SITE UPDATE - January 22, 2019

In-Game Artwork: 28 new sets; 5 sets updated

Game & Watch is fun! I am trying to figure out how I was an '80s kid, but I never had a Game & Watch. In fact, I had not even heard of them back then, that I can remember (though I do remember the Tiger LCD games that came out around the same time).

Today, we add artwork for eighteen Game & Watch games:

• Black Jack, Boxing, Climber, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong II, Egg, Green House, Lifeboat, Manhole, Mario Bros., Mario's Cement Factory, Mickey Mouse, Mickey & Donald, Oil Panic, Super Mario Bros., Squish, and Tropical Fish
  
• Thanks go to Sean Riddle, hap, Ryan Holtz (MooglyGuy / Just Desserts), algestam (hal3000), ICEknight, and ChoccyHobNob for donating, scanning, and cleaning up those scans


• Thanks to Lee Robson (hydef) for additional scan cleanup on many games, and recreating the beautiful outer cases for these games


• Thanks to Ryan Holtz and Magnus Nyström for donating and scanning instructions for those games where they were included (for now: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong II, and Mario Bros)


• Full credits for each game are in its individual LAY file


• Note that Black Jack, Lifeboat, and Manhole were completed after MAME 0.205 was released. You will either need to wait for MAME 0.206, or track down the necessary files to play those games early


• And there is still more to come: in the time putting this update together, Rain Shower has already been completed (for purposes of this site, it will come with the next artwork release)


• Additional Note: people requested that there be an option of not having the "3-D Shadow Effect" on the artwork for these games, and Lee Robson has obliged; for each game above, there are two views: the default view has the shadow, but there is also an optional view where there is no shadow on the backdrop


• Additional Note 2: Lee set things up right the first time, in regards to being able to display things how you want: turn off the backdrop layer, to get rid of the white background that fills the screen; turn off the bezel layer, if you want to see just the game with the backdrop and no case. For the dual-screen games, we have added an extra view, that is backdrop only, so that the screens will be closer together (compared to if you simply turn off the backdrop and bezel)

On the arcade side of things, I am still playing catch up:

• Comboman finshed artwork on some games:




• Cosmic Alien, Cosmic Monsters, and Cosmic Monsters II now have bezel artwork, thanks to bezel scans by TrevEB and header scans by Sam Grech


• Cosmic Avenger bezel is courtesy of rohan


• The backdrop for Dark Planet has been added (note to Stiletto; do you know where this came from?)




• One more from Comboman:
  
  
  
  • Solar War was a planned sequel to Atari's Video Pinball, but was never widely released; only five prototypes were created
  
  
  • Comboman found some good pics, and created bezel and backdrop artwork for the game, and uploaded it to the forum back in 2015, during my "hiatus" time
  
  
  • When I finally got around to looking at, I noted that some things needed fixing before it could be added here, but at that time, I did not have the time
  
  
  • During last month's release, there were some users that posted, rather than saying thanks for what was recently added, instead complained inquired about stuff that was not yet added
  
  
  • So I figured, why not, let's look at Solar War again; the following items have been corrected
  
  
  
  
  • Fixed the playfield perspective, so that all elements of the video screen line up correctly over the backdrop, based on videos of real machine gameplay, and multiple play-thrus in MAME; video screen perspective also fixed to proper 3:4 ratio
  
  
  • All of the lamps in the LAY file have been correctly identified based on multiple play-thrus of the game, details on the backdrop, and instructions listed on the game bezel
  
  
  • The current MAME driver only had 28 lamps identified in the driver; thanks to hap for updating the MAME driver, all lamps will work correctly in MAME 0.206
  
  
  • Redid the CREDIT, MATCH, etc. text at the bottom of the playfield, so that things lined up correctly on the left and right of the screen
  
  
  • Fixed the text for "3 TIMES BONUS"
  
  
  • The red circle in the kickback lane at the top-left of the playfield is not a lamp; this has been corrected
  
  
  • A lamp was missing above the Advance Bonus section, to notate the "5000 when lit"; this has been corrected
    
  • Found a better picture of the top part of the bezel; used that plus Comboman's existing work to redo the outer bezel
  
  
  • Spruced up the file for the lighted lamp, so those look a bit better now
  
  
  
  
  • And now... I like this game even more than the original Video Pinball; a shame that it was never widely released; compared to VP, this games feels much more like a real pinball game, with the drop target completion bonuses, advancing bonus multiplier, advancing reward on the top kickback, etc.
  
  


• We have a new member that is helping to work on artwork cleanup: alexs; his first contribution is the bezel for Capcom's 3 Wonders. Embarassingly, I do not remember who originally submitted this, I just know I was not the one who scanned it, and I cannot find notes in older emails or PMs about this one. If it is you, please let me know.


• From udb23, Strato Fighter has bezel and marquee artwork now, thanks to scans from the BYOAC / CAG Artwork


• Thank you to haynor666 for letting me know about the error in ncombat. Seems I must have edited the file at some point, and deleted a line, causing the game to crash in MAME if you had the bad artwork file (a bug was even filed on MAMETesters about this error at one point). This is now fixed.


• While going through Solar War, I revisited Video Pinball, and noticed that a couple things were not set right in the LAY file, causing the backdrop and video screen to not look as nice as they should; this has been corrected, and the nicer lighted lamps have also been added


• Happened to be watching videos of Sea Wolf on YouTube; noticed a couple things that were not displayed right in the current artwork (how the explosion lamps flash, and the color of the overlay); these have been adjusted


• Not sure when this changed in MAME, but artwork file ddpdoj has been renamed to ddp3, since that is now the parent file

And finally, a few more LCD Handheld updates:

• Realized that what I was trying to do with the artwork for tsharr2 and kblades was the wrong thing to do, so converted them back to how they should be displayed on screen


• And then, Lee Robson decides to create a bunch of cases for the Tiger line of LCD games currently in MAME. tsharr2 is added for now; the rest will be in the next update.


• Nu, Pogodi! is a Russian clone of Nintendo's Game & Watch Egg; thanks to Igor, we have backdrop artwork for this game

So this was nice... two artwork updates about a month from each other, like the old days. I may have finally found the work/home/MAME balance I need to keep all three things running smoothly. Cross your fingers.