Moon Patrol free play attract mode question

Arthur Dent

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I decided to set my Moon Patrol to free play yeaterday which was not quite as simple of a task as I had hoped as I had to remove the top board to access the DIP switches. This is a bootleg board set so I am not sure if this is the case for official Williams boards.

The DIP switches were not labeled and so I just guessed that when lookng at the where you can read the numbers, that the top one was DIP 1 and the bottom one was DIP 2. I set DIP 1 to free play based on the manual. I went with the assumption that it would be the same switch positions as it is for the real boardset.

When I put it back to gether and powered it on, free play works, but there is no attact mode. It just sits there saying "press 1 or 2 player".

I am wondering if anyone knows if this is normal. If so then it kind of sucks and if not then I need to try and figure out why it is doing this.
 
When I put it back together and powered it on, free play works, but there is no attact mode. It just sits there saying "press 1 or 2 player".

I am wondering if anyone knows if this is normal. If so then it kind of sucks and if not then I need to try and figure out why it is doing this.

Yep, that's normal, and it sucks. When I have arcade parties I hate leaving my Moon Patrol on if no one is playing it because I don't want it to burn in to the monitor.
 
That's why you should contact Souzilla for his HSS Kit with free play attract mode. Best money I ever spent.

PC090189.jpg

PC090190.jpg
 
That's why you should contact Souzilla for his HSS Kit with free play attract mode. Best money I ever spent.

I would but I like keeping my games stock. I'm one of those weirdos that runs in the competitive arcade gaming circles, and add-on kits are verboten for score submissions. I don't want to have to remove/reinstall kits like these all the time. It's not just for me; I occasionally have friends make record attempts at my place too. That's a great solution for those who don't care about such things though.
 
Here is a link to the free play with attract mode for Moon Patrol thread: http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=86629&highlight=moon+patrol+free+play

It gives the link to download the freeplay mod. Basically it just by passes the plain screen and allows the normal attract mode to run. It does not change any of the game code, so even purists should be happy.

ken

Not for what I'm talking about. No ROM hacks or mods of any kind are allowed. The board set has to be original with no modifications. What I should do is take it off free play and jumper the 2-player start button to the coin mech, but I know my coin mech has a wiring problem that shorts out the whole cab, so the mechs are just disconnected since they aren't needed anyway.

Anyway, the point is well made that there is a solution to the problem at hand for those who don't care about submitting scores to the various score tracking bodies.
 
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Hmmmm. Maybe I will just install a button and wire it to the coin mech similar to like what SanTe is suggesting. I want to keep 2 player working but I don't like it when people manualy toggle the coin mech switch. They end up messing up the coin mech by doing that.

Thanks everyone. I feel better just knowing that it is considered normal operation.
 
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