This cabinet was imported from Japan several years ago to a private collection here in California. You can now hear the game and see the cool multi layer artwork shrouds that create depth deep into the cabinet.
As is typical with these games, the keys are nowhere to be found so we are going to have to drill out the locks to see if the schematics are inside. The story continues.
>As is typical with these games, the keys are nowhere to be found so we are going to have >to drill out the locks to see if the schematics are inside.
Hopefully any paperwork is still in cab, but if not, then I guess photos of pcbs (audio board especially) is next best thing.
>This cabinet was imported from Japan several years ago to a private collection here in > California. You can now hear the game and see the cool multi layer artwork shrouds that >create depth deep into the cabinet.
Thanks for the gameplay cabinet video clip. The game isn't the same audio (analog) and visual effects (artwork backdrop etc) are missing.
I’m confused. Your saying the interior art and sounds are different from what you played here in the states? I assume the game itself though is the same?
>I’m confused. Your saying the interior art and sounds are different from what you played > here in the states? I assume the game itself though is the same?
The 'unfunny' bit and it was a stretch itself was meant to be was when first discovering MAME and the fact that coinop games that I enjoyed and remembered such as Sega Carnival and Gremlin's Frogs were emulated. It was a stunning surprise to me back then when first discovering MAME and downloading a couple of roms from JoseQ's Emuviews web site. So sometime back in April or May 2000, I was completely stunned that I was able to play Frogs or Carnival as they were back then about 20 years earlier.
The letdown was then discovering of why audio was either not emulated or using external audio files or the artwork backdrops used for a game like Frogs was not supported back then in 2000. There was some preliminary artwork, but not the amount that users can see these days. The Frogs gameplay didn't make sense back then to users in 2000, but at that time the more important stuff was Atari System 1 and System 2 being emulated. And then all of those repetitive "When will CPS-2 be emulated posts?" all over all of the emulation web sites forums back then in 2000......'the good old days'.
I wasn't expecting MAME to be an 'everybody contributes no matter what' type project when I first discovered MAME. I wasn't expecting Nicola Salmoria to have this sneaky plan of 'you want to see improvements in MAME, but it might require lots of your time to be spent as well'. Sneaky plot by Nicola back then.
Anyway, I was using the Sega Samurai comparison along with Gremlin's Frogs to point out that Frogs gameplay didn't make sense until artwork backdrop piece was supported and the external audio files as well. It was a while before both artwork and external audio sample files came along for Frogs.
Since Sega Samurai artwork is not yet supported or neither with the analog audio, maybe the Samurai gameplay might not make as much sense. Without the artwork or analog audio being supported, the gameplay might be missing elements of why the game could be interesting to play.
I attempted the unfunny bit with German pilot when he was angry with Ned Nederlander about the 'trick photography'.
>Sadly the Fire One video is a bust.
That's a bummer. I am certain I never saw that game in person when at arcades back in the 1970s and 1980s.
>Fire One makes progress anyway. This sounds spot on to what little I got to hear from the >cab.
Good to know the work matches with the audio effects. I forget how well the Exidy manuals were designed back in that era compared to other coinop game companies back then when it came to publishing repair service manuals to do repair work on coinop cabs.
And another Exidy example.
- Exidy's Star Fire - MAME Gameplay w/ Netlist Audio
>The game itself is as basic as they come, with no text other than score values which >disappear when a shot is on-screen due to lackluster hardware capabilities. Indeed, the >addition of proper audio simulation does very little in terms of redeeming the game from >its painfully simplistic play experience. -
I don't remember Star Cruiser cab myself, but Ramtek probably had to make do with artwork overlays or backdrops to put some artificial dressing to make the game enticing as best possible. It could be that if Star Cruiser used a bezel piece, it probably had backlit lamps to display game status etc.
Ramtek Clean Sweep bezel piece (waiting to be scanned), which I played many times in mid 1970s, had a blue tint overlay taped to back of bezel to provide artificial color to monitor and the backlit lamps would illuminate a portion of bezel to help provide gameplay status info to the player.
I forgot that Flyball didn't have audio support which now reminds me of Atari Destroyer also being another example of no audio for an Atari game. I don't remember the other Atari games since most have been done earlier.
The other issue that I remember about Atari Destroyer is the video code is from late 1990s and for some unknown reason the 'Atari copyright' text image doesn't appear on the attract mode segment of Atari Destroyer. 'siftware' had dumped his Destroyer pcb years earlier and indicated how his pcb does show the copyright text image. iirc his Atari Destroyer pcb rom set was eventually added to MAME support.
