I've completed another high score save mod for a fairly unpopular game. Released by Midway but actually programmed by some Brits (John Lathbury and the Stampers of Zilec/Zenitone and "Rare" fame), it doesn't seem to be very common in the US and it's definitely not common in the UK.
Whilst it has a high score table with player initial entry, it's always reset on power-up, and to blank initials and zero scores. It also has a horrible freeplay mode where the Blue Print logo just sits there burning a hole in the CRT...
A few hundred bytes of Z80 code and it now has proper freeplay maintaining attract mode, and a saved 10-position high score table, which can be defaulted on power-up. Not much else to say, it just adds some nice features (that in my opinion should have been there from day one...)
- freeplay maintaining attract mode selected by the standard "freeplay" DIP switch
- displays "FREEPLAY" on the screen (instead of the original which shows number of credits - and still allows you to enter credits in factory-freeplay mode)
- "FREEPLAY" not displayed when playing the game
- 10 position high score table saving scores and initials to serial EEPROM
- default high score table by holding P1 UP on power-up
Photos show freeplay attract in mame, and high score tables and HSS daughterboard on real hardware
Freeplay-attract code is available free-of-charge and you just need to reprogramme 2 ROMs. For high score save you would need a Z80 HSS daughterboard.
Whilst it has a high score table with player initial entry, it's always reset on power-up, and to blank initials and zero scores. It also has a horrible freeplay mode where the Blue Print logo just sits there burning a hole in the CRT...
A few hundred bytes of Z80 code and it now has proper freeplay maintaining attract mode, and a saved 10-position high score table, which can be defaulted on power-up. Not much else to say, it just adds some nice features (that in my opinion should have been there from day one...)
- freeplay maintaining attract mode selected by the standard "freeplay" DIP switch
- displays "FREEPLAY" on the screen (instead of the original which shows number of credits - and still allows you to enter credits in factory-freeplay mode)
- "FREEPLAY" not displayed when playing the game
- 10 position high score table saving scores and initials to serial EEPROM
- default high score table by holding P1 UP on power-up
Photos show freeplay attract in mame, and high score tables and HSS daughterboard on real hardware
Freeplay-attract code is available free-of-charge and you just need to reprogramme 2 ROMs. For high score save you would need a Z80 HSS daughterboard.
