azya

Edla Game became the 50th LCD game to be emulated in BrickEmuPy. I'm not planning to stop yet, so follow along!

@bnu7611643 It's great that you managed to find the footprint of this die, but it's a shame there aren’t any details. Hopefully someday I'll finally get around to digging into one of these Tetris games and at least be able to figure out the core type.

If they're rebadged, researching the pin names and pad layouts might give us a clue on who is the real manufacturer of these chips.

One of the MCUs used in modern brick games is the DL5605/DL5609 from JinFengDa/QiXin.

@Bobuswd I wrote you a DM

@OneBitOnePixel How do get the dump to test this out?

McDonald's Chicken Nugget Tetris (2023) has now been dumped and emulated. This is a significant achievement for me, as the game's microcontroller is quite modern, and tackling something like this was beyond my reach until now.

@RatRunner48 Here is a short description x.com/OneBitOnePixel…

@OneBitOnePixel How do you dump these? That sounds veeeery interesting

@JixHedgehog Yes, it was exclusive to China.

@OneBitOnePixel Oh yeah those! They never made it to the US, right?

@miyaopookie I wrote you a DM

@OneBitOnePixel could you send me the dump? i wanna try maxing out the score lol

@MameHaze These units look very much like genuine ones. Some may have left the factory through shady channels and been resold.

@OneBitOnePixel Interestingly the couple I got off Aliexpress seem to be genuine then, or at least exact clones.

@alexbowe @LowMax Yes :) It's actually a pretty common way to dump ROMs from devices like these.

@OneBitOnePixel @LowMax You dump ROMs by taking photos of them? That is the coolest thing I’ve heard all day.

@vgrichina I don't use anything special, just GIMP and Python :) The main challenges are chemical etching and high-quality photography of the die. Finding the inevitable errors in the ROM after optical readout also takes a lot of time. Your work is really awesome!

@OneBitOnePixel What tools are you using for reverse engineering? I also got into hobby reversing old games straight from binary using Claude and packaged methods I used as a skill: x.com/vgrichina/stat…

@exceptionalLoss There is some description here tetris.wiki/Tetris_(McDona….

@OneBitOnePixel does this version have srs

@DevHikikomori One of the Generalplus mcu with a 6502 core, most likely the SPL81408

@OneBitOnePixel What processor does this use?

@_blueculo A lot of useful information can be found here siliconpr0n.org/wiki/doku.php?…

@OneBitOnePixel this is so cool where do i learn to do this

@Wyrmver @LumanareMaxima The emulator can be found here github.com/azya52/BrickEm…, but I don't dare publish the dump.

@OneBitOnePixel @LumanareMaxima it's private ?

@spaztron64 Yeah, some Brick Games back in the 90s also ran on similar microcontrollers with a 6502 core.

@OneBitOnePixel Of course it's 6502 :P

@HappyMantShrimp Do you mean the other Happy Meal LCD games? Unfortunately, they use ASICs: x.com/i/status/18259…

@OneBitOnePixel have you emulated the sonic game and watch games? i assume they would be easier

@esotericsean Yes, the microcontroller has read-only mask ROM.

@OneBitOnePixel Is it a read only chip? I assume so, but wonder if it's possible to write anything back to it. I have one of these along and was going to mod it (by ripping out the innards and putting something else inside).

@LowMax I'm getting better at chemically etching crystals to make the bits visible, and I picked up a decent 100× objective for my microscope.

@OneBitOnePixel What changed that made it within your reach?

@LumanareMaxima I wrote you a DM

@OneBitOnePixel Where could I find this to try out?

@MameHaze I've only seen the keychain versions. They have completely different firmware – typical "9999 in 1" kind you see on other Tetris keychains from Aliexpress.

@OneBitOnePixel Is it known if the versions of this you could pick up on Aliexpress etc. are the same as the official one, or if those might be 'bootlegs' on different hardware with the case cloned. I find it weird that they'd make enough to flood 3rd party markets.

@Technonux I can't say for sure, but it's most likely Generalplus SPL81408.

@OneBitOnePixel What mcu does it use?

Just compare the ROM density to one of the earliest microcontroller supported by BrickEmuPy (photo at the same scale). In numbers, the difference is roughly 1:256.