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looping: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Looping (c) 1982 Video Games GMBH.

As the player begins his flight into Adventure-Land, his airplane is quickly surrounded by hot air balloons. WATCH OUT! These seemingly innocent colorful objects mean destruction.

Immediately the Player's flying skills are tested. The hot air balloons challenge and engage the Player in a fierce dogfight. The Player must loop his plane to avoid and destroy the swirling balloons.

As the Player continues his journey into Adventure-Land he encounters the Maze Tunnel. Now the Player must guide and loop his airplane through the labyrinth with precision movements.

- TECHNICAL -

The Looping arcade machine contains a series of relatively rare Texas Instruments CPUs and a dedicated DAC (Digital To Analog Converter) sound chip, capable of speaking audible commands to the player throughout his/her mission. The Texas Instruments CPUs are reportedly difficult to find if they need to be replaced, and original hardware is becoming scarce as the years go on.

Players : 2

Control : 2-way joystick (vertical)

Buttons : 2

=> [A] FIRE, [B] FLIGHT ACCELERATOR

- TRIVIA -

Released in April 1982. Looping was developed in Parma, Italy ans was completed in 8 months.

It was licensed to Venture Line for US manufacture and distribution.

David Teehee holds the official record for this game with 1,469,970 points.

- SERIES -

1. Looping (1982)

2. Sky Bumper (1982)

- STAFF -

Developed by: Giorgio Ugozzoli

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Colecovision (1983)

Atari 2600 (1983 - Unreleased prototype /2003 - Recovered and released by CGE Services, made available for purchase for the very first time ever, at the 'Classic Gaming Expo 2003').

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.138u3 [Andrew Welburn]

0.37b12 [Phil Stroffolino]

Artwork available

NOTE:

- The original ROM images for Looping (c) 1982 Video Games GmbH have been made available for free, non-commercial use. Authorization from Reinhard Stompe, founder of Video Games GmbH.

Bugs:

- Some voice samples are either cut short or don't play at all. Kurushimi / RansAckeR (ID 00502)

- When you enter the second part of the game, after destroying the terminal, most of the time music begins to play and no sound effects are played (normal I guess), but other times no music is played and sound effects continue to play. RansAckeR (ID 00187)

WIP:

- 0.138u3: Andrew Welburn added Looping (Video Games GmbH 1982). Changed 'Looping (set 1)' to clone 'Looping (Venture Line license, set 1)' and 'Looping (set 2)' to 'Looping (Venture Line license, set 2)'. Renamed (looping) to (loopingv) and (loopinga) to (loopingva).

- 18th June 2010: Smitdogg - Andrew Welburn dumped the original Video Games GmbH. W. version of Looping. The one in MAME is a licensed out version.

- 0.138u1: Couriersud added a readyq callback to the TMS5220 interface. The INTQ and READYQ are connected to PIA 6821 lines CA2 and CB1 which are edge driven. Just reading READYQ would miss to detect a state change if between reads READYQ went 0-1-0. Updated the Looping driver.

- 0.133u2: Robiza modified the COP420 rom region in Looping, fixed MCU rom region in clone set, added MCU support. This fixed the large error log of unmapped I/O read/writes and major performance drop.

- 9th August 2009: Robiza - Currently works on Looping through a hack and in particular a workaorund to overcome the protection. Essentially the code expects to find some values for each read operation between 7000 and 7007. The PCB has a COP420 (MCU) and the rom dump is the problem that the point of departure seems to move and when the cpu emulation that enters into an infinite loop. Looking to DASM the CPU, after some research, I realized that the shift is 0xC2 bytes. Moving the loading of the ROM code is executed correctly. And look, the code generates a list of values that are exactly what the game expects to lease between 7000 and 7007. Unfortunately one of the values generated does not fall within those expected, which means that for now is still a hack.

- 0.125u4: Aaron Giles fixed a 'Fatal error' crash in the Looping driver.

- 0.122u6: Changed COP420 CPU2 clock speed to 4MHz.

- 15th July 2007: Mr. Do - We have a lovely vectored Looping bezel by Jcroach, which replaces the current version.

- 0.114u2: Couriersud fixed shifted P2 graphics in cocktail mode.

- 0.113u2: Changed VSync to 60.606061 Hz.

- 0.109u4: Improvements to the Looping driver [Aaron Giles]: Fixed clock speeds, proper video timing, fixed protection (game would reset; should never have been marked 'working' in the first place!) and various other driver cleanups. Added COP420 (1MHz) CPU3, changed TMS9995 CPU1 clock speed to 12MHz, sawpped gfx1 roms and changed VSync to 60.606060 Hz.

- 18th September 2006: Mr. Do - Added Looping bezel, thanks to Jcroach.

- 0.97u5: MASH fixed Looping/Sky Bumper memory map.

- 0.59: Added 'Cabinet' dipswitch.

- 0.37b14: Mathis Rosenhauer added sound in Looping. Changed TMS9995 clock speed to 3MHz, added TMS9980A/TMS9981 (2MHz), AY-8910 (2MHz), TMS5220 (640000 Hz) and DAC sound. Fixed cpu2 rom ($0) length and cpu2 rom loading.

- 27th March 2001: Mathis Rosenhauer adjusted the CPU speeds in Looping.

- 24th March 2001: Mathis Rosenhauer added fire and balloon sounds to Looping, so there should be no more missing sounds.

- 20th March 2001: Mathis Rosenhauer added preliminary sound to Looping, but some sound effects are still missing.

- 0.37b12: Phil Stroffolino added added Looping (set 1) (Venture Line 1982) and clone (set 2). TODO: Get sound working. Map and test any remaining input ports.

- 29th January 2001: Phil Stroffolino sent in the playable Looping driver, with correct graphics and colors, but it lacks one of the nicest features of the game - speech and music. The COP420 microcontroller in fact helps with the CPU communication, so it is probably necessary for sound emulation.

- 28th January 2001: Phil Stroffolino made a big step forward with the Looping driver. While the game is definitely not playable yet (due to the unemulated COP420 microprocessor), at least the title screen shows up.

- 1st November 2000: Phil Stroffolino started on a Looping driver, it runs I/O CPU code fine now but main CPU code does not seem to be valid and the microcontroller isn't emulated, so nothing works.

Statement:

- Looping used perhaps the most bizarre assortment of hardware ever deployed in an arcade game. The schematics run to at least seven pages and no one really wants to hurt their heads that badly - Randy Hoffman.

Recommended Games (Airforce):

Canyon Bomber

Dambusters

Looping

Sky Bumper

P-47

P-47 Aces

Prehistoric Isle in 1930

Prehistoric Isle 2

Twin Falcons

U.N. Squadron

Carrier Air Wing

US AAF Mustang

Boogie Wings

Koutetsu Yousai Strahl

Zed Blade

Progear

Romset: 49 kb / 14 files / 21.8 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Looping</description>

<manufacturer>Video Games GmbH</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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