What does Mattel 1970s era games led fans user base say besides "thanks" to hap? Let tv show character Eric Foreman (That 70s Show) provide the appropriate comment.
Some of them are on PPS4/1 (Auto Race, Football games, and the newer VFD Football game too, this 1: https://handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/WCFB.htm). Missing MCU emulation, but might not be too hard to add to MAME since standard PPS4 is already emulated. Kevtris dumped the VFD game ages ago, older games are not dumped.
Basketball, Soccer, Hockey are on COPS I (COP400 is COPS II, COPS I is MM57xx series).
Seeing many of the led games using extraneous artwork playfields, good luck to those willing to work on supporting internal layout files unless the playfield component can be scanned and supported as an external artwork file.
Heh forgot about that mattel basketball game. I think all that is left from my childhood are those casio databank watches and that nelsonic pac-man watch. At that point I think MAME has emulated most of the electronic junk I had when I was a kid. Eeek the price for those on ebay, gawd.
Maybe not as memorable compared to Football, but still holds its own when being compared to Football. Basketball was my second pick after Football. I liked it compared to other Mattel led games I had such as auto Racing, Baseball, Armor Battle, Sub Chase.
*nevermind*
Here is an excerpt from my old message to someone of my guess.
Some of them are on PPS4/1 (Auto Race, Football games, and the newer VFD Football game too, this 1: https://handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/WCFB.htm). Missing MCU emulation, but might not be too hard to add to MAME since standard PPS4 is already emulated. Kevtris dumped the VFD game ages ago, older games are not dumped.
(COP400 is COPS II, Basketball 2, Soccer 2 are dual-COP421. Sean has these, but not dumped yet. --
Specific support for 421 type hardware will happen with the section while games data is/are copied from handhelds.
National Semiconductor COP421 /COP421 disassembler "cpu/cop400/cop421ds.cpp"
My guess is the games such as "Basketball 2, Soccer 2 are dual-COP421 COP400 is COPS II" are next items to be supported including Mattel's Look Alive! Football (1980) which looks like an awesome game itself.
>I think all that is left from my childhood are those casio databank watches and > that nelsonic pac-man watch. At that point I think MAME has emulated most of the > electronic junk I had when I was a kid.
Microvision being emulated to fully working last year was a big deal to me since I had that myself. The Mattel led games being emulated will complete the electronic games I had as a teenager then.
> Eeek the price for those on ebay, gawd.
Fortunately a fair amount of the handhelds is accounted for or emulated before speculators arrived to drive prices upwards of many of the games.
> > > I think all that is left from my childhood are those casio databank watches and > > that nelsonic pac-man watch. At that point I think MAME has emulated most of the > > electronic junk I had when I was a kid. > > Microvision being emulated to fully working last year was a big deal to me since I > had that myself. The Mattel led games being emulated will complete the electronic > games I had as a teenager then. >
ooo off to play some block buster.
> > > Eeek the price for those on ebay, gawd. > > Fortunately a fair amount of the handhelds is accounted for or emulated before > speculators arrived to drive prices upwards of many of the games.
Friend of mine reminded me most are totally ragged out. Just stay away from the 'collectable' ones and the price would probably be ok. Still saw one for 300 bucks. yikes.
FWIW, no other PPS4/1 handheld games in Sean's vault, but I'm sure a few others exist. The older Mattel sports games are on similar Rockwell calculator MCU's from before they designed PPS4/1.
Other known devices with PPS4/1: - Mattel Las Vegas (home pinball machine): MM77 - Brunswick home pinball machines probably have a MM76 - Bearcat BC300 supposedly has a MM76D - Zoom Telephonics Demon Dialer has a MM77 IIRC. Sean has it, but there's not much to emulate if MAME doesn't simulate a telephone/phone line. -
Unsure about Baseball, but I am going with Sean's old post (further below). Football and Auto Racing use Rockwell's earlier mcu which is another different mcu core needing to be assembled which could also include other Mattel led games as hap mentioned in his old post.
I think I've acquired all the Mattel LED handhelds. I've dumped the COPS I Basketball visually and have Soccer and Hockey. Basketball 2 and Soccer 2 have a metal layer over the ROM area to obscure the bits, but I should be able to dump those electronically. The original games (Auto Race, Football, Baseball) use a modified Rockwell calculator chip that is very similar to the PPS-4/1 microcontrollers, and some later games (mostly non-sports) use PPS-4/1 chips. There's also a set of (non-sports) LED games that use Hitachi calculator chips. There are also some LCD re-releases- I think I have Classic Football and Classic Baseball. -
Some of them yet to be emulated that might be hh_cops1.cpp or maybe hh_cop400.cpp file in the future.
I was curious about the cpu since my interest was towards the Mattel led games that used processor and this was about the time some of the led games were starting to be emulated just a year before lcd hardware games were then being emulated.
I asked Stiletto about PPS 4/1 and Mattel led games in 2014. Another great example of why I enjoy reading some of the stuff Stiletto mentions from years earlier and this is why I wanted to post this now that PPS 4/1 has happened and in MAME source code and will be in next official release.
