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blstroid: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Blasteroids (c) 1987 Atari Games.

A one or two-player update of Atari's seminal "Asteroids", where the object of the game is to clear all sectors of the asteroids and enemy ships. Once this task is completed, the player goes on to battle Mukor - the "boss" asteroid who rules all galaxies - and destroy him.

The player's ship appears first in the center of four vortices, he or she must chose which vortex they wish to enter, which then transports them to a sector of their chosen star system.

Unlike Asteroids, the player ship has a finite amount of fuel which must be replenished as often as possible. This is achieved by destroying specifically-colored asteroids which turn into collectible crystals. Not all sectors contain the crystal-bearing asteroids, however, and if the player runs out of fuel, a ship is lost. The game contains three different ship configurations and the player can switch between them at any time during a level. The three configurations are : Speeder (small and fast, but weak), Fighter (medium speed and strength) and Warrior (large and strong but very slow).

Additional power-ups can be collected to improve the player's chances, some of the items available are : additional guns, larger fuel tanks, crystal magnets and impervious shields. Some of these add-ons are time-limited while others last until the player's current ship is destroyed. In the asteroid field, there are also 'popcorn' asteroids; small blue rock formations that grow larger and travel faster with each hit they take until they become large, non-moving objects on the screen. These obstacles must be avoided since hitting them will drain all of the ship's fuel, costing the player a life. A popcorn asteroid can not be destroyed. Hitting anything other than bonus power-ups and energy crystals costs precious fuel. Clearing a sector of all of its asteroids takes the player back to a screen and shows a preview of all of the cleared and uncleared sectors in this star system. Some sectors are marked as "unknown" and no preview is offered for these levels. From here, the player can choose which system they wish to tackle next. All systems need to be cleared before the player is given the chance to battle against Mukor himself. To kill Mukor, the player must eliminate each of the volcanoes with multiple blaster hits. Destroying a volcano causes Mukor to release bonus power-up items, and destroying all of the volcanoes causes Mukor to flee, returning the player to the selection vortices.

Later, after all other sectors have been cleared, the player will eventually have to face Mukor again and this time, the enemy boss will have to be destroyed. After Mukor has been destroyed, the game ends.

In the simultaneous two-player game, the first person to fly their ship into a vortex chooses the star system to which the players go. A unique feature of two-person play is the docking of ships : to dock, one player must transform their ship to the largest size while the other transforms to the smallest. By touching the two ships together, they dock and form one large ship. The player originally with the larger ship now controls the speed and direction of the docked ship and can fire straight forward. The player with the smaller ship controls a turret that can rotate and fire independently of the main ship. The dock is broken when the player with the small ship hits their 'thrust' button.

- TECHNICAL -

Cabinet dimensions : 70'' (178cm) High x 26,75'' (70cm) Wide x 34,38'' (87cm) Deep.

Cabinet weight : 302 lbs (137 kg).

Game ID : 136057

Main CPU : 68000 (@ 7.15909 Mhz), M6502 (@ 1.7895 Mhz)

Sound Chips : YM2151 (@ 3.579 Mhz)

Screen orientation : Horizontal

Video resolution : 640 x 240 pixels

Screen refresh : 60.00 Hz

Palette colors : 512

Players : 2

Control : dial

Buttons : 4

- TRIVIA -

The game was originally to have areas in which a certain ship form was required to get through them, but the game's production was pushed forward, and it didn't receive the fine-tuning that was originally planned.

Background space-scapes, pictures of space ships, asteroids and other obstacles are actually digitized pictures of real-life objects. The asteroids were digitized by non other than ILM (Industrial Light and Magic), Lucasart's industry-leading special effects company.

Mark Twitty holds the official record for this game with 2,773,840 points on April 20, 1988.

- UPDATES -

The prototype version of Blasteroids has the programmer's head (Ed Rotberg) hidden in it.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* Ed Rotberg (Prototype version only) : To find his head, start a game on medium difficulty... complete the first wave, then pick the upper right hand wave next. Shoot the blue crystal rocks until they turn into spinning heads.

