MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Coinex Barracuda

I had never seen the game in person, but read about the name a couple times in old posts on Gridle's old MAME.net web site forums over 15 years ago and listed on Bobby's unMAMEd site over the years.

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https://unmamed.mameworld.info/non_other80.html#Barracuda

Barracuda (Coinex, 82)
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Currently no flyers found yet for Barracuda and this is the only Coinex flyer that Flyer Fever has for time being.

https://www.flyerfever.com/search/coinex

The game does get a review along with many other coinop games during that summer in July 1982 issue of Electronic Games in the 'Insert Coin Here' review article of coinop games
..(pages 40-48) and there is a cab photo of an upright cab with a yellow marque along with a couple screen snaps printed in the article.

DP Library http://www.digitpress.com/library/

http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/electronic_games/electronic_games.htm

July 1982
http://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/electronic_games/electronic_games_jul82.pdf

Thanks to a contributor Coinex Barracuda is preserved in source code and will be official in next official release even though users can grab latest source code create their own builds in case they have a state of the art computer to compile their own build and also find the romset which is around.

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/3ce4ca484a2c08ba14452660f625d95757c98fe6

2021-01-30

New working clones

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Barracuda [Cam, Lamonsoff]

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/mame/drivers/pacman.cpp

+// PCB marked KPM-II
+// Dumper's note: The PROMs are identical to regular Pac-Man. The board they were dumped from had a cut trace in the 4A prom circuit
+// which caused altered palettes to appear in-game. Although these palettes were unique and set it apart from being a simple sprite hack of Hanglyman,
+// the cut trace was likely accidental and there's no way to verify it was an intentional modification made by the bootleggers.

+ROM_START( baracuda )

+GAME( 1981, baracuda, puckman, pacman, pacman, pacman_state, empty_init, ROT90, "hack (Coinex)", "Barracuda", MACHINE_SUPPORTS_SAVE )
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The contributor had posted informative details about the pcb on another forum (can't link directly there because of MW's policy of non-linking of rom links) but the post is well done it is worth posting here since it gives details about the board hardware which I hope a bit more can be added to source code src/mame/drivers/pacman.cpp later.

Included are setup arrangements to do cheats and other stuff in the post.

Again...my thanks to the contributor for contribution and documentation details about
the pcb hardware, roms etc.

===
Long story short: it's Hanglyman but with Piranha graphics. The board it's installed on is a Falcon Puckman PCB. The game displays with some really cool colors when played, but interestingly enough the color proms are identical to a regular Pac-Man board

The unique colors are caused by a cut trace in the 4A circuitry which seems to shift the palette addresses up one number for certain screen elements (the maze palette for example becomes palette 11 instead of 10, the palettes for the fruits in the lower right are all bumped up a number, and certain other elements have involuntarily changed colors also).

https://i.imgur.com/E3t4Aqa.jpg

I can't guarantee the cut trace was accidental or intentional but based on the above photos from that Electronic Games magazine showing the game with a blue maze and peach-colored dots like regular Pac-Man I think it's probably fair to say the cut was an accident, which is ironic, since the new color palette definitely makes the game stand out in a sea (no pun intended) of otherwise boring Pac clones.

barracuda.zip

Lemme explain some stuff real quick. That zip file contains all row 5 and row 6 roms for this bootleg. Because Barracuda is a modification of Hanglyman, you should be able to convert any existing Hanglyman boards into Barracuda simply by burning new row 5 graphics roms and a new 6J rom (because the 6E, 6F, and 6H roms for Barracuda are identical to Hanglyman). So the conversion from Hangly to Barracuda only requires three new roms- 5E, 5F, and 6J, from that zip file.

I also included in that zip file an additional zip for a hacked version of the game, as well as optional freeplay versions. To convert a Hangly board to Barracuda with freeplay, just burn the "barracuda_freeplay" 6E and 6J files and replace those two row 6 roms (credit to Scucci for his Pac freeplay hack, which I tinkered with here) as well as the two row 5 graphics roms. To convert a Pac board to Barracuda, all row 5 and row 6 roms will need replaced with a set from that zip file.

The "barracuda_hacked.zip" rom can be renamed to "hangly.zip" and played in Mame as "Hangly-Man (Set 1)". The individual roms in this folder have been renamed to match the Mame Hanglyman romset but are all Barracuda roms. For this hack I've recreated the cut trace colors using code, as well as fixing the tunnels (so that the ghosts/"squids" slow down properly at the right time when entering the tunnels).

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I guess this leaves MazeMan as one of the couple remaining pac hardware titles not yet emulated besides the well known Crazy Otto which will likely never happen of being emulated for obvious reasons.

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sirscotty
05/19/20

https://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/sh...part=1&vc=1

There are at least two in the wild as of a few years ago.... I have been dying to track one down. Sadly none of the pictures have screenshots good enough to use for a recreation.

https://www.rotheblog.com/2008/11/arcade/photos-of-rare-pac-man-bootlet-mazeman/

https://www.rotheblog.com/2010/03/classic-arcade-games/maze-man-arcade-game-lawton-oklahoma/

https://www.rotheblog.com/2010/03/classic-arcade-games/maze-man-arcade-game-lawton-oklahoma/

https://www.vintagearcadegal.com/post/the-10-best-and-worst-looking-classic-arcade-cabinets
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