is no arm7 chip at all on the motherboard Instead This chip is on board most but not all IGS PGM cartridges the main purpose of this chip is for copy protection but to be very clear it's not the only purpose of it specific games have different uses for the arm7co processor and we'll get to that shortly another interesting standout feature of the hardware on the side is the expansion Port that allows for connectivity to introduce three and four players quite a few IGS PGM games do support four players so this is a welcome feature now speaking of the games the igspg GM is a bit of a mixed bag there's around 30 titles released for the PGM hardware and the earlier releases consisted of puzzle and Mahjong titles however heading into the 2000s some quality titles started to appear and here are some of my personal favorites 1998's The Killing blade is a traditional fighting game that is a bit of a nod to SNK Samurai Showdown games but the killing blade features a Two on Two tag team mechanic with two separate power meters and this is a very fun game to play and quite underrated if you're a fan of versus fighting games 1999's Knights of Valor kicked off a very popular series which is a side-scrolling brawler based on the Romance of the Three Kingdom series set in medieval China the game spawned a ton of updates and two thousands Knights of Valor 2 would be a true sequel to the game but no matter which version of the game that you play Knights of Valor is a great brawler series and even better with four players it has a terrific Showcase of what the hardware is capable of with very large Sprites fast action and terrific gameplay 2001's martial Masters is another versus fighting game on the system this one has 12 playable characters and one unplayable boss character and it's a fun game but what is immediately noticeable is that this game has superb hand-drawn Sprites and 2D animations that take influence from the Street Fighter Alpha Series this looks like a Capcom CPS 2 or 3 title and that's a credit to the game design and of course the hardware itself throwed on patchy 2B storm is a vertical scrolling bullet hell Shoot Em Up developed by IGS and published by Capcom in 2001 now shmup fans might be thinking didn't cave develop the dodon patchy series and yes you would be correct however cave was not involved with the development of B storm at all rather IGS attained the license to the doe Don Pachi name for a new game to release on igs's polygame Master Hardware in a vacuum b-storm is a pretty fun Shoot Em Up but it's just a touch on the easy side and to be clear this is not the quality of what we would expect from a cave game now I did say that cave wasn't involved in the making of b-storm and this is true what this did however was reinvigorate cave who had lost interest in the arcade business at this point and were looking to exit the business but the success of bee storm had convinced cave to continue working on arcade games and to even use the igsp gym hardware for their very own releases and the next three would be some of the most legendary shooter Maps ever released though Don Pachi dayaju released one year later and this would be followed up with two shoot em ups that are considered a one-two punch of bullet hell greatness with escaluda and katsui all three games ran exclusively on IGS PGM hardware and are considered some of Cave's finest works these games would not appear on the regular PGM cartridges rather they would be individual pcbs with the igsp GM Hardware on them this was done to stop bootlegging of the game as there would be sophisticated copy protection on the pcbs to stop duplication and this here is my personal escaluda arcade PCB as you can see it contains the very same Hardware as the IGS PGM motherboard including the game ROMs and the Asic protection Hardware IGS would also offer separate pcbs for other titles that would release later on the three cave PGM shoot em ups would all receive various Home console ports for the very first time DDP dayaju and escaluda would be ported to the PS2 and Xbox 360. kitsui would release for the Nintendo DS PlayStation 3 and 4 as well as the Xbox 360. demon front is another game that was offered in both cartridge and single PCB format and this is a metal slug clone make no mistake but it's a damn good one arriving around the time of metal slug 4 which was considered a bit of a disappointment demon front never manages to equal the appeal of the earlier Metal Slug games but it's a fun clone with its own charm and its own game mechanics and it's definitely worth checking out if you've never played it before spectral versus generation is perhaps the most well-known IGS PGM game outside of the cave Shooters it's a fighting game with a focus on Combos and Slow Time mechanics the game was ported to the PlayStation 2 and PSP by ideas Factory and is considered a pretty good fighting game overall and one worth checking out if you're a fan of the genre and finally last but not least is the Gladiator releasing in 2001 a year just after demon front this is a side scroller brawler and it's one of the best IGS PGM games and one of the most underrated brawling games you'll ever play with its amazing design controls animations especially the characters and the execution here is all fantastic there are six playable characters with their own unique Styles and special attacks there's also a Parry mechanic with mid-air specials and counters I mean all this stuff belongs in a fighting game rather than a brawler and as you play you earn Scrolls that offer completely new moves and you can switch between different fighting techniques this can give