Reverse-engineering the forgotten 80's game "Adventure Canoe"

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On October 12th, 2024, a few friends and I met at our buddy Taggsta's home arcade, where he was eager to show off his gorgeous Afterburner cabinet that had been recently refurbished; however, we had to appreciate it with our eyes only as it was awaiting a new harness to make it playable. Beside it was his Outrun cab and a couple of cute LAI low-boys which always have a special place in my heart.<br>It had been a while since seeing these guys. We'd typically meet a couple of times a year at an arcade bar, or the annual Aussie Kong Off at BPAC — the same event where I'd originally met most of these guys, tormenting ourselves through many hours of Donkey Kong over multiple days. The evening went mostly as usual catch-ups would, kicking back and talking shit whilst adoring Taggsta's various nerdy collectibles and displays around the shed.<br>On the far end of the arcade room, there was a projector pointing at the wall plugged into a tiny, scaled-down arcade cabinet.<br>The Taito Egret II Mini<br>The Egret II Mini is a mini arcade cabinet with 40 emulated Taito titles pre-installed on it, and I wasn't aware of its existence until then.<br>Usually I'd turn my nose up at emulator consoles like it, but the build quality stood out from many other modern emulator consoles that often feel and appear clunky or unpolished. Before I could get too eager to buy one myself however, I learned the price tag — too much for my liking. It was hooked up to a wireless 8bitdo arcade controller that allowed us to comfortably sit back on the couch and take turns playing various games relatively known to most of us — popular titles like Bubble Bobble, Qix, Rastan and Elevator Action. There were also even more games available that were included on an "Arcade Memories" expansion card (SD card) that could be purchased separately to add even more games.<br>Enter Adventure Canoe<br>At some point in the night, one of the guys selected a play on a game that didn't ring a bell to any of us — Adventure Canoe (1982 - Taito SJ System). The game we didn't think too much of initially remained on the projector screen for the rest of the night as we took turns beating each other's PB's. The gameplay was a straight-foward and had similarities to Speed Race CL-5, another Taito game that has eaten many of our coins at our local Bartronica in Melbourne.<br>As the night went on, I did a search on Google to learn more about the game. It was odd that in a room full of arcade nerds, none of us had heard anything about it before! Nearly all of the information we found was dated 2021-onwards; strange for a game that was stamped as being released in 1982.<br>Scrolling a bit further, we found this gem:<br>The only pre-2021 mention of "Adventure Canoe" that I could find was the above post on the KLOV forum from @solvalou68, asking about it in 2019, only to be met with "are you sure it was a taito release, and not a bootleg?" A follow-up response from the OP recalled "...the Arcade was owned by Taito, and you never really saw the clones there from what I could remember..."<br>Users commented theorising which game it could be, suggesting a few other titles but nobody could quite determine its title. After 4 years of silence in the thread, the mystery was revived with a comment from @TremiRodomi, mentioning the game's inclusion on the newly released Taito Egret II Mini:<br>"The game is real"!Somehow, this game was mostly undiscovered and unreleased for 40 years since its creation in 1982. It became clear to me after more digging that at the time in 2024 (and even until very recently in early 2026), the only way to play Adventure Canoe was to own this miniature $400 emulator console. There are no photographs of any original Adventure Canoe cabinets, nor any records of art or PCBs for the console having ever existed!<br>We kept playing for another hour or so before we dispersed, but stuck with an overwhelming desire to learn more about the game, I grabbed Taggsta before leaving and asked, "how would you feel about me borrowing the console for a week or so to poke around at it?" With a promise not to break it, and no clear idea where to start, I tucked the Egret II Mini into my passenger seat and headed home.<br>Poking around the machine<br>When I woke up the next day, I jumped online to do a deep dive and see what else I could find about the console and games within; still finding only articles and videos about the Egret II Mini with no particular focus on Adventure Canoe. Finding little about the hardware online, nor anything particularly useful for cracking into it, I decided to pull out the screwdriver and poke around.<br>Removing the screws from the bottom of the machine revealed the PCB within, sporting a bunch of discrete components, various I/O connectors, an RF shield and a cute mascot on the silk screen.<br>The bottom side of the boardRemoving the RF shield didn't reveal anything else of interest, so I removed the remaining...