Unibios change region defaults.

[redsteakraw]

So I have the latest Unibios, and it seems to default to Europe region and arcade and I have to manually change it each time. Does anyone know how I can set it to default to America / Arcade by default so I don't have to change it before I load each game?

[glenfiay]

Hi the best way I've found is to launch every game and enter unibios settings after I have activated autosave, I even entered settings and set things right (level 4, no censorship and so on) took me about an hour during lockdown

Yes I like playing in Japanese and Arcade setting
were you to use Darksoft set and willing to use the Jap/Arcade settings, I can share my saves, you just need to put them into your saves folder

[kikaso]

Hi the best way I've found is to launch every game and enter unibios settings after I have activated autosave, I even entered settings and set things right (level 4, no censorship and so on) took me about an hour during lockdown

Yes I like playing in Japanese and Arcade setting
were you to use Darksoft set and willing to use the Jap/Arcade settings, I can share my saves, you just need to put them into your saves folder

This is absolutely the way to do it. I almost lost my mind when I changed all my ROMs and realized later they didn’t save. Just make sure the memory card setting is set to plugged and autosave is on.

Also, another tip is to set your MiSTer permanently to MVS and then only change between MVS and AES from the unibios. This standardizes the saves between AES and MVS.

Credit to Smokemonster for that tip: https://twitter.com/smokemonstertwi/sta ... 68994?s=21

[nagus]

Question about Europe default... It doesn't seem to change to 50hz video, which is good but I assume the NeoGeo arcade cabinets in Europe used 50hz CRT screens since the arcades were using same European power standard. Is this a hack from Unibios?

Btw, I leave mine on Europe mode since still 60hz and doesn't have D.A.R.E. nag screen.

[darksakul]

Question about Europe default... It doesn't seem to change to 50hz video, which is good but I assume the NeoGeo arcade cabinets in Europe used 50hz CRT screens since the arcades were using same European power standard. Is this a hack from Unibios?

Btw, I leave mine on Europe mode since still 60hz and doesn't have D.A.R.E. nag screen.

No, the Neo Geo MVS Arcade hardware regardless of region is 59.1856Hz, the exception is later revision AES consoles run at a refresh of 61.18hz.
You can use Vsync adjust settings in your INI file to force a different refresh rate

[antibolo]

The Unibios defaults to Europe because there's generally no reason to use the US region on Neo-Geo, it is usually worse than Europe (more censorship by default, etc.)

[EvilRyu]

The Unibios defaults to Europe because there's generally no reason to use the US region on Neo-Geo, it is usually worse than Europe (more censorship by default, etc.)

Is there a place where we can find about these censorship changes? I tend to use the JAP version of the games because in some cases it enables blood or "improved physics" (cough... Mai... cough) but it would be good to only do it when necessary.

[rhester72]

It's worth noting - because it's strangely misunderstood to this day - that there were *three* MVS regions (USA, EUR, and JPN), but only _two_ AES regions (EUR - effectively English - and JPN).

This is important because the UniBIOS setting of AES/USA was literally impossible in the real world (on unmodified hardware), despite games working perfectly fine in that mode. But if you're looking for the real experience, all US AES consoles used the "European" BIOS.

[KremlingKuthroat19]

Setting Neo Bomberman to US localizes the game in English as opposed to Spanish when set in Europe mode so it's worth setting it to the US region for this game in particular.

[tonyt76]

How do we set our MiSTer permanently to MVS?

[glenfiay]

there were some AES units that were clocked in 50hz but the arcade hardware still used the 59,18hz clock
the 50hz standard for crt tvs was a downfall from the 70s, starting from the 80s and 90s most every crt tv was capable of 60hz NTSC on PAL TVs, but for standardization they chose to make it "most compatible" in Europe by choosing 50hz standard for console gaming, and as such SOME but not all of Neogeo AES units were converted in 50Hz by soldering a wire on the pcb as shown below

c_cc_cc056e1c_aespalntsc.jpeg (125.48 KiB) Viewed 11818 times

never the less, the Euro Bios is actually the True Export Bios : you had either Japanese bios or Export bios which corresponds to the EURO bios and NOT to the US bios, just launch Street hoop, in Jap bios it says Dunk Dream, with US bios it says Street Slam and in Euro Bios it says Street Hoop

try the game using a real Neogeo AES USA : the screen outputs Street Hoop just like the EURO bios ...

Question about Europe default... It doesn't seem to change to 50hz video, which is good but I assume the NeoGeo arcade cabinets in Europe used 50hz CRT screens since the arcades were using same European power standard. Is this a hack from Unibios?

Btw, I leave mine on Europe mode since still 60hz and doesn't have D.A.R.E. nag screen.

[darksakul]

Actually there no such thing as the European Bios, just Japanese and US.
The European Bios is just the Japanese Bios with the default language changed.

