Hyper Olympic 2 is the second MSX helping of Konami's athletics: four new events on top of the same program as the first. It plays the same way, hammering two keys to run and one to jump or throw.
0xE016 runs from 1 to 4 and picks the event; 0xE015 counts up to twelve. So the four events, three times each. Photographed one by one in the emulator (medidas/pruebas.txt):
| event | record it shows | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 110 HURDLERS | 12 SEC 93 |
| 2 | JAVELIN THROW | 96 M 72 |
| 3 | HIGH JUMP | 02 M 36 |
| 4 | 1500 METER | 03 min 31 |
Yes, it says HURDLERS. It is not the capture and it is not the emulation: the typo is in the cartridge's data, and it can be read byte by byte. It is written up in Findings.
Just as in the sibling cartridge, the fourth event is built on top of the first: the 110 hurdles and the 1500 metres share their scenery list (0x655A) and their scoreboard, and the javelin and the high jump share theirs (0x661F). Four events with two sets of screens.
Every round has a mark to beat, and they live in marcas_de_clasificacion (0x500A): two BCD bytes per round, which 0x4651 reads with 2*(round-1). They come out as
15.00 75.00 02.30 04.30
13.00 85.00 02.35 04.00
11.00 90.00 02.40 03.30Each lap tightens the screw: in the hurdles you have to get under 15, then under 13, then under 11; in the javelin, past 75, 85 and 90 metres; in the high jump, 2.30, 2.35 and 2.40; and in the 1500, under 4:30, 4:00 and 3:30.
Fail to qualify and that is that. 0xE021 carries one bit per player saying whether they are still in, and 0xE022 who goes through to the next round.
The 110 hurdles is a normal race with one thing on top, and it takes very little code (0x5A1B). While the athlete runs, bit 1 of 0xE0C5 asks to jump. The jump lasts ten frames, counted at 0x5A34, and while it lasts the pose is 13; when it ends it goes back to 6.
And then it is checked: 0x5A5B compares the athlete's column with the column of the hurdle that is his, and if when the jump ends they are less than eight columns apart, bit 4 of 0xE028 or 0xE029 gets set. That bit is the fall. 0x5AA5 gives him pose 14, wipes his four speed bytes and gives him 0x14 frames of getting back up.
So knocking a hurdle over is not a collision: it is a comparison of columns at one specific instant.
In the javelin and the high jump there is not one run and done: there are four attempts. 0xE023/0xE024 count the ones used up per player and 0xE025/0xE026 the one under way. Each result goes in 0xE02A/0xE02B: 1 foul, 2 valid, 3 record.
When an attempt does not count, the scoreboard writes the foul label (rotulo_de_fallo, 0x5140), and two different places ask for it: 0x4379 and 0x4521.
The routine that counts the time (0x56D7) adds 1.665 hundredths per frame, that is, one sixtieth of a second. It was worked out for a 60 Hz machine.
It is the same routine as the sibling cartridge's, and over there it is measured on both machines:
| machine | Hz | game clock per real second |
|---|---|---|
| Philips VG-8020 (PAL) | 50 | 0.8325 s |
| C-BIOS MSX1 JP (NTSC) | 60 | 0.9990 s |
On a European MSX, a "13.00" in the hurdles is really 15.6 seconds. And it is not that the game runs slow: it is that the clock counts short. The qualifying marks and the world records are meant for the Japanese machine.
Careful reading that backwards: it is a period, not a speed. The detail is in In the emulator.
0xE010 says whether two are playing and 0xE011 whose turn it is. When both run at once, the race motor looks at bit 0 of the frame counter: on even frames it moves player 1's athlete and on odd ones player 2's. Half the work per frame, and at 50 or 60 Hz nobody notices.
A measured detail that says a fair bit about how this cartridge was made: 0x4389 uploads 26 rows of the sprite attribute table (ld bc,01AFEh); in Hyper Olympic 1 the same routine uploaded 32.
And the pose table is shorter too: eighteen entries (posturas_del_atleta, 0x713C) against the twenty-five over there. These events need fewer figures.
When nobody touches anything a demo starts. It does not carry a recorded game: the interrupt plays it, and the pilot is about as dumb as you can write. With 0xE002 at 1, the interrupt drops into 0xE00B a value from ld a,r —the memory refresh register— masked to two bits, once every four frames. That is all of it: random keypresses.
0xE004 says whether you play with joystick or keyboard, and 0xE005 carries what was read this frame: bit 0 up, bit 1 down, bit 4 space, bit 5 F5. With a joystick, the two buttons. For each player both the previous and the current controls are kept (0xE008-0xE00F), which is how you detect an edge rather than a held key — indispensable in a game built on mashing one.