Crystal Castles FREEPLAY ATTRACT MOD

So I feel like a dope over this, but maybe it will help someone if I talk it out.

A few months ago, I picked up a CC cabinet from Craigslist that came from a fellow KLOV member. When I bought it, I vaguely remembered hearing something about a "free play" mode, but I did not look into it during the purchase. I simply assumed it had a kit installed or a hacked ROM set and I was just very excited to get to take this game home.

I had been enjoying the free play setup but started to wonder why there was no attract mode. After some searching (using the advanced search feature ;)), I found this thread, which seemed like it might explain what I had... possibly the the V4 Free Play Hack. Howver that link is dead so I have not been able to compare it to what I see.

I decided to investigate. The manual mentions on page 2-4, under Coin Value:

That line did not make much sense to me, but I figured it was worth checking out. Maybe it would explain how my game was setup. I decided to enter self-test mode. I flipped the test switch, and nothing happened. That seemed odd. I began to assume that maybe this was a result of a hacked ROM set.

I removed the board. (The EMI shield made that a fun experience.) Once it was out, I was surprised to see a very clean, factory-looking board and eprom set, with no signs of modification. I dumped the ROMs and compared them against MAME. To my surprise, they matched the ccastle2 ROM set... not V4 and no hacks. That left me wondering how I was getting free play.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the self-test toggle switch had the two wire connections on opposite sides at the top of the six terminals. This did not look like my other Atari games, so I repositioned the wires to match the normal layout. After doing that, I was finally able to enter test mode.

Inside the Game Options Menu, I found the Coin Value setting, as described in the manual. It was set to "Free Play" I changed it back to one credit, switched out of test mode, and a similar looking screen appeared, but this time it said 0 credits. After a short wait, the game entered attract mode.

So after all this, I have the "for game demonstrations" free play and didn't realize it because of a miswired self test switch. I am probably missing something else with this setup but now I am really curious why a free play hack exists if the game already includes a "free play" option?

This was a good learning experience howver it was a huge time sink. Anyway, maybe this post will help someone else avoid a goose chase:LOL:
Atari's version of the game has it so that when set to FREEPLAY MODE it always adds 2 credits to the counter and it just sits on the press start screen. So what my hack does is essentially tell the game to not add those 2 credits to the game and to add either one or two credits based on the buttons you hit and automatically starts that mode. So while the game technically has FREEPLAY it is kind of bad, and there is another hack somewhere out there on the Ausie Arcade site but it is indeed dead, so i had to make this one. But if you are like me and like to leave your games on for prolonged periods of time i would recommend this hack. i kind of want to revisit this one day and optimize it a little more. It is fully functional but there are some things in the code that I know I could do better.
 
Thanks for your reply and your mod! Your hack definitely makes sense to me. It was the Aussie arcade mod that had me wondering, however the lack of attract mode while on free play was the real motivation for investigating. I really enjoy the attract mode and didn't like how my game would just sit static in Free Play. I think I am going to order some eproms to give your mod a shot and in the meantime keep it on coin mode and use a thin ribbon cable button for credits.
 
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