- SERIES -

1. Asteroids (1979)

2. Asteroids Deluxe (1981)

3. Space Duel (1982)

4. Blasteroids (1987)

5. Asteroids Hyper 64 (1999, Nintendo 64)

- STAFF -

Staff : Ed Rotberg, Peter Lipson, Gary Stempler, Sam Comstock, Rob Rowe, Mike Hally, Brad Fuller, Mike Albaugh, Chris Downend

- PORTS -

* Computers :

Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1987)

Commodore C64 (1988)

Amstrad CPC (1989)

Atari ST (1989)

Commodore Amiga (1992) : European release.

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.35b11 [Aaron Giles]

0.33b4 [Aaron Giles]

Artwork available

Bugs:

- [possible] A wordy issue. Dorsola (ID 01180)

WIP:

- 0.143u4: Changed VSync to 59.922748 Hz.

- 0.139u1: Aaron Giles changed atarigen_state to be a base class from which all the related Atari drivers derive their state from.

- 0.135u4: Some more Atari driver shuffling [Aaron Giles]: Added atarigen_init() function which allocates all timers and registers for save states. Updated all drivers to call it. Converted some drivers to use device timers.

- 0.135u3: Aaron Giles converted atari drivers over to using driver_data for the most part. Some shared systems still exist with globals, but this tackles the atarigen module and the variables local to each driver.

- 0.133u1: Renamed (blstroi3) to (blstroid3), (blstroi2) to (blstroid2), (blstroig) to (blstroidg) and (blsthead) to (blstroidh).

- 2nd May 2009: Mr. Do - Shoegazer was out taking pics one day at Hershey Park, and got a good shot of a Blasteroids a while ago. A day after JC posts the picture on the forum, Kiltron cleans it up to perfection.

- 0.122u4: Changed M6502 clock speed to 1789772 Hz and YM2151 to 3579545 Hz.

- 0.114u2: Aaron Giles and Couriersud added more accurate video timing to most of the Atari 68000-era games. The parameters are from published specs, not derived. The board uses an SOS-2 chip to generate video signals. Changed VSync to 59.922743 Hz.

- 0.114: Couriersud added general save state support to the atarijsa and atarigen modules.

- 0.105u4: Updated address map (full map verified from schematics).

- 0.76u1: Aaron Giles added clones Blasteroids (rev 3) and (German, rev 2). Changed parent description to 'Blasteroids (rev 4)' and clone '(version 2)' to '(rev 2)'.

- 0.62: Russell Howard fixed service mode is listed twice.

- 0.60: Changed palettesize to 16384 colors. Added 'Service Mode' dipswitch.

- 0.37b15: Changed M6502 CPU2 clock speed to 1789500 Hz and YM2151 to 3579000 Hz.

- 0.37b5: Added clone Blasteroids (with heads).

- 19th June 2000: Aaron Giles added a new Blasteroids romset, which replaces the rocks with designer Ed Rotberg's head under certain circumstances.

- 0.36RC1: Changed 68000 CPU1 clock speed to 7159090 Hz, M6502 CPU2 to 1789772 Hz and YM2151 to 3579545 Hz.

- 0.35b12: Removed TMS5220 speech.

- 0.35b11: Aaron Giles added Blasteroids (version 4). Added Pokey sound. Changed 'Blasteroids' to clone '(version 2)'. Renamed (blstroid) to (blstroi2).

- 0.34b8: High resolution sprites in Blasteroids [Nicola Salmoria].

- 0.33b4: Aaron Giles added Blasteroids (Atari Games 1987).

LEVELS: 68

Other Emulators:

* Retrocade

Recommended Games (Asteroids):

Blasto

Asteroids

Asteroids Deluxe

Dai San Wakusei Meteor

Astropal

Space Duel

Space Force

Vortex

Moon Shuttle

Moon War

Space Fortress

Sinistar

Spectrum I+ (Vectrex - Mine Storm)

Blasteroids

Space Lords

Romset: 1600 kb / 25 files / 557.8 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Blasteroids (rev 4)</description>

<manufacturer>Atari Games</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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