MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: Space Ranger dumped!

>The streak of luck continues. I should go to Vegas... Marcello Mancini has dumped the
>insanely rare Space Ranger by Taito.

Good to see the pcb still works and good find too. Although it uses Taito pcbs, it should be added as a graphics hack (example below of another Leisure Time bootleg) of one of the newer generation Taito Space Invaders boards. Not sure of which exact model of Taito boards used.

http://www.progettoemma.net/indice.php?source=8080bw.c

Leisure Time suspiciously has "bootleg" written all over it. I wouldn't be surprised they hacked the graphics and altered audio too because of maybe being visited by Taito's corporate law firm back then in late 1970s?

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http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/8080bw.c.html

GAME( 1980, mlander, lrescue, invaders, lrescue, 0, ROT270, "bootleg (Leisure Time Electronics)", "Moon Lander (bootleg of Lunar Rescue)", GAME_SUPPORTS_SAVE )
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Another example of supposed Taito pcbs being used is the game Black Beetles, marketed by TDS + MINTS MINTS happens to be first letter of each name of each Japanese programmer involved in game design. At least Black Beetles is an original game itself compared to Space Ranger.

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http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=623&page=1#1405

Black Beetles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lZgT9a4aL4
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I believe Taito never made nor marketed Black Beetles. The origination of the mistake probably goes back to 1990s when whoever was listing Taito games at the time had understood that Black Beetles came on Taito pcbs. The thought then was overlooking the fact that TDS + MINTS likely had purchased a truckload of Taito pcbs and then TDS modified the Taito pcbs to play Black Beetles instead. That's my take with this.

I believe had Taito had been involved in any way with Black Beetles, a Taito flyer would have been found by now since Dan H. (TAFA administrator) is very good at tracking down flyers. It would be good if a Black Beetles flyer ever turns up.

The more I look at the Leisure Time flyer, it looks like the other two games may have also used a prom for handling color output. Hopefully the Moon Lander pcb can be looked over again in hopes that a prom is still on the Moon Lander pcb and not already stripped off.

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http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=3493
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=3493&image=2
Leisure Time

Astro Laser http://www.progettoemma.net/gioco.php?game=laser

Moon Lander http://www.progettoemma.net/gioco.php?game=mlander
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