Arcade lags (Slows down) in 4 player mode

crash41301

Member
Joined
Jan 7, 2010
Messages
165
Reaction score
0
Location
Louisville, Kentucky
Hi, New to the forum. I just picked up a TMNT arcade to start what already seems like its going to be a new hobby for me. :)

Anyway, the machine I bought works well unless there are 4 players playing. It seems when all four are playing that the machine will lag, sometimes alot. This especially seems to happen on later boards in the game.

I've a couple of thoughts, and I thought I might run them by everyone to see what they say.

Thought 1) The game dip switches have it set on the hardest setting. I wonder if perhaps the CPU just cant keep up with 4 turtles, and all the baddies that show up for 4 turtles on "very difficult" setting?

Thought 2) The game board is really old. Perhaps it has lost some speed in the last 20 years and no longer can keep up but used to be able to?

Thought 3) The game board is getting warm, and thus slowing things down. (Kind of like my laptop does when it gets hot? )

Anyone have any other input? Id really like NOT to turn the difficulty down. Ive thought about rigging up a fan to blow on the board to keep it cool? (If its getting hot... I've no idea if it is or not)

Any other input? Ive noticed the sound gets kind of choppy when the game slows down too.

Thanks everyone!
 
if there are chips getting hot, i would definately put a heatsink on them as soon as possible.

check the +5 volts. could be the switcher needs to be turned up a little bit but use a multimeter so you dont turn it up too high.
 
Thought 1) The game dip switches have it set on the hardest setting. I wonder if perhaps the CPU just cant keep up with 4 turtles, and all the baddies that show up for 4 turtles on "very difficult" setting?

I remember lots of slowdown with this game with 4 players especially when there is a lot of fighting going on. The more moving objects on the screen, and the bigger these objects are, and the more player input into the cpu(moving joysticks and hitting buttons)the harder the processors have to work. Sometimes they can't keep up. Game programmers often got to ambitious, given the processor's capabilities that were available at the time.
 
Thought 1) The game dip switches have it set on the hardest setting. I wonder if perhaps the CPU just cant keep up with 4 turtles, and all the baddies that show up for 4 turtles on "very difficult" setting?

I remember lots of slowdown with this game with 4 players especially when there is a lot of fighting going on. The more moving objects on the screen, and the bigger these objects are, and the more player input into the cpu(moving joysticks and hitting buttons)the harder the processors have to work. Sometimes they can't keep up. Game programmers often got to ambitious, given the processor's capabilities that were available at the time.

+1

I remember playing quite a few games that would slow down during busy scenes, like when there are lots of enemies or explosions at once. I guess back in the day, programmers didn't really care if the framerate dropped a bit, or there wasn't much they could do about it. These old game boards don't have dynamic clock frequency or power management features like your laptop, so it's very unlikely one would slow down due to temperature or even age.
 
They will occasionally freeze up due to high heat, not sure about slowdown though. Trying to execute some of guile's combos in street fighter 2 were often frustrating due to slowdown.
 
Thought 1) The game dip switches have it set on the hardest setting. I wonder if perhaps the CPU just cant keep up with 4 turtles, and all the baddies that show up for 4 turtles on "very difficult" setting?

In all likelyhood this is the problem - the programmers just went too far and outpaced what the hardware can actually do. This actually isn't that uncommon, I suspect, because it's really easy to do - the code just says how many enemies, and it doesn't necessarily get tested as well in the final stages, so perhaps no one notices that it's a problem until it's too late.

Sadly, there's nothing you can do about this.


Thought 2) The game board is really old. Perhaps it has lost some speed in the last 20 years and no longer can keep up but used to be able to?

No. Electronics don't 'slow down' as they age. If they did, you'd have problems with the sync signals to the monitor, among other things.


Thought 3) The game board is getting warm, and thus slowing things down. (Kind of like my laptop does when it gets hot? )

No. Your laptop slows down because the OS is deliberately slowing itself down to prevent an overheat. Arcade games like this don't have that kind of intelligence built in. If you're lucky they might have a thermal cut-out (oops I'm too hot - I'll turn myself off!), but they are meant to run full-tilt all the time. There should be enough ventilation in the cabinet for the board to keep within the specs of the chips - if not, the game will crash or something, not slow down.
 
i just remembered a RAM slowdown with the DEFENDER game.
in the first wave, if you capture all the humans after they get captured and before they fall to thier deaths, it slows the game down quite a bit. its slow enough that one can go baiter hunting and rack up many thousands of points. i think the game allows 12 baiters, so when you kill one, another one spawns.
the trick is to fire a bunch and the baiters gork out and "warp" to another part of the world so you dont die. then after enough points or if you think you are going to die, you can land your humnas and rack up a bunch more points and lots of cool sounds. its fun to fire real slow like and kill baiters...
it a great way to start a long DEFENDER game anyway. try it and see. theres a trick to it and its not easy to capture them all.
 
Back
Top Bottom