Bootleg Games Central Forum

Pirate Discussion => Hacker Center => Topic started by: SF-Human on April 29, 2026, 09:23:14 AM

Title: Ping Pong by Inventor - Intro Restored
Post by: SF-Human on April 29, 2026, 09:23:14 AM

I've restored the intro of the English variants of Inventor's Ping Pong. There's a "Table Tennis Tournament" logo and the "2004" version of the unused 2001 Table Tennis Championships logo. Not sure if any people had done this before.
Value $04CA at memory determines the current game mode. $1B in the headered ROM determines the game mode it boots into, setting it from $03 to $01 will load the intro instead of jumping to the title screen.
I'm also considering restoring the other game modes of the Chinese variant but I don't know if this is possible since setting $04CA to $04 (which is the value of main menu for English variants) jumps straight into gameplay, although there're remnants of other game modes which can be seen by setting $04CA to other values.

Title: Re: Ping Pong by Inventor - Intro Restored
Post by: SF-Human on April 29, 2026, 09:39:55 AM

Also possible new finding? The game mode $05 boots into an unused "Mode Select" menu, consisting an unused player select menu. All currently dumped variants puts the player into an endless loop of code when selecting either options.

Title: Re: Ping Pong by Inventor - Intro Restored
Post by: forgotusername on April 29, 2026, 02:22:26 PM

Thank you for posting. Something of note that I found: in the Chinese version, the $05 byte change displays the unused menu with the original Zinger Software court backing partially visible. The known English versions properly alter the menu to remove it.

The related "Tennis Ball" game uses the same code structure and controlling byte (1B) for switching between menus, though I did not see any unused contents at a cursory glance.