-- Re: Mattel Electronics handheld games From: Stiletto 12/15/14
> After reading hap's post, I am looking forward to seeing if this gets any of the > Mattel games closer to being emulated. I hope the cpu support pps4.c that Juergen had > added for other hardware games is what helps start emulation of any of the Mattel > games even though I figure some update might be needed for the cpu code first before > a driver is created.
Yes, the motivating factor here was not more handheld simulation (although that would be cool). Basically, Juergen recently randomly rewrote the PPS-4 emulation core to match the original documentation archived by Bitsavers. (The previous core was what Micko had originally imported from PinMAME around 2008 or so, plus another round of modernization in 2010 or so.)
The reason Juergen rewrote the core was that some German had got in touch with him regarding a rare unemulated German computer (don't look at me, I've never heard of it) that used the Rockwell PPS-4 as its main CPU. But after Juergen's modernization this required him to touch the Gottlieb System 1 emulation to ensure it still worked. Juergen has yet to submit his German computer driver to MESS, but it's coming. Hey, I'm happy any time Juergen takes another stab at MAME/MESS, no matter what he wants to work on.
But it reminded me that back in 2008 when Micko was copying and updating CPU/video/audio cores from PinMAME (Intel 4004, Rockwell PPS-4, a few others) that he'd got in touch with me to see if I could track down other systems (arcade/console/computer/handheld/other) that used these CPUs, possibly even ROMs, so that he could further test these cores on more than just pinball ROMs. So this time, I dug my notes up and dug out the PPS-4 notes and gave them a second pass/update and posted it to the group rather than just Micko. No ROMs, but I saw that I'd made a note about the Mattel handhelds. hap caught onto that right away and thought to bring it to Sean's attention. And here we are.
Yes, I'm thinking that the Rockwell B6000 series must be related to the Rockwell PPS-4 series. I guess someday we will find out how.
The temporary coworker recalled the game name, but did not remember which company made the TC7 game. Iirc a different coworker had brought in a PSX disc and explained that the disc ran some classic Namco arcade titles on the PlayStation.
That reminded the coworker about his TC7 game and how he wishes it were possible to play that again. This was just about time that community emulation was just getting started.
The coworker retells how he bought the TC7 product in early 1980s to self train to be an airplane traffic controller in order to become one by late 1980s in which he did and briefly worked at a small airport in a Midwest town for a couple years.
Before he bought a computer and some simulator programs for the computer, the TC7 product was first training equipment. He was laughing while mentioning his girlfriend at the time was embarrassed about him using the TC7 item while practicing to be a controller. She refused to be around him whenever he was practicing with the item in their apartment.
They eventually separated and she broke some of his belongings including the TC7 product. The guy was glad he got some of his other stuff out of there such as his computers and Mattel Intellivision and other belongings. He mentioned that the TC7 product was partly useful for traffic control practice, but he missed it for the novelty factor. If MAME as it is today were around then, he would be first person to come to mind that would be thankful that Bandai TC7 is emulated in MAME
Wow. My thanks to Sean and hap. I am impressed with ongoing progress from adding cpu support to supporting the specific games and getting them playable within a couple weeks.
New machines marked as NOT_WORKING -- Auto Race [hap, Sean Riddle] Missile Attack (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle] Football (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle] Baseball (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle] Gravity (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle]
-- Auto Race [hap, Sean Riddle] Missile Attack (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle] Football (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle] Baseball (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle] Gravity (Mattel) [hap, Sean Riddle]
It is interesting with descriptions of how it became possible to emulate the games and get them working in MAME. One event that helped make emulation possible was the Auto Race developer contributed hardware notes in which provided insights of the details of how the game and opcodes work as Sean’s page explains.
With that and Sean’s work and hap’s coding, it became possible to emulate the specific Rockwell cpu run games.
The one remaining led game that is also believed to be using a Rockwell brand cpu is Mattel Electronics Ski Slalom.
I played the heck out of my Armor Battle handheld and wound up damaging the game to where it quit working. That game seemed more fragile compared to the other Mattel handheld games.
One time my Mattel Football was thrown about 75 yards across a mall parking lot and was still in playable working condition although the plastic case had lots of damage. The Football handheld could have starred in one of those 1970s era tv commercials where Samsonite luggage suitcase is thrown around inside a cage with a gorilla trying to break the suit case. If a Mattel Football led game can withstand a bratty teenager throwing the game 75 yards away, it probably has a fighting chance against a gorilla.
I don’t know why, but this episode was amusing compared to other episodes made that season. It’s odd that in real life Michael Richards got in trouble while on tv episode he was scolding Jerry. I know the political correctness attitude would pull the plug on this episode regardless, but it is simply a show that relies on innuendo just like other previous shows such as BBC’s comedy tv show Coupling (2000 to 2003) which was more damn risqué imo. European and Canadien folks understand comedy humor better compared to pc crowd in USA.
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