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abattle: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Astro Battle (c) 1979 Sidam.

Astro Battle is a 2-D, space shooter style game. Your job is to protect the various sectors from the hoards of invading aliens. You will have to defeat four waves of alien spaceships in order to dock with the 'GS' ship and refuel. In addition to battling the alien spaceships, you will also have to dodge bombs that seem to come out of nowhere. Armed only with your fighter and a lot of spirit, you must ensure that you clear the screen of invaders before they pass you by. All in all, another walk in the park.

- TECHNICAL -

Main CPU : M6502 (@ 662.187 Khz)

Sound Chips : Samples

Screen orientation : Vertical

Video resolution : 240 x 240 pixels

Screen refresh : 60.00 Hz

Palette colors : 16

Players : 2

Control : 2-way joystick

Buttons : 1

- TRIVIA -

Official Releases :

Astro Fighter [Upright model] (Data East)

Astro Fighter [Cocktail model] (Data East)

Astro Fighter [Slimline model] (Data East)

Licensed products :

Astro Fighter [Upright model] (Gremlin/Sega)

Astro Fighter [Slimline model] (Gremlin/Sega)

Astro Fighter [Upright model] (Taito)

Astro Fighter [Cocktail model] (Taito)

Astro Fire (René Pierre)

Astro Fighter (Sonic)

Bootleg/Hacks :

Astro Combat

Astro-Battle (Sidam)

Super Star Battle (SG)

- SCORING -

Blue Alien : 20 points

Purple Alien : 30 points

Green Alien : 40 points

Yellow Alien : 50 points

'GS' Alien : 300-1000 points

Bomb : 60 points per bombs destroyed

Fuel Bonus : 3,000, 6,000 or 9000 points

Spaceship Bonus : 5000 points/spaceship

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* When you start the game, your fighter will be in the middle at the bottom of the screen. The alien spaceships have two ways they shoot at your fighter. They either shoot straight down or they shoot diagonally. You must take out all the alien spaceships on a screen. If you fail to do so, you will have to deal with their full complement again and your fighter will be set at the next higher level. If you happen to get killed during a wave, you only have to deal with the remaining alien spaceships.

* Fuel is a precious commodity in this game. You may be able to let one or two waves of aliens escape but you will really be pressed to finish the entire round with enough fuel. If your fuel runs out, your game is over regardless of how many fighters you have left.

* You can only have one shot on the screen at a time. This means you will need to plan your shots and don't fire unless you need to.

* The first four waves of alien spaceships, with 15 alien spaceships per wave, come down in distinct formations. Understanding how these formations are set up is the key to taking them out quickly.

1) The Blue Aliens come down in a 'pyramid-type' formation. Starting from the bottom, the numbers are five at the bottom, four at the next level, three at the next level, two at the next level, and one at the top.

2) The Purple Aliens come down in two straight lines. With seven in the bottom line and eight in the top line.

3) The Green Aliens come down in a haphazard-type formation. They move back and forth across the screen and they are the hardest spaceships to deal with.

4) The Yellow Aliens come down in three rows with five spaceships per row.

* As you shoot the alien formations, you will notice that the remaining alien spaceships will speed up. The key is to shoot them high up on the screen so that you are not desperately trying to take out the last ones at the bottom. This also means taking out the bottom attackers first to give yourself some 'breathing' room.

* In addition to the alien spaceships, you must be wary of the bombs that drop down. When you are lining up your shots at the alien spaceships, always be aware of where the bombs may be heading and act accordingly.

* On the fifth wave, you will have to deal with the 'GS' ship. Its shots are pretty easy to avoid and it must be hit dead center to stop it, collect the points, and refuel your fighter for the next round.

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

F.A.Q. by Kevin Butler A.K.A. War Doc

MAME Info:

0.34RC1 [Zsolt Vasvari]

0.30 [Lee Taylor]

Samples required

SETUP:

- Toggle background color (blue/black) in the 'Driver Configuration' menu.

Bugs:

- acombat, acombato: Score resets. Germano (ID 01540)

- sstarbtl: [possible] Graphic corruption during demonstration. Tafoid (ID 01554)

WIP:

- 0.135u3: David Haywood added driver configuration to Astro Fighter to emulate common wire hack which causes black background.

- 16th November 2008: Guru - I recently picked up a pile of junk for spares and repairs from a local friend. It turned out there was quite a bit of interesting stuff in this lot. As far as I can make out, I got a Astro Fighter (Data East) PCB.

