0.74u2 [Luca Elia]
0.37b14 [Luca Elia]

WIP:
- 0.147: Promoted Brick Zone to playable state [Luca Elia]: Fixed gfx ROMs loading. Fixed inputs in joystick version. Alternate data decryption. Fixed alternate opcode decryption ranges. Palette encryption, banking and writes disable. Work RAM disable. Multiplexing of registers through protection. Added cheat / debugging inputs. Changed description to 'Brick Zone (v5.0, Joystick)' and clone '(v4.0)' to 'Brick Zone (v4.0, Spinner)'. Renamed (brickzn3) to (brickznv4). Fixed gfx1 rom loading. Replaced 8-way Joystick and Trackball with 2-way Joystick and Dial. Added 3rd button. Added dipswitches 'Service / Invulnerability', 'Select First Stage', 'Cheat 1', 'Select Next Stage', 'Cheat 2', '0: Use Cheat 1&2 Setting', '1: Unused?', '3: Unused?', '4: Unused?', '5: Unused?' and '6: Unused?'.
- 8th September 2012: Luca Elia - SunA is a Korean company whose arcade output is covered in this interesting article (http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/korea/part1/company-suna.htm). As you can see the originality of their production is questionable, but the execution and graphics are not bad for the time. In the past I have emulated both SunA's 16-bit and 8-bit hardware (suna16.c, suna8.c) and unfortunately many of their earlier games have another, much less pleasing feature in common: Use of encryption and protection. This includes games such as Hard Head and Hard Head 2 that I got up and running long ago, as well as the more coriaceous Star Fighter, Spark Man and Brick Zone that have instead been languishing in non-working state to this day. Recently I (took a deep breath and) had another look at Brick Zone to see if anything could be moved further. This Arkanoid clone uses: different encryptions for data and opcodes; run-time tweaking of both data and opcode decryption; encrypted palette ram; run-time disabling of main and palette RAM writes; multiplexing of different hardware on the same address according to sequences of values written to the protection registers; a lot of obfuscated protection tests, including some red herring, in key moments (e.g. bosses) that produce consistent gameplay malfunctions if not passed. The fact that the sprite-based video hardware is a bit on the "unnecessarily convoluted" side is just the icing on the cake. As you can see the attempt has been successful although it forced me to follow and heavily comment a substantial portion of the game code disassembly (Z80). I don't claim a perfect emulation, some bugs may still be lurking in some of the 100 stages, but the game is now promoted to working state. It turns out the parent set shown in this post, which is version 5, is the joystick version, and uses the second button to activate a short supply of "shields". The other set dumped is an earlier version 4 and actually a spinner version (compatible with Arkanoid spinners), but without the "shield" feature. I'm now looking at the other two non-working games in the driver with renewed interest...
- 0.135u4: Angelo Salese fixed Brick Zone parent set bitplane graphics. Fixed gfx1 rom loading.
- 0.96u2: Nicola Salmoria simplified the decryption code in the sun8 driver, and made some improvements to the Brick Zone main set. Changed description of clone 'Brick Zone (v3.0)' to 'Brick Zone (v4.0)'.
- 0.88: Changed AY-8910 clock speed to 1.5MHz.
- 0.78u5: Changed Z80 CPU1/2/3 clock speeds to 6MHz.
- 0.74u2: Added Brick Zone (v5.0) (SunA 1992) and clone (v3.0).
- 0.37b14: Luca Elia added Brick Zone (v5.0) (SunA 1992) and clone (v3.0) (Testdriver).
- 1st April 2001: Luca Elia decrypted Hard Head 2, Star Fighter and Brick Zone, but none of the games are working due to other problems.

Romset: 1184 kb / 11 files / 500.7 zip