New Artworks for VFD games

Here's my first (and not the last) new artwork pack for MAME 0.167. The first new artwork i've done is the bezel for Coleco Pac-Man:

The second one is that i have change the color of the maze so it would look like more the arcade version (and if Coleco would have made it that way, it would have been much greater...well that's my opinion)

The third one is the only clone known of Coleco Pac-Man: the Gakken Super Puck Monster.

Still not enough of good old Paccy ? Then here's the bezel for Entex Pac-Man 2:

After the Entex version, i have done an artwork that was not critical but really helps when playing that game: Mattel Star Hawk (bezel with the crosshair)

and the final of the first pack (the cherry on the sunday for some of you), the bezel for Tomy Tron:

So that's it for the first new artwork pack. And here's a preview of one of the next artwork (not vectorized yet)

So try out those artworks! You can download the pack in the menu on your right (just under "downloads"). =)


--- Sly DC ---

What is LÖVE M.E.G.S. ?

LÖVEMEGS is a mega project which consists of simulating various electronic handheld games like the ones made by Luca Antignano (aka MADrigal - see his wonderful web site HERE). MADrigal's handheld simulators are among the most known as well as Peter Hirschberg's LEDhead which simulates many Mattel's electronic handhelds that were released in the late 70's, but they have three small problems which i find a bit irritating: small playfiled of games (we can't make them bigger or fullcreen), can't hide your desktop and finally, they work only with Windows or some old OS's. So that's why i chose LÖVE to program these handheld simulators since LÖVE can work with Windows, Mac, Linux and a few others OS's and can make any games fullscreen or not. So this project is for simulating these electronic handheld games for digital archival and historical purpose.

Now M.E.S.S. emulates many electronic handhelds games (especially VFD's and LED's) since version 0.156.

LÖVEMEGS is divided into these categories, which are:

01 - Electro-Mechanical Game [EMG] (example: Tomy Blip)
02 - Light Emitting Diode/Light Games [LED/LGT] (example: Mattel Football/MB Simon)
03 - Liquid Crystal Display Games [LCD] (example: Nintendo Game & Watches)
04 - Color LCD Games [CLG] (example: Nintendo Tabletops)
05 - Vacuum Fluorescent Display Games [VFD] (example: Coleco Arcade Tabletops)
06 - Wrist-Watch Games [WWG] (example: Nelsonic Pac-Man Watch)

Any handheld games that has a microprocessor, especially in the categories 02, 03, 04 & 05, are now on hold to see which handheld games will be added in future releases of MAME. So that leave categories 01 (EMG) and 06 (WWG) to simulate.

The biggest problem that it's "almost" impossible to simulate all the electronic handheld games out there. More than 2,000 exists and some companies continues to produce them (only VFD games aren't produced anymore, which is a real shame since they are the best ever electronic handheld games). So the best is to choose one or some games that you really love (or loved - you had one in the past) to play. If you have a problem to chose a game or need some informations about it, there is many web sites that talks about electronic handheld games but the best one i like is the "Handheld Museum" (created and maintained by Rik) web site and it also have a forum to discuss and help out about any kind of electronic handheld games.

There is also a sub-category for the EML-types that would be quite fun to add/do which are "Electro-Mechanical Toys - [EMT for short]" (an example: Nintendo Duck Hunt - 1977) that could/can be added to category #1 (Electro-Mechanical/Light Games) since these EMT-types are very close to EML-types games. Even some EMT-types are based on old "Penny Arcade" games.

Here's a list of Electro-Mechanical games i intent to simulate soon:

* Horizon/Yonezawa Screen Tennis
* Illco Magic Tennis
* Marx T.V. Tennis
* Marx T.V. Hockey
* Sears Rocket Launch (made by Alps)
* Tomy Arcade Attack (1978)/Cosmic Clash (1982)
* Tomy Arcade Racing (1978)/Daring Driver (1982)
* Tomy Blip
* Tomy Digital Derby
* Waco Electro Tic-Tac-Toe
* Waco Black Jack 21 (pocket edition)
* Waco Draw Poker (pocket edition)
* Waco Slot Machine (pocket edition)


--- Sly DC ---

Hanimex HMG-7900 cartridge PCB scans

I'm still trying to retrace all the pins of the D779C-300 so when it will be finished, i will post the pinouts and infos. But in the meantime, here's some scans of the cartridges i have so far:

 SD-201 (front)

SD-201 (back)

SD-202 (front)

SD-202 (back)

SD-203 (front)

SD-203 (back)

SD-205 (back)

SD-205 (front)

As you can see, the SD-201 (aka Chaser/Gobeur) doesn't have any ROM, only a PCB with some jumpers to activate the Chaser/Gobeur game which reside in the D779C-300. So when another cartridge is connected, it shuts-off the Chaser/Gobeur game and the ROM replaces the Chaser/Gobeur game.

SD-202 (Space Smash) and SD-203 (Saucer Attack) have the same PCB's and connections, the only difference between the two is the model number of the ROM which are made by Motorola: SC87027P (SD-202) and SC94806P (SD-203).

The SD-205 (breakaway) PCB has also the same connections BUT it has a CD4069, two diodes and three resistors as extra components. Since i don't have all the other cartridges, i can't say what is it truly used for as i didn't retrace the PCB, but it looks like (just guessing here) that it is for the paddle as it is the only game that uses the paddle. Will know for sure when i have retrace it. ;)

I tried to find information about the Motorola ROM(or Masked ROM as plgDavid suggested since he told me that many time masked ROMs doesn't have any specific indications) but i only found that some companies has still has some of the Motorola ROMs in stock so no datasheets or extra information (so far). But what bugs me is that the smallest EPROM that has 28-pins is an 2764 (and compatible) which can contain up to 8K, but seeing how the games are very blocky and simple, i would estimate that the games are 1 or 2K in size.

I will lend these carts to plgDavid so that he will make dumps to preserve them and to see the Soundic SD-200/Hanimex HMG-7900 emulated one day. =)


--- Sly DC ---