Index

Six weeks of the alanmargolies88 project: why pure imitation plateaued at a passive average, what ~34 verified arXiv papers changed about the design, how a mislabeled RAM byte silently shaped two training runs, and the first RL run where 'plays like Alan' is inside the objective itself.

The sequel to the Arcade1Up protocol RE: disassembling libarcade.so's spectate consumer, discovering the cabinet's blind-apply-and-run model, proving verbatim state resume is impossible cross-architecture, and a debugging saga where the biggest bug was my own screenshot tool swapping red and blue.

Closing two long-open items on the alanmargolies88 behavioral clone — state perception and the four player-struct offsets we'd never wired — using a community reverse-engineering reference for Marvel vs. Capcom's EU 0.2.5 ROM.

An AI-for-good project: training a behavioral clone of a beloved Marvel vs. Capcom 1 Fightcade player from 7,554 of his recorded matches, so the community can spar with his playstyle again.

From TCP packet captures to P2P input exchange at 60fps — reverse engineering Arcade1Up's proprietary online multiplayer system for Marvel vs Capcom, building a desktop spectator client and fighting bridge with RetroArch + FBA Alpha

Reverse engineering MvC1's hidden character box system - discovering three table formats, cursor navigation mechanics, and the path to making Armored Spider-Man selectable

Systematic binary analysis discovers 85 code references, 4 disabled load points, and 3 distinct table formats for character ID 0x2E -- evidence of an unreleased Armored Spider-Man in MvC1's CPS-2 ROM

Pushing every ROM type to the theoretical maximum of Capcom's CPS-2 hardware: 128MB graphics, 16MB audio, 4MB program - documented with in-game verification

Complete series index: reverse engineering Capcom's CPS-2 arcade hardware from first principles -- binary forensics, ROM expansion, audio injection, and character restoration

Engineering a new menu item and 24-line verification screen into CPS-2 arcade firmware using 68000 assembly, jump table extension, and sprite system mastery

Porting MvC2's jazz-fusion soundtrack to MvC1's CPS-2 hardware - from 8-bit PCM injection to multi-bank streaming playback via Z80 ISR-driven bank switching, including the int16_t bug that tripled playback speed

Curated engineering case studies: binary-level systems engineering on CPS-2 arcade hardware, from ROM expansion to cross-architecture audio injection

Designing an emulator platform with Metal GPU rendering, AI opponents via CoreML/PyTorch, massively parallel training, and full developer tooling for fighting games

Discovering undocumented characters, secret input codes, and unused entity IDs through systematic binary forensics on MvC1's CPS-2 ROM

Expanding every ROM type on CPS-2 hardware to its theoretical maximum - 128MB graphics, 16MB audio, 4MB program - using Python automation and binary analysis

Structuring technical analysis so both humans and AI can execute it - from scattered ROM notes to automated validation pipelines with in-game verification

Reverse engineering MvC1's character select screen - discovering cursor navigation tables, decoding entity ID mappings, and mapping three distinct secret character table formats

Adding a new secret character to a 1998 arcade game through ROM patching, 68000 assembly injection, palette engineering, and input sequence state machines