Rockola's (SNK's) Pioneer Balloon: Anyone own it? Play it?

Phetishboy

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Rockola's (SNK's) Pioneer Balloon: Anyone own it? Play it?

Just got my dedicated PCB back from repair (thanks Craftymech!) and have been playing it a bit. My board has never worked correctly in the 3-4 years I've owned it, so I forgot how truly weird this game was. I played my first few games on a Nibbler adapter without the fire button wired. I just basically evaded arrows and tried to get as far as I could. Still not quite getting the concept of the random arrows hitting the birds (and you getting 400 pts every time they do) and how you somehow can cause that. Haven't got past the first stage yet but I hope to once I wire the bomb button. I'll post some pics and screenshots and update my progress as I go. Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has this game and or plays it regularly.
 
I think this is the best Rockola game (licensed or otherwise) to the point of almost swaying me towards buying one of CraftyMech's Bitkit FPGAs... Almost.
 
Neither game did I see BITD.
But both are fun on BitKit.

Pioneer Balloon feels slightly "awkward" and I am not sure if I'd have been happy about blowing a quarter on it back in the arcades. but for a multi-game, it's cool.

The "almost" on the bitkit will quickly be tipped toward buying when you become aware that Crafty is continually adding games and platforms to it.
 
I'll chime in although I'm a bit biased ;)

Love me some Pioneer Balloon! You are right that when you play Fantasy & Pioneer back to back you pick up on the similarities (hot air balloon, monkeys, birds, coconuts?)

The game is delightfully weird. It can be a challenging shooter at times, really picking up speed on the second loop of stages. The music is fun, and the second stage of the game even plays a rendition of "Yellow Rose of Texas". And we all know there were coconut throwing monkeys in the Old West, so the game is also historically accurate.
 
. And we all know there were coconut throwing monkeys in the Old West, so the game is also historically accurate.

Public service announcement just released out of Austin.....your humor has landed you on THE watch list.

 
Some actual screenshots of my game:

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Sorry about the massive curl on the right side. It seems this, Nibbler and Jump Bug are pretty finicky when it comes to their video output and all have different sweet spots. I adjust the monitor perfectly for one of them, then I pop in a different board and the image is all out of whack again.
 
Can't I just fly my f$&$in balloon in peace without monkeys, natives, birds, and effin tornadoes trying to ruin my day?!??! It's like poor paperboy trying to do HIS job with all of these bulls$&@ obstacles being hurled at him. Who needs it?!?
 
think that is the first time I've seen either of those titles in full cabinet with sideart and marquee form.

Great work!
 
Can't I just fly my f$&$in balloon in peace without monkeys, natives, birds, and effin tornadoes trying to ruin my day?!??! It's like poor paperboy trying to do HIS job with all of these bulls$&@ obstacles being hurled at him. Who needs it?!?

Ha! It was tough back then on the open prairie.
 
Was wondering, the nibbler and fantasy both share the same boardset...does pioneer balloon share it too?

All three games share the same hardware, with slight modifications for Pioneer Balloon (and Fantasy has a speech daughter board). The games were converted back and forth often, most likely exclusively to Nibbler, since the other two games were pretty obscure.

My soon to be released BitKit FPGA board plays all three games currently, and I'm working on getting Vanguard running as well (very similar hardware, biggest difference being the sound section). Zarzon (Satan of Saturn) is the other title that was released in the US on the SNK 6502 platform, which I also plan to add.
 
All three games share the same hardware, with slight modifications for Pioneer Balloon (and Fantasy has a speech daughter board). The games were converted back and forth often, most likely exclusively to Nibbler, since the other two games were pretty obscure.

My soon to be released BitKit FPGA board plays all three games currently, and I'm working on getting Vanguard running as well (very similar hardware, biggest difference being the sound section). Zarzon (Satan of Saturn) is the other title that was released in the US on the SNK 6502 platform, which I also plan to add.

What were the modifications for pioneer? I know that fantasy had the speech board, nibbler did not...and I can switch between both on the same boardset with a few chip swaps...is pioneer the same way?
 
What were the modifications for pioneer? I know that fantasy had the speech board, nibbler did not...and I can switch between both on the same boardset with a few chip swaps...is pioneer the same way?

Pioneer uses a different address base for the I/O. So either the roms have to be patched, or the Nibbler/Fantasy board set has to be modified. Swapping all references to $BXXX in the Pioneer code to $2XXX, should get the Pioneer code running on a Nibbler/Fantasy board. You also need to swap out the 2 background roms, 3 sound roms, and two color proms.
 
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