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nibbler: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Nibbler (c) 1982 Rock-Ola Mfg. Corp.

A maze game where you control Nibbler the snake to eat food around the maze. With each food you eat, Nibbler gets bigger. Complete each level by eating all the food on the screen. You lose a life if Nibbler hits his own body.

- TECHNICAL -

Model G-208

Main CPU : M6502 (@ 930 Khz)

Sound Chips : Custom (@ 930 Khz), SN76477 (@ 930 Khz)

Players : 2

Control : 8-way joystick

- TRIVIA -

Released in December 1982, this is the first game to support a billion point score.

Rock-ola offered a free Nibbler machine to the first player to turn the game over by scoring a billion points. The early favorite was Tom Asaki, who came close but failed in attempts at Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa IA (once when the joystick broke after he scored 793 million points). Tim McVey finally broke the billion-point barrier with a score of 1,000,042,270 points after six unsuccessful attempts (he passed out after one of them) and January 28 1984 was declared Tim McVey day in Ottumwa.

McVey's record stood until February 22, 2009 when Dwayne Richard exceeded him with a score of 1,004,328,140. On April 10, 2009, McVey attempted to regain his Nibbler WR and recorded his progress through a webcam which was streamed from the Twin Galaxies website and Ustream.tv. However after almost 40 hours of gameplay and 945,939,420 points, McVey was forced to walk away after developing a blister in his hand. His attempt was one of the first to be recorded and streamed through the internet.

- SCORING -

Food Item : 10 points x level.

Time Bonus : 10 points per remaining second on clock x level.

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* Nibbler does pause for a split-second when it hits a corner, so use this pause to decide your next turn.

* Try to collect the items on the inside of the maze first, as you can use the outer edges to move relatively safely when Nibbler is longer.

- STAFF -

Designed & programmed by : Joe Ulowetz (JHU), John Jaugilas (JMJ), Joe Bak (BAK), Lonnie Ropp (LDR)

- PORTS -

* Computers :

Amstrad CPC (1984)

Apple II

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

Arcade Retro Lounge; http://tips.retrogames.com/

MAME Info:

0.143u6 [Nicola Salmoria]

0.34b7 [Nicola Salmoria]

0.10 [Nicola Salmoria, Brian Levine]

Artwork available

WIP:

- 0.145u6: hap added clone Nibbler (Pioneer Balloon conversion). Note: There are way too many references now, proving that the game shouldn't have music. I've split nibbler6 into two, one of them is a pballoon conversion now. I hope this finally solves this thing. Removed optional music rom sk7_ic51.bin from nibbler, nibbler8, nibbler6 and nibblero. This fixed broken music in wave 2 of nibbler and nibbler8.

- 0.143u6: Various Nibbler clean-ups [Tafoid]: Set up Nibbler and clones to allow the Pioneer Balloon sound rom as OPTIONAL as some board configurations has this rom on board. If it is missing from your romset, the game will be allowed to play without the music is desired. Nibbler and clones have been reordered and renamed based on version information. Added notes to the driver. Changed 'Nibbler (set 1)' to clone '(rev 6)', '(set 2)' to parent 'Nibbler (rev 9)', '(set 3)' to '(rev 8)' and '(Olympia)' to '(Olympia - rev 8)'. Renamed (nibbler) to (nibbler6), (nibblera) to (nibbler) and (nibblerb) to (nibbler8). Note: Version Number => Hold DOWN on controller after crosshatch appears. A number will show up to the right of the primary game creator's initials "JU". The music that has been in MAME for this game since it was first added is not from Nibbler! IC51 is a leftover from the game board to which the conversion kit for Nibbler was applied, a Pioneer Balloon, and is where MAME's original rom dump came from. Both the dedicated cabinet boards and the conversion kit boards for Nibbler never came with nor do the manuals for them list a "iC51" in the parts list breakdown. In fact, sound roms between different games using the snk6502 custom sound can largely be interchanged with another using the same. Currently in MAME, this IC51 from Pioneer Balloon is set as as OPTIONAL rom, allowing you to still play Nibbler (with/without music if you wish) without needing to adjust the source and recompile.

- 0.141: Aaron Giles fixed Nibbler crashes after pressing OK (64bit).

- 0.126u4: Derrick Renaud added discrete sound to Fantasy, Nibbler and Pioneer Balloon.

- 0.122u8: RansAckeR improved dipswitches according to manuals in Nibbler.

