Turbo Fix patch for Metal Gear 2

Konami's Metal Gear 2 is surely one of the highlights in MSX gaming. However, people often complain about the speed, which would be too slow when compared to Metal Gear 1. What happens is that the 3.5Mhz Z80A rarely can cope with the target frames-per-second the game was designed for. Probably the elevators are the only place during the game where the framerate is as it should be. But then there was another problem: if you try to run Metal Gear 2 on a 7Mhz MSX2 or turbo-R, the game runs too fast. This happens because its timing routine has a bug that allows it to run at 2x or even 3x the target framerate if the CPU can handle it.

sd_snatcher, from Brazil, has created a patch to fix this bug. Now it is possible to enjoy Metal Gear 2 in its full glory on a 7Mhz MSX2 or turbo-R, you'll have the same framerate as Metal Gear 1. The patch is available in both IPS and XPC formats.

Relevant link: FRS' MSX Page

Comments (14)

By Huey

Paragon (1436)

08-02-2009, 11:29

Cool! For sure are going to try this!!!

Thanks

By ant0niutti

Expert (115)

08-02-2009, 11:41

Good work!

Congratulations FRS.

By Randam

Master (254)

08-02-2009, 12:42

Great patch!!! Works like a charm. Not as fast as booting the game with SHIFT key pressed though. But that's a fortunate thing: then the game becomes unplayable. And of course you can't save to disk anymore with the SHIFT trick.

Do you intend to make more turbo fixes since there are more games which have the same 'bug'? Hope so...

By sd_snatcher

Hero (538)

08-02-2009, 21:07

Not as fast as booting the game with SHIFT key pressed though. But that's a fortunate thing: then the game becomes unplayable.

Well, but that's exactly what's this patch is all about: to let the game run with turbo at the correct (and playable) speed.

And of course you can't save to disk anymore with the SHIFT trick.

"Trick" is the most appropriate word to define the use of the SHIFT key to enable the turbo. You know, that's not part of the game, but instead the Turbo-R diskROM is enabling the turbo. What happens when you press SHIFT on the boot of a Turbo-R without a cartridge? It goes to BASIC without drives and with the turbo enabled. As MG2 waits for the diskrom to boot so it can use it for savegames, the SHIFT key will enable the turbo before MG2 start running. But sadly, the speed bug was there up to now. This "press SHIFT to enable the turbo" will work with any cartridge (Konami or not) that waits for the diskrom to use it. Just try it on Kings Valley-2 or GameMaster 1/2 to see.

Do you intend to make more turbo fixes since there are more games which have the same 'bug'? Hope so...

Well, I do INTEND to do it. But this doesn't mean I'll have enough free time to really turn this a reality.

By Randam

Master (254)

08-02-2009, 22:43

Great to hear you intend to make more Turbo fixes

Hopefully you'll have some spare time somewhere in the future. There are too few programs/ games that utilise the turbo R speed. So these are welcome additions. Hurrah!

And about the SHIFT trick: I noticed back in the nineties that it behaved that way. Don't know why I even tried that back then. After that tried it with other 'disk save/load' konami games. Particularly Shalom I found much better to play that way. Only boss 2 was real hard to beat with turbo enabled. Till this day I never thought it to be more than a konami feature/glitch. Thanks for the tip about it working on other games as well.

By Moniz

Master (220)

27-03-2009, 01:48

I've tried to use the pathed rom with my mega scc flach card, but OPF seems to hang when before its flashing the card.
Is there a way to play the game using the scc flash card ?
I've pathed the to english translated version that works fine without the patch.

By sd_snatcher

Hero (538)

07-04-2009, 00:04

By Manuel

Enlighted (5675)

07-04-2009, 11:37

You can try it in openMSX, FRS... it's emulated.

By hama33

Supporter (0)

15-04-2009, 16:44

Hey, im new here (and a complete noob to the MSX system!)

I applied the patch to the Metal Gear 2 rom using an ips patcher (dont quite remember the name, maybe ipswin..). Anyway, im using blueMSX and when i play the patched rom on the default 'C-BIOS' machine there is no change in speed (still slow). So i change the machine in the 'Emulation' settings to a Panasonic turboR (because turboR was mentioned in the post!) and the gameplay is at a much better pace, which seems like the right speed, however the frames per second drop to around 15 during gameplay. When i played the unpatched rom i got the original slow gameplay with fps of around 27!
So im just wondering what settings i should use on blueMSX to be able to play Metal Gear 2 with this patch at the correct FPS. Can anyone help??

Thanks alot!!

By sd_snatcher

Hero (538)

18-04-2009, 04:18

o im just wondering what settings i should use on blueMSX to be able to play Metal Gear 2 with this patch at the correct FPS. Can anyone help??

Sorry, I don't know too much about blueMSX's specific settings, but it shouldn't behave this way, at least on a fast PC. Have you tried the openMSX emulator on your PC?

By Muyfa666

Supporter (6)

22-11-2011, 08:25

Sorry to wake this topic up, but I wonder how I am supposed to use this? After patching the game speed shows no difference. Am I supposed to set my msx emulation to something special?

By Manuel

Enlighted (5675)

22-11-2011, 21:19

No, because it works on real machines

It's just smoother and faster (especially the loading parts) on a turboR. Try that.

By Muyfa666

Supporter (6)

22-11-2011, 23:34

If I set machine to TurboR the game runs much better, but most things also runs a bit too fast. On regular MSX2+ I see no difference at all.

By Manuel

Enlighted (5675)

23-11-2011, 20:10