0.36b9 1999/11/13 [#082 - Nicola Salmoria]
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IMPORTANT: due to changes in the palette system, there might be games that had correct colors before, and wrong now. Please let us know if you find any.


New games supported:
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Big Striker [Luca Elia]
Dream Soccer '94 [Bryan McPhail]
Kageki [Takahiro Nogi]
Kick and Run [Nicola Salmoria, Ernesto Corvi]
Kick Off [Luca Elia]
KiKi KaiKai [Nicola Salmoria, Ernesto Corvi]
Perfect Soldiers [Bryan McPhail]


New clones supported:
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Ajax (Japan) [Nicola Salmoria]
Blue Print (Jaleco) [Nicola Salmoria]
Checkman (Galaxian hardware) [Zsolt Vasvari]
Contra (Japan) [Nicola Salmoria]
Donkey Kong 3 (Japan) [Nicola Salmoria]
Dump Matsumoto (= Body Slam) [Nicola Salmoria]
Fantasy (SNK) [Nicola Salmoria]
Karate Dou (= Karate Champ) [Nicola Salmoria]
Mega Zone (Konami) [Nicola Salmoria]
Ring no Ohja (= The Main Event) [Nicola Salmoria]
Thunder Blaster (= Lethal Thunder) [Nicola Salmoria]
Undercover Cops (Japan) [Nicola Salmoria]
X-Men (2 Players Japan) [Nicola Salmoria]


These drivers have improved GRAPHICS:
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- Fixed raster effects in 'Turf Masters' (Japan course) and 'Zed Blade'. Improved 'Super Sidekicks 2' [Massimo Morra].


Source changes:
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- Fixes to 'Lazer Command' and 'Meadows Lanes' [Malcolm Lear].
- [DOS] Changed the -depth option behaviour, now it can be either 8, 16, or auto. The default is auto, which uses the color depth appropriate for the game. 8 forces use of a 256 colors display (faster but less accurate), 16 forces use of a 16-bit display (not suggested, doesn't work with all games). MAKE SURE TO SET depth = auto IN MAME.CFG, OR YOU'LL USE 16-BIT IN ALL GAMES [Nicola Salmoria].
- 16 bit support in the tilemap manager, so the Namco System 2 games no longer require -depth 8 [Phil Stroffolino].
- Fixed a few bugs in the NEC CPU core that caused problems in Hook, Gunforce, Lethal Thunder and maybe others [Bryan McPhail, Nao].
- Several changes and improvements to the TMS34010 emulation and to the Williams games using CVSD sound [Aaron Giles].
- [DOS] Now compiled with Allegro 3.9.27 WIP [Nicola Salmoria].
- Calling palette_recalc() is now *MANDATORY* in all drivers that modify the palette. The palette will not be updated otherwise [Nicola Salmoria].
- Removed adpcm_sample_list, palette and colortable from struct GameDriver. Changed char *color_prom to int prom_memory_region.
- Replaced MachineDriver->video_attributes VIDEO_SUPPORTS_16BIT with GameDriver->flags GAME_REQUIRES_16BIT. Added color_depth to struct RunningMachine and struct GameOptions. OS dependant code may set it to force a specific depth. Added depth parameter to osd_create_display(). The OS dependant code MUST respect it - if it has special requirements, it must set the GameOptions flag beforehand [Nicola Salmoria].
- Updated the TMS9900 emulator [Raphael Nabet].