MAMEWorld Forums - News - Prototype RCA Arcade Game from 1975 Dumped and Emulated

Andy Modla has added Swords to his emulator of the RCA Studio II and related hardware.

https://github.com/ajavamind/rca-studio2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbSNnIyc1K4

Swords was developed by RCA for their Fredotronic arcade hardware in 1975. It was based on the RCA 1801 CPU, a predecessor to the better known RCA 1802. It was location tested, but never put into mass production. However, RCA did release the RCA Studio II home console in 1976 using similar hardware. To put the time frame into perspective, Midway released Gun Fight, the first mass produced arcade game to use a CPU, in November 1975.

The program data was found on an audio cassette at the Hagley Museum And Library in Wilmington, Deleware, which holds a number of records from an RCA research laboratory. Thanks also to Ubersaurus, who arranged for the tape to be digitized.

http://findingaids.hagley.org/xtf/view?docId=ead/2464_09.xml

Based on the labels of other tapes in their collection, they appear to have data for other games on the hardware. The other known titles are Mines, Chase II, and Bowling. Some of these tapes have been recorded as WAV files, but have not been processed further as far as I'm aware.

Some Atari Age users have posted documents, photos, and instructions from their visit to the archives.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/209519-...47#entry3872336

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/209519-...49#entry3906140

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/209519-...49#entry3906144

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/209519-...49#entry3906146