Just noticed you replied to this Ray, I'll check that out, thanks for the advice. It does look like a ram problem, there's lines and shit in some of the graphics. Very strange game, pcb, guns, artwork, everything.
Can I use a logic probe on those and just replace the ones that look different?
An old trick that work for me many of times but not always is that you piggy back a new ram over the old one. If it changes it to normal or even changes the your problem lines in picture at least you narrowed it down to the section.
What I do when I'm working on a game board that I have no schematics for is momentarily touch two SRAM data pins together with the logic probe tip and see what changes on the screen. This helps me narrow down which RAMs are for background, overlay (scores/texts), and player/enemy sprites.
If it reboots then I found the Work RAM or Backup RAM.
Sometimes you can get the piggyback method to work.
Hey that's a good idea with the shorting the two pins together, that'd be easy to do as you work through it and see if anything changes. Thanks!
Edit: I eventually got around to working on this, you were right, 2 of the ram chips were bad. By shorting the signals I was able to see a similar problem pop up on the screen, replaced those two chips and it fixed it. YOU THE MAN