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The FairyLand Story
🕑 Added 2024-12-14 12:06:30 +0000 UTCSaturday release this time, as there was a last minute hickup yesterday.
History
This fixed-screen action game was developed and released by Taito in 1985. Compared to "Chack'n Pop", a game with a similar system released by the same company the previous year, the number of items and enemy types increased significantly, making it an epic game with a total of 101 stages. Chack'n Pop and FairyLand Story lead up to "Bubble Bobble" in terms of character design and mechanics. Sadly, I have not been able to find a Chack'n Pop board to document and extract schematics from. If anyone is willing to donate or loan one, please contact me.
The items that appear at certain locations in each stage follow a rule: the longer you play without making a mistake, the more powerful the item. There are also unique ways of defeating enemies (see below). The idea of the protagonist, Ptolemy, using magic to turn enemies into cakes was inspired by one of the developers' addiction to Namco's "Dig Dug".
The character can ride on the heads of some enemies, which is necessary to navigate certain areas. The game incorporates a strong puzzle element, requiring players to figure out the order in which to defeat enemies and the best movement strategies. Additionally, it is rewarding to discover ways to earn high scores by defeating multiple enemies at once!
Differences with Emulation (as of Dec. 2025)
The following features are present on the hardware and seem to be missing on emulators:
sprite count limited to 8 per line without blinking, more than 8 sprites can be shown but some will blink
there is a RAM that sets the scroll-sprite priority, not fixed values
background tile flip control bits can be ignored by means of a global control bit
some MCU features are missing, such CPU bus sharing via bus request/acknowledgement
there are a lot of analog audio features that the sound CPU can control, such as balance, treble, bass... the balance feature of amplifier TA7630 is used to alter the relative volume of the two MSM5232 audio channels, so it plays an important role in how the melody sounds
there are two palette banks (not one)
there are two background tile banks (not one)
the priority bits for sprites and scroll tiles are three and two (fewer used in emulation)
there is support for a light gun on the board (maybe for NY Captor?)
Some of the GFX features missing seem to have an impact on other TAITO games, like NY Captor. For FairyLand, the most noticeable item is the music. The current version of the core is not implementing the bass/treble yet, but it implements the balance one. This is used to set the volume of each instrument on the MSM5232 chip, so it has a very clear impact on the music.
The game controls the bass/treble gains independently for the PSG and MSM sound chips, changing them during game play. Just by reading the datasheet of the audio equalizer and the schematics, it is not clear at all what the relationship between the digital value set by the sound CPU and the filter frequency response is. So we are working on measuring it on the actual sound board. For this beta release, the equalizer is disabled.
Note that JTFLSTORY does not fit on MiST because of the extensive use of multipliers for audio features.
How to defeat enemies
Use magic to temporarily transform an enemy into a cake and then repeatedly casts magic on the cake to make it disappear
Use magic to turn an enemy into a cake, then picks it up and drops it on the floor to break it
Drop a cake onto enemies gathered directly below to defeat them
Enemies can also be defeated using special items, such as the Star Tiara, Change Potion, Book of Death, and others
Worms, giant caterpillars that live in warp tunnels in certain stages, will eat anything —friend or foe— so you can lure enemies near the Worm to have them eaten
The last remaining enemy will automatically disappear after a certain amount of time
Other Updates
JTWC (compatible with Tehkan World Cup) sees two fixes:
Correct behavior for game pause
Fixes joystick detection
It took a bit of digging to discover why the joystick was failing for some users. JTWC detects the use of analog sticks to play and then locks the control to analog mode. But it turns out some gamepads will produce "analog output" regardless of not having analog sticks. That rendered the game unplayable for some users. In order to prevent this, control will be forced to the d-pad y default, and you can configure it as analog stick or automatic detection in the options (DIP switches) menu.
JTWWFSS (compatible with WWF SuperStars) was also updated with larger sound volume.
Comments
Andycapped
Was wondering the same here, it's always been like this.
Matt
And the weekend update seems to have the pull to the left and missing cars again.. its really odd as that comes and goes from release to release - Merry Christmas!
Matt
FYI, just updated and on my GITD pocket the steering on the driving games like Outrun seems to have gotten a glitch.. and pulls to the left :)
AskaLangly
pupdate: NGPC still saying that the beta key is invalid.
Václav Morávek
Is there any chance of NARC being released? (Sidi128) My favorite arcade game. :)
Rainwolf
Dear all, I would like to know if all updates are compatible with the Mister PI ? Many thanks !
Dr Tenma
Do anyone knows if arcade organizer or names.txt is working bad with jotego cores? It's weird because in MiSTer I only found the core in the "by core name" and not in the main menu of arcade cores...
Justin Williams
Fantastic. Thank you so much.
Hiddenbyleaves
Brilliant
Mark Saunders
Thanks JT as always. I never knew about this game until now
Bart394
The core is not on pupdate as of yet. Anyone have any luck on a different analogue pocket updater?
JOTEGO
My fault! It should be online now.
JOTEGO
Thank you for reminding me of the equalizer on Namco System 1 games. I have added it to the to-do list https://github.com/jotego/jtcores/issues/896
Espiox
Thanks as always JT, but the new files don't seem to be on JTBIN yet.
nuxvomo
This is so cool. Always appreciate this history lesson. Bubble Bobble will always be core memory stuff for me. Awesome to know what lead up to it.
Adrien Duchemole
Thanks a lot for that release, i'm really glad to see the Oki MSM5232 emulated (i had it in my Poly-800) seeing that chip emulated opens some new possible core releases, such as Equites or typhoon gal These EQ cpu controlled you mention are amazing, poor man filter, but clever tip About these EQ, I wondered if you plan to add someday treble/bass trims for Namco System 1 games like the original PCB ? Also, I mentioned Equites, there was a trim to change the music pitch tuning have you ever met such features on other pcbs ? Thanks again and good luck for measuring all these cpu changes !!
Dan Doyle
Awesome write-up, thanks JT!
ronalvel .
Amo los juegos de los 80s gracias!!!!
Pixel Cherry Ninja
Oh wow 😲 My weekend is here. Thanks, this is a great game and an important piece of preservation.
