Tornadoboy

Just thought I'd give this a nudge and see if there's anything new going on? Hope all is well over there? I've been playing around with Sprint Layout a lot lately and making gerbers of some rare arcade related stuff and I'm starting to get tempted to do one of the motherboard and make some mods of my own, mainly just making the board in two sections so it'll fit in smaller cases and maybe changing some of the connectors, though I don't know if I'm up to the task of incorporating upgrades like internal 32k and such. Is there a gerber for the original motherboard available anywhere?

I have absolutely no first hand knowledge of any of it but I wouldn't be surprised if they worked out a deal with the copyright owners and are cutting them in for some royalties, which would make sense as it wasn't making them any money just sitting in oblivion like it was and if they want to do something else with it in the future this will garner some attention, after all it's a game which outside the collector's community few know even exists. As far as the hardware they're simply converting existing boards they purchased so there's really no copyrights involved in that as they're just reusing existing boards they own and in a way that isn't infringing on the original board's game copyright. I imagine it's like buying new cars, doing major enhancements on them then reselling, that may sound like splitting hairs but I'm willing to bet that's how it shakes out. As far as CRTs? Maybe they found a stash of new old stock somewhere or they're just using rebuilt ones, as long as they're not pretending they are brand new there's nothing wrong with it.

SP2 was such a blown opportunity, if they had just kept the original top-down game play and had made it two player with different special weapons, more variety to the roads, maybe the flying level they wanted to do in the first and more enemies I think it had the potential to be a huge hit. But instead they had to get cute, try to show off and reinvent the wheel then ended up putting out something completely unplayable, if it had been up to me I wouldn't have bothered releasing it and made them start over from scratch, the original code would have become a grail for MAME of unreleased ROM curiosities.

With having now seen but not played it I can guarantee you this much, it's no Spy Hunter II that's for sure, which frankly was the Star Wars Holiday Special of video game sequels. If it had been in my local arcade would I have played it? Again with only the videos to go by I'd say yeah probably, it's unlikely it would have been addictive to me like some games and I doubt I would have liked the joysticks, but at first blush it looks like it has potential and I could have seen myself sticking with it until I got through all the levels.

Also alternately known as "IRS Simulator" By the way, the speech on the title screen just about had me fall out of my chair!

My god, imagine if a Bouncer ever turns up? People will be in the streets attacking each other with swords. I've probably already said this here but personally I take some satisfaction just knowing the game is safely preserved, sure I hope to play it someday and would love to see the ROMs and repro/modified boards put out but there are some decent play through videos where I get to see what the game's really all about, so it takes most of the mystery out of it for me. Spellsinger... Gremlins... probably Bouncer and maybe Vertigo, too many great games are simply lost forever and that bums me out far more than never being able to play something that is otherwise safely preserved. Re: Interest in head-to-head Missile Command II, isn't that game extremely buggy and the ROMs found from relatively early in its development? Still wouldn't mind playing it and again I'm glad it still exists but at least MM was pretty much completely finished and ready for production, I get the impression MC2 is more a curiosity than much of a playable game.

The cool thing is that I believe halfway decent pics of the original artwork are out there so if someone wanted to recreate it for repro cabs it should be possible, if the ROMs get released someone might even be able to talk the owner of the original cab into letting them scan it and do up a blueprint of the cab itself.

Nice! I'm going to have to check that out, I can think of a ton of games that would be interesting to add spinners and trackballs to! Where's the controls forum? Is that on atariage somewhere?

Crystal Castles with a JOYSTICK?? Yikes, I don't even want to know what it felt like trying to play that version! Fortunately if I understood them right it sounds like they're almost done re-adding trackball support to MMII and just need to tweak it a bit, which just goes to show how smart the people working on this are, to be able to even attempt to do that.

HOLY S**T!!!!!! X 1,000,000!!!! Check out John's Arcade latest video!! Particularly at 2:12:10 !!

Ditto, worry about the important things right now, the rest can wait for as long as necessary.

Do you plan on selling bare boards too?

Meltdown definitely benefited from being compiled, I always liked the game but it seemed very bogged down.

Not to be a pest here, but when you say $500, are you talking total price to get the PCBs and to populate them? Or is that just for the set of blank PCBs? Personally I was hoping to just get the blank PCBs and any custom components initially and slowly populate the rest as money because available and I find other things to cannibalize.

