wotw: MAME ROM Information.
History:
War of the Worlds (c) 1981 Cinematronics.
This is one great looking game. You control a little tank that can move back and forth at the bottom of the screen, your enemies are martian walkers that advance on your position. Each martian takes several hits to destroy, as you are actually blasting their legs out from under them. You can protect yourself from their shots by using your shield button, but use it sparingly, as you only have a limited amount of shield time.
- TECHNICAL -
Main CPU : CCPU (@ 5 Mhz)
Sound Chips : Samples
Screen orientation : Horizontal
Video resolution : 224 x 256 pixels
Screen refresh : 38.00 Hz
Palette Colors : 32768
Players : 1
Buttons : 4
- TRIVIA -
War of the Worlds (or WOTW for shorts) is based on the HG Wells science-fiction classic.
WOTW was one of the last vector games Cinematronics created. This game was meant to be a 3-D vector version of "Space Invaders" but was never released due to it testing badly at the 1982 AMOA show. Less than 10 were made. They were all sold to distributors and sold at trade shows. The game did not generate enough interest to be put into production. The reason this game never went into wide production was twofold. The first reason was that it was simply too easy. Games that are too easy don't make a lot of money. The second reason was that the hardware simply wasn't good enough to run the game, it lagged a bit from time to time, and arcade games are not supposed to lag.
One interesting note is that the game was originally made with the B+W X-Y monitors, but a couple years later, it was resurrected with a color monitor around the time of "Solar Quest". Only one or two where made this way, and it is doubtful that they still exist.
The 'War of the Worlds' conversion kit came with a red and yellow marquee that had a fairly simple game logo on it. The monitor bezel showed the curved surface of an orange planet, along with some generic outer space stuff. The control panel has graphics showing a ruined city, and the legs of several giant martian walkers. The controls are all pushbuttons, no joysticks or anything like that at all. The game came with a plastic monitor overlay meant to give color to the black and white monitor, it made the upper and lower areas red, while the center area was yellow (it also had a hand drawn city scene way in the background).
- STAFF -
Designed and programmed by : Tim Skelly, Rob Patton
- SOURCES -
Game's rom.
Machine's picture.
MAME Info:
0.35b6 [Aaron Giles, Zonn Moore, Jeff Mitchell, Neil Bradley]
Artwork available
Samples required
WIP:
- 7th February 2010: TrevEB - Added samples to War of the Worlds. The samples have been recorded from direct input, however the sounds are identical to Star Castle. War of the Worlds will need some driver work: 1. The sound of the player being removed and replaced is the same sound as the opening drone sound from Star Castle with the pitch changing from high to low. 2. The tripod sound often does not stop when the game ends. 3. The shields sound is not working for some reason. The shields callout is there, but it does not play.
- 26th July 2008: Mr. Do - On a disk that I forgot I had artwork sitting on, I found the TRUE overlay for War of the Worlds, which Tom M. from ionpool had made a scan of a long time ago. I took another shot at it, and it looks pretty good this time.
- 0.122u4: Zsolt Vasvari fixed initial entry screen is clipped on right side (wotw36b1gre).
- 10th September 2006: Mr. Do - Added color overlay to War of the Worlds, based on excellent eBay auction pics.
- 26th August 2006: Mr. Do - Added War of the Worlds bezel from MAME.net and Mean Arena. Some of these decent stuff are so-so; some are REALLY good.
- 0.97u1: Aaron Giles fixed 'Lives' dipswitch.
- 0.87u3: Aaron Giles added clone War of the Worlds (color) as the color hardware version (same ROMs). Made parent set to the black & white hardware which was commonly seen as a Star Castle upgrade. Added sound to Barrier, Star Hawk, War of the Worlds and Boxing Bugs (note that samples don't exist yet, but I'm working with Zonn Moore to get them for everything except Barrier). Added Samples sound (cfire, shield, star, thrust, drone, lexplode, sexplode and pfire.wav).
- 0.37b2: Added 3x 'Unknown' dipswitch.
- 0.35RC2: Mathis Rosenhauer added color to War of the Worlds (seems to be wrong compared to Retrocade).
- 0.35b6: Added War of the Worlds (Cinematronics 1981) [Aaron Giles, Zonn Moore, Jeff Mitchell, Neil Bradley].