I don't know if the copyright text appears or not when running Destroyer, but if not then likely some video emulation issue from the older era code.
The other thing I remember about Atari Destroyer is there was a language rom option in which operators could request the language rom as an extra item. I am not sure if that is supported yet or if that is a rom that has yet to be dumped and supported.
I'm pretty sure the netlist is correct, so I'm not quite sure why the sonar has so much more of a pronounced "pong" sound to it in TrevEB's video of a real cabinet from 6 years ago.
At this point, I have to figure that some combination of the integrated amplifier, the speaker itself, the cabinet itself, or the camera microphone is working as a low-pass filter to remove a lot of the hiss that comes through loud and clear from the netlist.
> The other issue that I remember about Atari Destroyer is the video code is from late > 1990s and for some unknown reason the 'Atari copyright' text image doesn't appear on > the attract mode segment of Atari Destroyer. 'siftware' had dumped his Destroyer pcb > years earlier and indicated how his pcb does show the copyright text image. iirc his > Atari Destroyer pcb rom set was eventually added to MAME support. > > I don't know if the copyright text appears or not when running Destroyer, but if not > then likely some video emulation issue from the older era code.
While working on this game's emulation recently, I found that the copyright text is drawn in the left corner at the beginning of the VBLANK area. VBLANK timing is determined by a bipolar PROM on actual hardware, but postponing its start puts it out of sync with scanline interrupts, causing the game to glitch unplayably.
Video of an actual Atari cabinet doesn't show anything like the text, and the cabinet art would make it very hard to see there. Most likely, it's just another trap Atari laid for bootleggers in an era when Atari was clearly worried about video game code not having adequate legal protection.
> The other thing I remember about Atari Destroyer is there was a language rom option > in which operators could request the language rom as an extra item. I am not sure if > that is supported yet or if that is a rom that has yet to be dumped and supported.
The language ROM (030138) simply hasn't been dumped yet.
Is there still a couple of circuits that netlist does not do yet? I’ll have to look back in my files and see if I made a recording by hooking up to the speaker wires. In the meantime, be sure to grab the artwork Comboman did for this game. It will make your video so much better!
Also regarding that translation chip. Is that an empty socket on the board somewhere? How would I identify if the chip is installed? These 3 machines I think came from Canada so they might have the translation chip.
>> I don't know if the copyright text appears or not when running Destroyer, but if not >> then likely some video emulation issue from the older era code.
>While working on this game's emulation recently, I found that the copyright text is drawn >in the left corner at the beginning of the VBLANK area. VBLANK timing is determined by a >bipolar PROM on actual hardware, but postponing its start puts it out of sync with >scanline interrupts, causing the game to glitch unplayably.
>Video of an actual Atari cabinet doesn't show anything like the text, and the cabinet art >would make it very hard to see there.
Thanks for taking a look at the video emulation and observing and describing the Destroyer video behavior.
I believe your take on this should be worthy of adding to info regarding Atari Destroyer. That way it will prevent any possible future false positive bug reports from happening.
>Most likely, it's just another trap Atari laid for bootleggers in an era when Atari was >clearly worried about video game code not having adequate legal protection.
Heh. In a way this reminds me of going back to around 2003 or 2004 on Gridle's old MAME.net forum days. At the time, many including myself were posting in a particular thread guessing Kee Games Quiz Show didn't use a cpu. Al Kossow joins in the thread with his post explaining Quiz Show uses a s2650 cpu. The Quiz Show service manual seems to maybe be intentionally designed to be obscure since lots of info seems vague as what someone had described to me in the past.
>> The other thing I remember about Atari Destroyer is there was a language rom option >> in which operators could request the language rom as an extra item. I am not sure if >> that is supported yet or if that is a rom that has yet to be dumped and supported.
>The language ROM (030138) simply hasn't been dumped yet.
Okay. That's what I was guessing. Midway Checkmate is another game with same issue of missing a language option rom.
>Also regarding that translation chip. Is that an empty socket on the board somewhere? How >would I identify if the chip is installed? These 3 machines I think came from Canada so >they might have the translation chip.
iirc the Atari Destroyer manual doesn't indicate where the chip is on the pcb. Cross fingers that the part number that AJR mentions is on a sticker label on the rom in case a pcb has that rom.
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