Considering the European version came out last out of the 3, and the least amount of effort on any console put into it is the European release.
As we can see with Every console the PAL region games often ran slower, and often with black borders to fit the image on to a PAL screen.

It's worth noting - because it's strangely misunderstood to this day - that there were *three* MVS regions (USA, EUR, and JPN), but only _two_ AES regions (EUR - effectively English - and JPN).

This is important because the UniBIOS setting of AES/USA was literally impossible in the real world (on unmodified hardware), despite games working perfectly fine in that mode. But if you're looking for the real experience, all US AES consoles used the "European" BIOS.

Which you also got backwards, it's US and Japanese, there no "European" Bios in US AES consoles.
It wouldn't even make sense for there to be one, as the US market was developed for the AES long before the European market was.

UniBios isn't "Impossible" in the real world, as the UniBios was Intended for real MVS and AES boards. We using it on the MiSTer is the non-standard application of the Bios, as the Unibios was intended for real hardware. And depending on the board, there no modifications involved. My MVS board used a Socket for the Bios and it was easy to swap out the default Bios for the Unibios.
All the different versions you see are set into the Rom, and the Bios just preselects the Region and mode settings.

[rhester72]

Thanks for the clarification on the origin of the 'European' BIOS, that's a piece of NG history I didn't know.

re: being 'impossible', as I said, on *unmodified hardware*...but there's *zero* doubt that the _European_ BIOS variant went into the US AES. It's super-easy to prove with a single cartridge - Street Slam/Street Hoop/Dunk Dream. Each title is specific to a given region, as follows:

JAP: Dunk Dream
USA: Street Slam
EUR: Street Hoop

Guess which title displays on a stock US AES? You guessed it...Street Hoop. (The AES English BIOS, to this day, is mysteriously still misnamed 'Asia AES' in MAME.)

[darksakul]

So I found out that the Unibios defaults to European because its the preference of it's creator, as they are French.
It's just a arbitrary choice made by a programmer that their preferred setting is the default setting.

Guess which title displays on a stock US AES? You guessed it...Street Hoop. (The AES English BIOS, to this day, is mysteriously still misnamed 'Asia AES' in MAME.)

That's odd. I wonder if it was a mistake or the Mame team took their info from a incorrect source.

[darksakul]

So I found out that the Unibios defaults to European because its the preference of it's creator, as they are French.
It's just a arbitrary choice made by a programmer that their preferred setting is the default setting.

Guess which title displays on a stock US AES? You guessed it...Street Hoop. (The AES English BIOS, to this day, is mysteriously still misnamed 'Asia AES' in MAME.)

That's odd. I wonder if it was a mistake or the Mame team took their info from a incorrect source.

[rhester72]

That's odd. I wonder if it was a mistake or the Mame team took their info from a incorrect source.

I'm not sure, because in reality, there was no "Asia AES". I know that very early dumps of NeoGeo BIOSes were _horribly_ misnamed and attributed to all sorts of craziness, sorting it all out has taken literally more than a decade.

If I had to take an educated guess, the lineage looks like this (forgive the poor ASCII attempt):

Code: Select all

Japan MVS -> Japan AES
     |
     v
  US MVS -> Euro MVS -> "US" AES

(this is obviously ignoring various slot branches)

It would make sense that since the "English" branch would have necessarily started with the US (because Europe was kind of an afterthought for SNK) and that the only English AES BIOS would have thus been derived from the most recent branch of the English AES code (which was Europe). I don't think they maintained separate territorial branches of code (or even older versions of code in any sort of code repo), just continued to evolve Japanese and English branches linearly.

[darksakul]

That's odd. I wonder if it was a mistake or the Mame team took their info from a incorrect source.

I'm not sure, because in reality, there was no "Asia AES". I know that very early dumps of NeoGeo BIOSes were _horribly_ misnamed and attributed to all sorts of craziness, sorting it all out has taken literally more than a decade.

If I had to take an educated guess, the lineage looks like this (forgive the poor ASCII attempt):

Code: Select all

Japan MVS -> Japan AES
     |
     v
  US MVS -> Euro MVS -> "US" AES

(this is obviously ignoring various slot branches)

It would make sense that since the "English" branch would have necessarily started with the US (because Europe was kind of an afterthought for SNK) and that the only English AES BIOS would have thus been derived from the most recent branch of the English AES code (which was Europe). I don't think they maintained separate territorial branches of code (or even older versions of code in any sort of code repo), just continued to evolve Japanese and English branches linearly.

Oh I agree with you there on the Asia AES.

I can see early Dumps getting misnamed for all kinds of crazy reasons, especially when there lack of official documentation avalible to the public for a long time.

I do know some games have an additional language settings in the soft dip section, which I can see causing more confusion.