time-bandit

Time Bandit 1.1 for Sanyo MBC-550/555 - Now Playable in MAME

In 2026, an old Sanyo MBC-550/555 owner wants to travel back in time and play Time Bandit again. The original floppy disk is no longer readable, the game does not yet run properly in MAME, and the Sanyo version is protected by a clever copy-protection scheme that kept it from being copied back in the day.

This demo tells the story of a rare version of Time Bandit that was almost lost in time: a game written specifically for the Sanyo MBC-550/555 by Bill Dunlevy and Harry Lafnear of MichTron. It remembers the strange not-quite-IBM-compatible Sanyo machine, WordStar, Sanyo BASIC, MS-DOS, impossible old listings, and the feeling that someone had really made the effort to create a cool game for this unusual computer.

The story follows a modern investigation into the original executable: digging through handwritten 8088 assembly, uncovering sprites, treasures, maps, portals, overlays, multicolor fonts, flipped and mirrored level variants, hidden sectors, checksums, and the locks behind the copy protection. It is a small tribute to Time Bandit, to the Sanyo MBC-550/555, and to the people who created them.

Maybe no one has ever truly finished this vast Sanyo version of Time Bandit, with its hundreds of levels and no way to save progress. But perhaps another Time Bandit from the future, armed with time, clues, DEBUG, and modern hardware, finally will.

Thanks to Bill Dunlevy, Harry Lafnear, MichTron, and Sanyo.

Greetings from The Netherlands, Sanyoman2 a.k.a. RickyboyII June 2026

Video-Ram area 3C000-3FFFF

IO.SYS version 1.00  (C) 2-13-1984 SANYO
Phyiscal drive A: to D: = Single/Double-sided,double-density

MS-DOS version 2.11
Copyright 1981,82,83 Microsoft Corp.

Command v. 2.11

A>intro
It's *2026*. You're old and gray and 
you want to play *Time Bandit* to take 
a time warp back to your youth...
There's just one problem!    
Although you still have your good old
*Sanyo MBC-550/555*, the original
floppydisk is no longer readable, and
Time Bandit doesn't run in MAME yet
due to clever *copy-protection*.
You think back to the game,  
the Time Bandit *tapping his foot* 
if you kept him waiting too long...
You remember the Killer Smurphs,
the Looking Lurkers, Angry Elmo 
and all the rest...
the levels you could play over and
over again, yet somehow they looked
different everytime - as if they 
transformed into another dimension.

You had never managed to finish the
game. But was that even possible?
You start investigating and find
versions of the game for other
platforms such as Atari ST. But 
they are not the same... They look
different. Better, perhaps. Newer?

But you want Time Bandit on your
old Sanyo MBC-550/555: that early 
sub-1000 USD, *not-quite-IBM-*
*compatible PC* that came without 
a BIOS in ROM and ran MS-DOS 1.25.

Your Sanyo MBC-550 was a strange 
machine. PC games you tried to
copy from classmates didn't work...

Only the bundled copy of *WordStar*,
and *Sanyo BASIC* - the language in
which you learned to program and
some MS-DOS utils such as *DEBUG.COM*.

And even BASIC was diffent from other
BASICs, so after carefully typing in
a long listing, you would still spend
hours, sometimes days debugging it.

Back to *Time Bandit*.

With this game, it felt as if someone
really had made the effort to create
a cool game specifically for this
computer: *Bill Dunlevy* and 
*Harry Lafnear* of *MichTron*.

They had already released the game
for the TRS-80, but that computer 
was being phased out. 
The Sanyo MBC-550/555 looked like
a good future bet for them.

Bill rewrote the code line by line in
WordStar on the machine itself and
did many smart optimization tricks.

They visited the Sanyo US headquarter
even before the MBC-550 was released 
and got access to the BIOS developer 
and documentation.
It was going to be the *killer app*
that would turn the MBC-55x into more
than just an cheap office machine.

But they made one small mistake:
Their clever copy-protection made 
that this version of their game was 
*never pirated* and may have missed
out on the wordwide marketing boost
that some other games received.

So far, there was no way to play 
the game except from the original 
floppy on the original hardware. 
Floppy disks degrade over time, and 
most Sanyos have long since ended up
on the scrap heap.
The Sanyo version of the game was
almost lost - *lost in time*...

Until a Dutch Time Bandit coming 
from the future rose up and started 
*scrutinizing the .EXE*, and deep in
the caverns of handwritten *8088*
assembly code, found the keys to the
locks of the copy protection, 
opening them one by one.
The secrets of the game's inner 
workings were uncovered one by one.
The sprites, the treasures, the maps 
and their flipped and mirrored 
variants, the portals, the overlays
the multicolor fonts, 

And finally: the hidden sector on
the floppy and the checksums for
copy-protection.
With over 300 levels and no way
to save your progress, the game is
so difficult and so vast that perhaps,
nobody has ever finished it so far.

That may change. Who knows what is
next - maybe some other Time Bandit
of the future will finally manage it,
armed with lots of time, new clues
and modern hardware.

But now... How do you actually *crack*
Time Bandit? Let's go deep, real deep
...through The Timegates, into the
Halls of Doom, through Lost Maverick
Mine, across the Light Barriers...

Where we go, no Time Bandit has ever
gone before. Our secret map is called: 
*The Hidden Chambers of Debug*.

Let's conquer the hidden sector, 
solve the checksum puzzle and maybe..
even become immortal (A39D C3, A3B4 C3)?

debug bandit.exe
- N bandit.tmp
- E 8914 EB
- E 8D4D 55 F7 55 F6 55 F5 55 55 55 55 20
- E 91EB F8 90 90 90 90
- E AEA7 EB
- W 100
- Q
A>ren bandit.tmp bandit-x.exe

A>bandit-x

You did it! The conquests of 
time and space awaits you!

the creators' last words from the 
original booklet:

for the bandit intent
on winning the day
and defeating the game,
we have this to say:

when the treasury is full
and every gate broke,
if you die in the timegates
you've missed the last joke.

Thanks Bill Dunlevy, Harry Lafnear &
MichTron for creating Time Bandit
& Sanyo for creating the MBC-550/555.

Greetings from The Netherlands
Sanyoman2 a.k.a. RickyboyII
June 2026