you the edge when fighting bosses and can quickly switch back to your regular fighting style at any time and once again this game supports four players make no mistake the Gladiator is one of the very best games that you've probably never heard of and if you haven't you should at least check it out compared to the Neo Geo the igsp GM protection system was quite sophisticated and took many years for IGS PGM games to be considered playable in emulators such as maim the arm7 was a custom chip with its own special unique ROM and each individual game had unique use cases on how to use the arm7 for example many of them would form the copy protection of the IGS PGM Hardware but some games would also use the arm7 as the main processor and rely on the 68 000 to be somewhat of the co-processor additionally games such as the cave Shooters including bee storm would also use the arm7 chip to handle its bullet processing to manage bullet patterns and physics leaving the 68 000 to Simply handle code and data processing but because the arm7 Asic had its own custom ROM dumping these ROMs were very very difficult at the time this meant that it would be possible to dop the dodon pachy2 ROMs and data from the 68 000 but if you didn't have a ROM dump of the arm7 Asic that's tied to this game playing it would simply not show any bullets on screen at all effectively this is the copy protection of the hardware and this meant at the time the bootlegging of IGS PGM games was considered very very difficult if not impossible because of the custom nature of the arm7 Asic it meant that the only way to get a good ROM dump of this particular chip was to use sophisticated decapping methods which can be expensive and dangerous at least back in the day and as a result because of the custom Hardware being different in each game emulation is a difficult task IGS PGM games were not fully emulated until around 2014 when all games were considered playable in Maine before that reverse engineering trial and error and some guesswork would be used to bypass the copy protection techniques but this was not a one-size-fits-all approach many games possess their own unique challenges and their own custom Asics the hardware protection held up for years and considering that the igsp GM released in 1997 by 2014 this is an impressive fee now for those people that want to play IGS PGM games in 2023 there are a couple of different options your best option for the moment is emulation either via maim or FB Neo both have very comprehensive IGS bgm game support unfortunately at the moment there is no Mr fpga core available I have heard some Rumblings that it's currently in development but for the moment there's been nothing officially announced or if you prefer the original igsp GM arcade motherboard it's quite cheap I've seen them for as low as 60 dollars it is of course if you own a gemma-based arcade or a super gun the games themselves vary in price with many being quite expensive however since we've had breakthroughs in dumping the arm7 Asic ROMs and emulation it means that conversions and bootlegs have now flooded the market on sites such as AliExpress there is one more option and for those that own a Nintendo switch you may have seen a brand new release known as the IGS classic arcade collection this is some of the very best classic IGS games in a single bundle including games like the Gladiator Marshall Masters and the king of Valor games as well as demon front all for thirty dollars in the US unfortunately however this is a missed opportunity for gamers to enjoy these IGS PGM games on console for the very first time for starters the audio is in bad shape with lots of pops and crackles that indicate some type of emulation problem but worse that the game is presented in 16x9 widescreen support only now this is not a bad bad thing considering the wider horizontal width of IGS PGM games means that you can get away with a stretched 16x9 aspect ratio however what I would really have liked to have seen is proper two to one aspect ratio settings or even a simulated 4x3 aspect ratio unfortunately these issues including the bad audio really means that I can't recommend this collection to anyone and I am hopeful that a patch will come in conclusion the polygame master is a cheap but powerful arcade-based Hardware that has excellent 2D and sound its release was definitely a gamble especially in 1997 but its main focus was to tap into the low end arcade market and in the end it ended up being quite successful prompting new revisions of the hardware with the pgm2 in 2007 and the pgm3 in 2010 and interestingly enough in the end SNK themselves would end up putting the King of Fighters 98 ultimate match Hero on pgm2 Hardware putting your game on the competition is certainly a move but the neogea had already well and truly been sunset by that point and with that we are going to leave it here for today's episode I do hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the world of the IGS PGM arcade Hardware I certainly had fun making this episode and I hope you guys enjoyed it as well but that's going to do it for today's episode if you like this please don't forget to leave me a thumbs up leave leave a comment below and I'll catch you guys in the next episode bye for now [Music]

Channel: Modern Vintage Gamer

Views: 192,360

Keywords: neo geo, retro gaming, arcade, igs, igs pgm, polygame master, demon front, jamma, 68000, mvs, poly game master, mvg, modern vintage gamer, knights of valor, cave, shmups, dodonpachi, espgaluda, the gladiator, neo geo mvs, snk neo geo

Id: O9ufiuXRN-8

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023