Tornadoboy/Andy starts drooling....

"Zax-and-Violence?" "Noxxaz?" "Zoxxan?" "Zannax?"

Thanks for the update! Hope you feel better!

Thought I'd be a pain and give this topic a nudge. Any updates? Spent a few bucks lately on upgrades and hacks for some TI hardware I've put in a larger case but I figure I probably shouldn't go too deep into it if I'm just going to move on to one of these and/or one of the other motherboard projects being worked on.

At this moment, financial I just bought a FinalGROM99 and have a USB keyboard adapter on order, that's about as much as I want to spend on TI stuff at the moment. Got some things coming up that could be costly, though if not things might look a little different.

I suppose again assuming the onboard is truly capable of being turned off the best plan would be to hold out for the TIPI compatible SAMS, although again I suspect there will be some sort of enhanced motherboard replacement or an entirely newer version of the 4a available before I get to that and might be moving over to it instead.

I think I'm going to go for it as far as the onboard 32k, if it's able to be turned off there's really no reason not to since I already have the parts and I can always get the sidecar later which I might with a TIPI, not to mention it adds some nice blinky lights to the front of the chassis What is the SAMS good for? Any software the uses memory that high? Or do people use it like a flash drive? It seems to me I've heard a SAMS is being developed to go with TIPI instead of the standard 32k memory card.

I've got a 4a motherboard built into an old firewall chassis with a PC supply so I can play around with doing mods and building everything in one convenient box, so far it's got an F18a and switchable crystal console speedup, I've got the original keyboard externally wired up quite awkwardly with a cable and have the Jedi USB keyboard adapter on order. Doing the mainbyte.com 32k in console mod itself doesn't scare me, in the big scheme of things it doesn't look all that complicated, but are there any reasons not to do it over the other available options to boost memory? Does it cause problems with some programs or hardware? There are of course other options like one of the modern 32k sidecar boards but I don't have those parts and I'd rather not spend the money not to mention because of the way things are I'd have to run wires to it, I do however have the parts around to do the in console version. I'll probably add something like a TIPI later but that won't be for a while and I'd like to have 32k now as a have a FinalGROM99 coming. Also mainbyte's mod says it can be "switched off" but I'm not sure if I understand was is meant by that. Does switching it off make it so it's no longer there and any external 32k upgrade like a sidecar can be used? If I do the mod I'll probably do the wait state defeat and LEDs too. This may ultimately all be a moot point as there's some pretty cool stuff being worked on by people here that no doubt will end up replacing whatever I build, but again I want something for right now and I already have my TI abomination mostly built.

This inspired me to finally order a FinalGROM99, I was kind of holding out because there's a couple of really cool projects going on involving replacement motherboards and open source multi-board remakes, but I want to be able to run these NOW Now I've just have to populate the 32K sidecar PCB I have so I can use everything, although that said I think I might still have an original sidecar around somewhere.

This is AWESOME! It's like a walk down memory lane too! Glad someone did Maze of Ariel, that game looked good but was incredibly slow, especially with the initial maze set up. Here's my recommendations, although I don't have any of them on hand to post here but maybe naming them will inspire others who also liked them: Cavern Quest - Moonbeam software Cool platformer that already ran pretty good but might benefit from compiling. Meltdown Rather like the Atari game Turmoil, except it really needs a speed up. Window Washer Platformer where obviously you go around washing windows on a building. Zap-A-Ball Two player game where each player controls a laser gun and try to shoot a falling ball so it lands on the other player's side of the screen. Neat concept, but really too slow in original form to be that playable. Meteor Rescue Someone's really good take on the Taito arcade game Lunar Rescue. Meteor(s) Someone might have already done this one as a game called "Meteors" was posted earlier, the one I'm thinking of had the player opening gates on a bridge to let meteors drop through. Beeline Game where you play a honey bee collecting pollen. Chuck-A-Luck Dice game. The Game of Mr. T Extremely funny multi-level game where you play Mr. T! Shoosh Boomers (If I remember the title correctly) Skiing game. Wizard's Dominion 3D maze game. Schmoo Game where you try to calculate the angle and power to shoot a ball of mud at a character at the other end of the screen.

Bouncer is the holiest of holy grails as far as lost games, sadly I'm getting the impression it's gone for good A few others: - Spellsinger - Gremlins - Williams Devastators - Vertigo