Atari

Space Lords, Moto Frenzy, T-MEK, Primal Rage: All of these games suffer from some advanced protection that affects them in different ways. Through some magic accesses in memory, data can be decrypted using some special key sequences that are not entirely understood. It might be possible to find all possible data sources, run them through the decryption process on the real PCB, and then encode that information in the driver, but it is tedious work at best. Below is the status of each game:

• Space Lords has had some of its data decrypted, which is why the palette during attract mode looks ok. But in game there are many problems lurking.

• Moto Frenzy has some obvious gameplay glitches. Not much work has been done to understand the protection on this one.

• T-MEK is interesting. We have a prototype version that plays well, but has no matching sound ROMs so you don't get sound. Then we have a non-prototype version that doesn't play correctly, but has fine sound. In theory, it might be possible to see the decrypted data in the prototype version and understand the process, but not much work has happened here.

• Primal Rage is pretty close, but not quite perfect. There are some sprite offsetting issues still and I'm not 100% sure the gameplay is all there.