FPGA developer Jotego has released a core for Konami's Sunset Riders arcade game to his Patreon supporters.
Released in 1991, Sunset Riders is one of Konami's most beloved coin-op titles from the decade and presents a colourful representation of the American Wild West. It was ported to the Genesis and SNES soon after release, and is also available on the Switch as part of the Arcade Archives range.
"Four gunmen looking for action under the hot sun," says Jotego on his latest Patreon update. "If you have not met Sunset Riders before, get ready to fall in love with its smooth animations, humour and saloon girls. We welcome a new core: JTRIDERS, compatible with Konami's Sunset Riders hardware. This core operates in all FPGA platforms (including the small SiDi) and should present no problems to CRT screens."
Jotego admits that bringing this one to FPGA platforms was a challenge due to its unique protection chip. "This is a chip that seems to reconvert some data written in the sprite RAM region," he explains. "We were able to make some measurements but we had to eventually rely on MAME's description of its behavior, which is in turn based on a bootleg PCB. The core adds bus timing accuracy over the emulated version, as the CPU is halted while the protection chip is working."
If you're a supporter of Jotego's Patreon, you can download the Sunset Riders cores now.