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rthunder: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Rolling Thunder (c) 1986 Namco.

Rolling Thunder is a single-player scrolling platform shoot-em-up in which a James Bond-esque secret agent codenamed 'Albatross' has been ordered by the Rolling Thunder anti-espionage unit to stop the criminal organization known as Geldra. Albatross must also rescue captured field agent, Lelia Blitz and overthrow Geldra's leader, Maboo.

Rolling Thunder's gameplay takes place on two levels of platforms, with the player able to jump or drop to platforms as and when required. Albatross begins the game armed with only a standard-issue pistol and a limited amount of ammunition. If the pistol's ammunition runs out, the player can only fire a single slow "chaser" bullet - with only one allowed on-screen at any one time - until more ammo is acquired.

Each level is littered with doors; most of these contain constantly emerging enemies and must be carefully passed; some, however, also provide ammunition and new weapons. Ammo rooms are clearly marked while weapons rooms have re-enforced metal doors. A weapons room gives the player a fully automatic assault rifle that allows for continuous firing by holding down the shoot button. As with the pistol, the assault rifle has a limited amount of ammunition.

The majority of Rolling Thunder's protagonists are hooded soldiers known as "Maskers". Maskers are dressed in various colors, which determines both their strength and attack pattern. Some Maskers do not shoot, but throw grenades instead, while others will shoot their gun while crouching, making their shots much harder to avoid.

Other enemies includes ninjas, mutated bats known as Gelzos, panthers, shrieking yellow creatures known as Blogas and lava men.

Albatross must travel through two different segments or "stories" - each composed of five stages - making for a total of ten stages. The stages in Story 2 are essentially a harder version of their Story 1 counterparts, featuring more traps and different enemy placement. At the end of the final stage, the player must battle the Geldra leader Maboo to rescue Leila and complete the mission.

- TECHNICAL -

Namco System 86 hardware

Game ID : RT

Main CPU : (2x) M6809 (@ 1.536 Mhz), HD63701 (@ 1.536 Mhz)

Sound Chips : YM2151 (@ 3.57958 Mhz), Namco 8-channel WSG, Namco (@ 6 Mhz)

Players : 2

Control : 4-way joystick

Buttons : 2

- TRIVIA -

Released in December 1986, this is the first jamma game ever produced.

Licensed to Atari for US distribution.

A Rolling Thunder unit appears in the 1996 movie 'High School High'.

Alfa Records released a limited-edition soundtrack album for this game (Namco Game Music Vol.1 - 28XA-170) on 25/07/1987.

- UPDATES -

NEW VERSION :

* New title screen.

* BGM of area 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 10 are changed.

* Different enemy arrangement.

* Addition of a Continue feature.

* Addition of the Extra-life feature.

* 150 time units (180 in the old version).

- TIPS AND TRICKS -

* One of rolling thunder's more useful 'hidden features' is that it's actually possible to visit the ammo rooms more than once. Once you have stocked up on bullets from a particular room (for example, a Machine-Gun-Bullets room), go forward past the door approximately the distance of two jumps (ensuring that the door in question is completely off screen), then turn back, visit the room again, and find more ammo. The reason this works is because the game is divided into invisible 'sections' and once you cross a section boundary, the game forgets everything from the previous section.

* A step-by-step guide to one of Rolling Thunder's more impressive glitches :

1) In levels five and ten, once you get to a certain point in the level (around halfway through), you come up against two boxes stacked on top of each other (i.e. you can't jump over it), and a platform above you (on which you jump and continue to the RIGHT).

2) At this point, jump UP onto the platform, then position yourself at the very RIGHT EDGE of the railing on the platform (you can only jump up/down where railing is present) which should correspond to the very LEFT EDGE of the BOXES; then jump DOWN. This will put you at the very LEFT EDGE of the boxes.

3) Next, making sure not to move the joystick to the left, walk towards the RIGHT, hit the JUMP button, and you should find yourself 'caught' between the bottom and top boxes. Then jump RIGHT again, clearing the top box and landing on the ground. Don't fire at anyone, and don't panic, but simply go to the RIGHT watch yourself walk through everybody completely unharmed. You can simply walk past everyone until you reach the final, cloak-wearing enemy. Finally, providing you have properly stocked up on 'MG bullets' earlier in the game, simply hold down the fire button and kill the enemy. One final thing to note is that when using this method on level TEN, in that last area before the final arena, there are the 'stairs-like' hurdles, and on each of these steps, a white enemy will appear.

4) You have to be careful not to be in too much of a hurry, or they will follow you into the arena, where they can and will hurt you, or keep you busy enough that the guy in the cloak will. So make sure you have a little extra time to let those guys disappear off the screen (after you've made all of them appear) before going after the guy in the cloak in the arena.