- 0.122u6: Changed visible area to 256x256 and changed VSync to 56.308461 Hz.

- 0.118u3: Atari Ace added new AM_READ_PORT() macro which lets you define an input port read callback based on a port tag. This is now preferred over the previous technique of calling port_tag_to_handler() within an AM_READ() macro. Updated Astro Fighter that uses the latter pattern to the new system.

- 0.115u4: Astro Fighter driver update [Zsolt Vasvari]: Added memory map/interrupt/video timings from schematics. General driver clean-up. Changed visible area to 248x256 and VSync to 59.948171 Hz. Added 'Flip Screen for Player 2' dipswitch.

- 0.109: f205v added clone Astro Combat (older, PZ). This is an older revision of Astro Combat (most probably manufactured by Sidam), with incorrect spelling for fuel as FLUEL and the main boss sporting "PZ". Changed description of clone 'Astro Combat' to 'Astro Combat (newer, CB)'.

- 0.103u1: Pierpaolo Prazzoli added clone Super Star Battle.

- 28th December 2005: f205v, Gnoppi and Corrado Tomaselli dumped Super Star Battle.

- 0.92u1: Pierpaolo Prazzoli added clone Astro Combat.

- 12th February 2005: f205v and Corrado Tomaselli dumped Astro Combat (older, PZ). Update 20060917: I finally got hold of a spare romset for this PCB. It is on older revision of "Astro Combat" (most probably manufactured by Sidam), with incorrect spelling for fuel as FLUEL and the main boss sporting "PZ". Also dumped Astro Combat (newer, CB). This is a newer revision of "Astro Combat" (most probably manufactured by Sidam), with correct spelling for FUEL and the main boss sporting "CB".

- 0.90: Pierpaolo Prazzoli added clone Astro Fire (Rene Pierre 1979). And fixed with Highwayman the Astro Battle clones.

- 0.89u5: Highwayman added with help from Pierpaolo Prazzoli the clones Astro Battle (set 1) and (set 2). One set may be a bad or they may simply be different. Protection involves the EPROM datalines being routed through an 8bit x 256byte PROM. This game is not currently playable due to the NMI causing a reset. It may have a more complex palette, it needs to be investigated when i get more time.

- 14th June 2001: Peter Fyfe dumped Astro Battle (set 1).

- 27th February 2000: Nicola Salmoria fixed Astro Fighter from crashing.

- 0.35RC1: Changed description to 'Astro Fighter (set 1)'.

- 0.35b2: Known issues: The background is blue. It was black in all the original boards checked, but there is no obvious bug in the emulation.

- 0.34RC1: Samples support in Astro Fighter [Zsolt Vasvari]. The sound library took a lot of work. Two boardsets made this possible. Changed 'Astro Fighter (set 1)' to clone '(set 3)' and '(set 2)' to parent 'Astro Fighter' and '(set 3)' to '(set 2)'. Renamed (astrof) to (astrof3), (astrof2) to (astrof) and (astrof3) to (astrof2).

- 0.34b2: Zsolt Vasvari added clone Astro Fighter (set 3) and added accurate colors (PROMs required). Added color prom astrf.clr.

- 0.33b7: Changed description to 'Astro Fighter (set 1)' and clone '(alternate)' to '(set 2)'.

- 0.31: Santeri Saarimaa added high score saving to Astro Fighter.

- 0.30: Lee Taylor added Astro Fighter (Data East 1980) and clone (alternate). TODO: Sound, correct Colours (current are best guess from memory) and dipswitches.

- 27th December 1997: Malcor dumped Astro Fighter (set 3).

LEVELS: 5

Other Emulators:

* JAE

Recommended Games (Space Shooter):

Andromeda

Astro Fighter

Super Astro Fighter (DECO Cassette)

Astro Wars

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Sky Love

Destroyer

Mad Alien

Magical Spot

Magical Spot II

Moon Cresta

Moon Quasar

Quasar

Space Trek

Speak & Rescue

Pisces

UniWar S

Altair

Cosmos

Defend the Terra Attack on the Red UFO

Terranean (DECO Cassette)

Saturn

Romset: 13 kb / 7 files / 9.03 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Astro Battle (set 1)</description>

<manufacturer>bootleg? (Sidam)</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</configuration>

</game>

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