Ketsui dumpato? :), Magari si, magari no... :)

Honestly, from what i can tell, the asic doesn't do much in the way of providing anything except protection to the game. On boot, the game expects 3 values supplied from the asic (and is easy to bypass). In game, it reads 2 more values (frequently) that are calculated in the 68k and the asic and compared (it is easy to bypass this as well). Lastly, the 68k will read 2 values from the asic, these values are scrambled around a bit by the 68k and used as addresses to read/write to (I'm fairly certain this is related to the sprite issues in the game). I have dumps of 3 revisions of the program rom, only the oldest one gets far, as the newer ones seem to actually check the values I'm using for the last bit of the protection (I think).

As for the status of the game, I think it is as far as I can get it. I'm going to pass it back off to XingXing and see if he has any more luck.
Right now, it is fairly playable, but there are random freezes, some sprite issues (positioning mostly), and the coin input is not read, so coins have to be inserted via the test button.