* This is completely useless, but fun to do : at the end of each level there is this force field, which drags you through the door. Just before you get sucked in, turn your back to the exit and make low jumps (jump button only) while pushing the joystick towards the exit. This results in your agent jumping backwards a little every time. When the force field catches you, your character will appear to 'moonwalk' into the exit.

- SERIES -

1. Rolling Thunder (1986)

2. Rolling Thunder 2 (1990)

3. Rolling Thunder 3 (1993, Sega Mega Drive)

- STAFF -

Music composed by : Junko Ozawa

- PORTS -

* Consoles :

Nintendo Famicom (1989)

Atari Lynx [Unreleased Prototype]

Sony PlayStation (1998, "Namco Museum Encore") : Japanese release only

Sony PlayStation 2 (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Microsoft XBOX (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Nintendo GameCube (2005,"Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

Sony PSP (2005, "Namco Museum Battle Collection")

Microsoft XBOX 360 (2008, "Namco Museum Virtual Arcade")

Nintendo Wii (2009, Virtual Console, Japanese release only)

* Computers :

Atari ST (1986)

Commodore Amiga (1987)

Commodore C64 (1988)

Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1988)

Amstrad CPC (1988)

Commodore Amiga (1988, "Amiga Gold Hits 1")

PC [MS Windows, CD-ROM] (2005, "Namco Museum 50th Anniversary")

* Others :

LCD handheld game (1986) released by MGA (Micro Games of America).

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.35b1 [Jimmy Hamm, Phil Stroffolino, Ernesto Corvi]

Bugs:

- Clone rthundro crashes often after you die; I've seen this happen only in area 5, though. Source (ID 02386)

WIP:

- 0.133u1: Renamed (rthundro) to (rthundero).

- 0.104u6: Aaron Giles fixed Rolling Thunder broken in 0.104u5.

- 0.104u5: Aaron Giles fixed bug rthunder0104u3ora.

- 0.95u4: Fixed rom names.

- 0.80: Nicola Salmoria fixed watchdog emulation, this allows entering service mode without resetting. Fixed reset problem in clone Rolling Thunder (old version), but the game still sometimes crashes when you die. Changed M6809 CPU1 clock speed to 1536000 Hz. Replaced Namco/Samples/Custom sound with Namco CUS30 and Namco_63701X (6MHz).

- 0.36b12: Renamed (rthundrb) to (rthundro).

- 0.36b7: Added Custom sound.

- 0.35b13: Changed description to 'Rolling Thunder (new version)' and '(set 2)' to '(old version)'.

- 0.35b11: Changed M6809 CPU2 and HD63701 CPU3 clock speed to 1536000 Hz and palettesize from 256 to 512 colors.

- 0.35b10: Changed HD63701 CPU2 clock speed to 6MHz. Renamed (rthundr2) to (rthundrb).

- 7th April 1999: Nicola Salmoria has updated Rolling Thunder driver to work on the new 6800 core, but music speed is still sometimes screwed.

- 0.35b8: Ernesto Corvi added voices to Rolling Thunder. Added Samples sound.

- 22nd March 1999: Ernesto Corvi fixed some problems with Rolling Thunder samples.

- 20th March 1999: Ernesto Corvi has plugged samples into Rolling Thunder.

- 0.35b7: Changed HD63701 CPU3 clock speed to 1.5MHz.

- 0.35b6: Nicola Salmoria added clone Rolling Thunder (set 2). Changed parent description to 'Rolling Thunder (set 1)'. Changed M6809 CPU1/2 clock speeds to 1.5MHz. Replaced M6803 CPU3 with HD63701 (3MHz). Added sound1 roms ($0, 10000) and proms ($0, 200, 1400).

- 13th March 1999: Nicola Salmoria updated the Namco sound driver to support dynamic changes to the waveform data, and also converted Rolling Thunder to the tilemap system.

- 0.35b5: Ernesto Corvi improved Rolling Thunder sound.

- 11th March 1999: Jim Hernandez fixed Rolling Thunder sound settings.

- 2nd March 1999: Ernesto Corvi fixed Pacland and Rolling Thunder sound by emulating two new opcodes in the 63701 core. Juergen Buchmueller Buchmueller has fixed Rolling Thunder MCU problems by simplifying the 6809 interrupt handling and corrected CWAI emulation.

- 0.35b2: Dave W. added high score saving to Rolling Thunder.

- 0.35b1: Jimmy Hamm, Phil Stroffolino and Ernesto Corvi added Rolling Thunder (Namco 1986). TODO: Further optimize video (skip transparent/obscured tiles). Add voice (see note below). Add flipped and cocktail cabinet mode.

LEVELS: 5 (must be finished twice)

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Romset: 1178 kb / 28 files / 319.2 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Rolling Thunder (new version)</description>

<manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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