It's over 5 years since I did the Phoenix high score save kit, followed up quickly (as the code was so similar) by the Pleiades high score save kit.
Both kits sold out and were open-sourced a few years back but I still get asked for built kits and also regular requests for a Phoenix/Pleiades multigame. I'd always based the idea of any multigame on using a Phoenix board as they are plentiful and cheap but had pushed back as the Pleiades board has different (extra) sound hardware and also twice the colour palette as Phoenix, so I always thought in my head a multi wouldn't do Pleiades justice. Plus nowadays it feels like multigames on real hardware are a bit out-of-favour, with emulation and FPGA seeming to be much more popular, but I still prefer the real thing.
Fast-forward to November last year and I thought I'd see just how well Pleiades plays on a Phoenix board, and it's not actually too bad, although there are a few differences:-
1 Not as many colour changes as the game progresses
2 The sound isn't as "rich" as it is on a Pleiades board
3 The melody that plays at regular instances on Pleiades is just plain annoying on a Phoenix board (melody is louder on Phoenix and not as subtle)
4 When you fire there is no fire sound (turns out Pleiades uses the 8085 SIM pin to make the fire sound, and it doesn't work in MAME either so it took me a while looking for a fault that didn't exist...)
There's nothing I can do about 1 or 2, but for 3 I could always give the option to switch it off and for 4 I could look at getting the Phoenix fire sound to work.
So a redesign of the high score save board to add bank-switching for the 2 games, a mod to the memory map so it doesn't need a huge EPROM, and convert it from using a FRAM (£5 each) to serial EEPROM (30p each) and I've made a start. The kit consists of a main (CPU) board (containing game EPROM, buffers & latch, serial EEPROM to save settings and scores, and GAL for addressing, etc.) and 2 (identical) graphics boards joined with ribbon cables which switch between the Phoenix and Pleiades foreground and background graphics).
Coding took a while as the original game code has some unusual routines in it, plus Phoenix has just 16 unused bytes of RAM (where I need to store high scores and names, plus the electronic DIPs) but I'm now at the stage where I'm happy with it and think it's (fairly) bug-free.
Actual gameplay for both games is identical to the originals, but because of the hardware differences explained above, Pleiades sound and colours aren't as good as original, but they're good enough for me and Pleiades is actually quite fun.
As with my 2019/2020 high score save kits, the game options are from a menu:-
- Software-selectable DIPs, covering:-
-- number of lives
-- bonus life
-- coin settings
-- freeplay or not
-- sound in attract mode
-- enable or disable 204K point bug (Phoenix only)
-- switch off (the really annoying) melody (Pleiades only)
And the kit gives the following features:-
- attract maintained in freeplay mode
- sound in attract mode (selectable on/off/how often) - this works apart from the background noise in the Phoenix mothership attract stage where the CPU just can't manage it
- high scores saved to serial EEPROM
- 5 position high score table with initials
- lets you backup (and restore) high scores, handy if having a party and you don't want your best scores beaten
- option to boot up to Phoenix, Pleiades or menu
- option to return to the multi menu by pressing P1 & P2 start during a game (this option can be switched on or off, but you can always access the menu on first power-up)
- prints "FREEPLAY" on screen during attract in freeplay mode and doesn't display credits
- doesn't ask to insert coins in freeplay mode
- also works with coins
- you can remove the existing game ROMs
That just leaves some photos...
Both kits sold out and were open-sourced a few years back but I still get asked for built kits and also regular requests for a Phoenix/Pleiades multigame. I'd always based the idea of any multigame on using a Phoenix board as they are plentiful and cheap but had pushed back as the Pleiades board has different (extra) sound hardware and also twice the colour palette as Phoenix, so I always thought in my head a multi wouldn't do Pleiades justice. Plus nowadays it feels like multigames on real hardware are a bit out-of-favour, with emulation and FPGA seeming to be much more popular, but I still prefer the real thing.
Fast-forward to November last year and I thought I'd see just how well Pleiades plays on a Phoenix board, and it's not actually too bad, although there are a few differences:-
1 Not as many colour changes as the game progresses
2 The sound isn't as "rich" as it is on a Pleiades board
3 The melody that plays at regular instances on Pleiades is just plain annoying on a Phoenix board (melody is louder on Phoenix and not as subtle)
4 When you fire there is no fire sound (turns out Pleiades uses the 8085 SIM pin to make the fire sound, and it doesn't work in MAME either so it took me a while looking for a fault that didn't exist...)
There's nothing I can do about 1 or 2, but for 3 I could always give the option to switch it off and for 4 I could look at getting the Phoenix fire sound to work.
So a redesign of the high score save board to add bank-switching for the 2 games, a mod to the memory map so it doesn't need a huge EPROM, and convert it from using a FRAM (£5 each) to serial EEPROM (30p each) and I've made a start. The kit consists of a main (CPU) board (containing game EPROM, buffers & latch, serial EEPROM to save settings and scores, and GAL for addressing, etc.) and 2 (identical) graphics boards joined with ribbon cables which switch between the Phoenix and Pleiades foreground and background graphics).
Coding took a while as the original game code has some unusual routines in it, plus Phoenix has just 16 unused bytes of RAM (where I need to store high scores and names, plus the electronic DIPs) but I'm now at the stage where I'm happy with it and think it's (fairly) bug-free.
Actual gameplay for both games is identical to the originals, but because of the hardware differences explained above, Pleiades sound and colours aren't as good as original, but they're good enough for me and Pleiades is actually quite fun.
As with my 2019/2020 high score save kits, the game options are from a menu:-
- Software-selectable DIPs, covering:-
-- number of lives
-- bonus life
-- coin settings
-- freeplay or not
-- sound in attract mode
-- enable or disable 204K point bug (Phoenix only)
-- switch off (the really annoying) melody (Pleiades only)
And the kit gives the following features:-
- attract maintained in freeplay mode
- sound in attract mode (selectable on/off/how often) - this works apart from the background noise in the Phoenix mothership attract stage where the CPU just can't manage it
- high scores saved to serial EEPROM
- 5 position high score table with initials
- lets you backup (and restore) high scores, handy if having a party and you don't want your best scores beaten
- option to boot up to Phoenix, Pleiades or menu
- option to return to the multi menu by pressing P1 & P2 start during a game (this option can be switched on or off, but you can always access the menu on first power-up)
- prints "FREEPLAY" on screen during attract in freeplay mode and doesn't display credits
- doesn't ask to insert coins in freeplay mode
- also works with coins
- you can remove the existing game ROMs
That just leaves some photos...
