Home Page Forums MAME MAME "watered down" build of Primal Rage official ROM?

Atari Games intended that to be the best version of the game. If it was something that had been hacked up for Midway Arcade Treasures that would be another matter, but it was in arcades and has been found on later-production PCBs as Vas said.

So, you're telling me that you really think that if today, 31 years later, Netherrealm put out a new build of the original Mortal Kombat arcade which lacked blood, screwing over a very deliberate design choice that largely contributed to the original game's identity, and put out 10 arcade machines on the streets, you would expect MAME to make that version the parent, meaning it would be what people would encounter if they just tried to play Mortal Kombat.
Just for being newer, and despite not being what has been on arcades for 31 years.
Really?

I could argue that it may have also been the only version they could find in their archives. But, I don't know the story behind that version, or if the developers said something that amounts to them looking at the original source and fixing things.

It's not a 31 years later thing. These machines were the most common version in a lot of not-US countries in the actual 90s.

Wrong blood colour (black, green or whatever) was required by youth protection law in Germany in many games. Later most fighting games replaced blood with luminous explosion/firework effects (explained as using "magic" swords etc.) to make them family friendly.

Game protections can do funny things; e.g. emulated Space Harrier added instead of subtracted lives when reaching higher levels. I read in a magazine that a 1st person shooter for PC made your gun suddenly fire chickens instead of bullets when it failed to detect its original CD.

By the way, I have played through Hard-/Race Drivin versions on MAME now a hundred times, but I guess its tons of funny glitches were original technical problems because it was the first driving simulator game with such technology. Only some random mid-game resets might be protection related.

Same reason that PAL region console games tend to be parent sets. PAL versions tend to be later releases because they're inevitably delayed and/or screwed over by the likes of the Australian and/or German (etc.) governments' save-the-children censorship policies, and coincidentally happen to fix some bugs that weren't found when the final US version was released (and since the US version was released earlier, it's probably off the shelf for the next upcoming game).

Megaman 3 on the NES didn't have any censorship issues, but the PAL version removed some forgotten dev code which had allowed the use of the second controller to do things not intended by the game. A second PAL version was released shortly after (labeled "NES version", coinciding with Nintendo themselves taking over from Mattel in Europe/Australia), fixing a timing bug where the background went haywire on the second last stage due to still being programmed for 60Hz and the game running at 50Hz. Unfortunately they never fixed the Top Spin bug (the Rush Jet movement bug and the A6 dev password weren't patched either, but those are good bad bugs!)

In that case it would be counted as a new release, rather than a revision (there's almost no chance it would be running on the same PCB)

Primal Rage is different, this is just a revision of the game that was distributed back in the day, there was equal chance of you encountering either.

As it seems to be the newest revision it's possible the changes were made entirely based on feedback from people playing the game on location back then, with the choice eventually being made to use a more traditional scheme if it seemed like the game wasn't being played correctly / understood. Many games went through revisions like that.

uKER: It's not difficult to download the ENTIRE mame rom set so just play whatever version you want.
If some random game player downloads x version of the game they won't know the difference either way.
I own the board with later ROM version and dumped it because that's what I do. Be happy you have it and several other versions.
This issue is a nothing-burger.