- 17th December 2006: Mr. Do - Thanks to the loan by Vintage Arcade Superstore, we have a scan of the generic Rockola bezel, which Zorg vectored quite nicely. For now, I added in a blank red instruction card until we get the real thing. This gives us a bezel for Nibbler.

- 0.88u7: Changed M6502 CPU1 clock speed to 930000 and VSync to 61.246746 Hz.

- 0.87u2: Costa Sgantzos added clone Nibbler (Olympia) (1983).

- 0.84u1: David Haywood added clone Nibbler (set 3).

- 0.81u5: Curt Coder corrected ROM names for Nibbler from manual.

- 0.81u4: Curt Coder hooked up SN76477 sound for BOMB effect in Fantasy, Nibbler and Pioneer Balloon, correct CPU frequency from schematics, merged memory maps, cleaned up driver a bit, fixed dips and enabled debug inputs. Changed M6502 CPU1 clock speed to 1411125 Hz, replaced Samples sound with SN76477.

- 0.37b12: New filtering code for the audio mixer. It is applied to audio streams generated at a sampling rate different from the sound card's one, improving quality. Some examples with a very audible difference are Nibbler.

- 0.37b7: Added Vanguard samples.

- 0.36b7: Added Custom sound.

- 4th July 1999: Thierry and Gerald dumped Nibbler, SET B, Rock-Ola Mfg. Corp. 1982. This software run on a OLYMPIA board, Programmer's name JOE ULOWETZ.

- 3rd April 1999: Valerio Verrando added a Nibbler bootleg.

- 0.34b7: Changed 'Nibbler (set 1)' to clone '(set 2)' and '(set 2)' to parent 'Nibbler (set 1)'. Renamed (nibbler) to (nibblera) and (nibblera) to (nibbler).

- 0.34b4: In "nibbler" starting at level 32 you must complete each level on one life. If you die, you'll have to start it all over again. In "nibblera", you don't. When you die, you simply pick up where you left off (at least as far as level 53).

- 0.34b1: Added proms ($0, 20 - foreground and background colors).

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

- 0.33b1: Nicola Salmoria added clone Nibbler (alternate). Added sound rom G960-45.53 from the alternate version to Nibbler.

- 0.31: Brian Levine added better sound in Nibbler.

- 0.28: Nibbler and Fantasy have sound, using the Vanguard driver. I don't know how accurate it is [Nicola Salmoria]. Nibbler and Vanguard are back to (hopefully) normal speed. Added sound roms (IC52/IC53).

- 0.27: Nibbler now run at half their previous speed. Is this the correct one?

- 0.23: Fixed Nibbler colors [Mirko Buffoni]: I should say 100% correct colors, but I remember the Nibbler hairs were Green versus Purple. Maybe I played a bootleg version.

- 0.14: Nicola Salmoria fixed bug which sometimes caused 6502 games not to run (actually they did run, but interrupts didn't happen).

- 0.13: Nicola Salmoria added high score saving to Nibbler. Use latest version of Marat's 6502 engine.

- 0.10: Nicola Salmoria added Nibbler (Rock-ola 1982). Game is playable with wrong colors and no sound. This is the second 6502 game supported by MAME. Interesting hardware: No sprites, two playfields and it uses RAM for character generation (redefining the characters to animate the worm). New function in common.c: decodechar() [Nicola Salmoria]. It was originally part of decodegfx(), and is used to convert one single char from the machine format to the one used by the emulator. This function was needed by the Nibbler driver to dynamically convert the graphics at runtime. Known issues: What is the clock speed of the original machine? Nicola currently using 1Mhz. Some input bits seem to be used as debug controls - quite interesting, but Nicola haven't investigated yet. One ROM fails the power on test, but the game seems to work well - maybe it's a bootleg?

PLAY INSTRUCTIONS:

- Clear each maze before time runs out.

- Nibbler does not stop at corners and do not let Nibbler bite itself

- Extra Nibbler every 4 waves.

LEVELS: 99 (endless - after 99th level, the game restarts from level 80)

Other Emulators:

* JAE

* Retrocade

Recommended Games (Maze Snake):

Hustle

Jungler

Anteater

Nibbler

Python (Photon System)

Snapper

Pass

Go Go! Mile Smile

PoPo Bear

Romset: 49 kb / 15 files / 17.4 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Nibbler (rev 9)</description>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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