- 7th March 1999: Brad Oliver has finally sent in the Cinematronics vector games driver with working support for Space Wars, Barrier, Star Castle, Tailgunner, Rip Off, Armor Attack, War of the Worlds, Warrior, Star Hawk and Solar Quest.
- 2nd January 1997: Zonn dumped War of the Worlds.
Other Emulators:
* Cinelator
* CINEMU
* Retrocade
Recommended Games (Defence):
Galaxy Wars
Space Launcher
The End
Missile Command
Arcade Classics (Missile Command II)
New York New York
Space Zap
Colony 7
Dark Warrior
Demoneye-X
Laser Base
Pleiads
Satan's Hollow
Space Tactics
War of the Worlds
Liberator
Orbitron
Tactician
Raiders
Senjyo
Repulse
D-Con
Alligator Hunt
Romset: 17 kb / 10 files / 11.4 zip
MAME XML Output:
| | <game name="wotw" sourcefile="cinemat.c" sampleof="wotw"> |
| | | <description>War of the Worlds</description> |
| | | <manufacturer>Cinematronics</manufacturer> |
| | | <rom name="wow_le.t7" size="4096" crc="b16440f9" sha1="9656a26814736f8ff73575063b5ebbb2e8aa7dd0" region="maincpu" offset="0"/> |
| | | <rom name="wow_lo.p7" size="4096" crc="bfdf4a5a" sha1="db4eceb68e17020d0a597ba105ec3b91ce48b7c1" region="maincpu" offset="1"/> |
| | | <rom name="wow_ue.u7" size="4096" crc="9b5cea48" sha1="c2bc002e550a0d36e713d07f6aefa79c70b8e284" region="maincpu" offset="2000"/> |
| | | <rom name="wow_uo.r7" size="4096" crc="c9d3c866" sha1="57a47bf06838fe562981321249fe5ae585316f22" region="maincpu" offset="2001"/> |
| | | <rom name="prom.f14" size="256" crc="9edbf536" sha1="036ad8a231284e05f44b1106d38fc0c7e041b6e8" region="proms" offset="0"/> |
| | | <rom name="prom.e14" size="32" crc="29dbfb87" sha1="d8c40ab010b2ea30f29b2c443819e2b69f376c04" region="proms" offset="100"/> |
| | | <rom name="prom.d14" size="32" crc="9a05afbf" sha1="5d806a42424942ba5ef0b70a1d629315b37f931b" region="proms" offset="120"/> |
| | | <rom name="prom.c14" size="32" crc="07492cda" sha1="32df9148797c23f70db47b840139c40e046dd710" region="proms" offset="140"/> |
| | | <rom name="prom.j14" size="32" crc="a481ca71" sha1="ce145d61686f600cc16b77febfd5c783bf8c13b0" region="proms" offset="160"/> |
| | | <rom name="prom.e8" size="32" crc="791ec9e1" sha1="6f7fcce4aa3be9020595235568381588adaab88e" region="proms" offset="180"/> |
| | | <sample name="lexplode"/> |
| | | <sample name="sexplode"/> |
| | | <chip type="cpu" tag="maincpu" name="CCPU" clock="4980750"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="mono" name="Speaker"/> |
| | | <chip type="audio" tag="samples" name="Samples"/> |
| | | <display tag="screen" type="vector" rotate="180" flipx="yes" refresh="38.000000" /> |
| | | <input players="1" buttons="2" coins="1"> |
| | | | <control type="joy" ways="2"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Unknown" tag="SWITCHES" mask="1"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="Off" value="1" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="On" value="0"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Lives" tag="SWITCHES" mask="2"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="3" value="0" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="5" value="2"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Unknown" tag="SWITCHES" mask="4"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="Off" value="4" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="On" value="0"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Coinage" tag="SWITCHES" mask="8"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="1 Coin/1 Credit" value="8" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="2 Coins/3 Credits" value="0"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Unknown" tag="SWITCHES" mask="16"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="Off" value="16" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="On" value="0"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Free Play" tag="SWITCHES" mask="32"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="Off" value="32" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="On" value="0"/> |
| | | <dipswitch name="Service Mode" tag="SWITCHES" mask="64"> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="Off" value="64" default="yes"/> |
| | | | <dipvalue name="On" value="0"/> |
| | | <driver status="imperfect" emulation="good" color="good" sound="imperfect" graphic="good" savestate="supported" palettesize="0"/> |
|
|
