Soldier Blade does some odd things in this emulator in both pce cores.

1. Wavy background effect just prior to stage 4 boss has glitchy lines through it while animating, but mostly only in the higher res "Arcade" screen mode, the one that generates a 373 pixel wide image. Reference here https://youtu.be/wnnWK9coJ2c?t=1186 but right at the 20:00 mark.

I say mostly because it sort of happens in normal screen mode too, but only one line or 2 for a couple of frames, you really have to watch for it. I took some snaps in the pce_fast core as the bug was more jumpy looking in it than regular pce.

First was made of snaps taken with frame stepping while the game was unpaused


Second and third images from when the game was paused with the start button, note the jumpy flicker.



In the regular pce core the lines aren't jumpy like that while paused, but they are still there. For some reason fast core is much more flickery with how it draws.

Turning on supergrafx mode also exhibits the same problem which leads me to my next bug.

2. Bomb flash is missing unless you play in sgx mode.
SGX forced, Ootake without sgx turned on, and MAME sgx do this, background blanks out and screen filled with a gray color:


But pce and fast without sgx, and MAME pce just black out the background, and I think MagicEngine did this too:


unfortunately I can't find a reliable video from real hardware to prove this is the wrong behavior. It seems to me the bright flash was intended to enhance the bomb effect. I do like how it fills the entire overscan area in sgx mode and the title screen background also does this. The regular mode overscan is always black with this game.

[Updated on: Sat, 14 May 2022 01:48]