The latest in my selection of high score save / enhanced free play mods is Pleiads.
A fairly unpopular game, said to be the follow-up to Phoenix but I can't really tell any similarities other than the look of the graphics. Runs on almost identical hardware to Phoenix, and tons of the code is identical which has meant I've been able to get this running in about 3 hours since starting to disassemble it. The feature list is:-
;provides enhanced free play (attract mode in free play) selected by unused DIP
;prints free play when in free play mode
;removes the bit that asks you to insert coins when in free play mode
;high score saving in Mame for one high score even when you press reset
;does a "proper" high score reset in Mame,for some reason the code doesn't do a full reset and memory clear
;prints high score sooner than when you press P1 or P2 to start a new game
;only checks DIP for freeplay mode at start of game
;press P1 and P2 at power-up to clear high score
;fixes the "player 2 doesn't get the high score" bug that I just found this afternoon
Will also save the high scores to NVRAM on a real board.
Photos of it running in Mame are below, 4 screenshots showing "FREEPLAY" in attract mode, and no asking for coins to be inserted
Then using the unused DIP switch you can change between Freeplay mode and non-Freeplay mode (only checked on power-up/reset). Below shows it in normal mode
Finally the game playing. And if you're playing as Player 2 your high score will now register!
Note that it only works with the Tehkan version of code. When you first run it ensure you press P1 & P2 on startup
to clear the scores and high score RAM to a known state.
The modified ROMs you need (not the full set) can be found here http://www.ukvac.com/forum/uploads/183/Pleiads_freeplay_ROMs.zip
A fairly unpopular game, said to be the follow-up to Phoenix but I can't really tell any similarities other than the look of the graphics. Runs on almost identical hardware to Phoenix, and tons of the code is identical which has meant I've been able to get this running in about 3 hours since starting to disassemble it. The feature list is:-
;provides enhanced free play (attract mode in free play) selected by unused DIP
;prints free play when in free play mode
;removes the bit that asks you to insert coins when in free play mode
;high score saving in Mame for one high score even when you press reset
;does a "proper" high score reset in Mame,for some reason the code doesn't do a full reset and memory clear
;prints high score sooner than when you press P1 or P2 to start a new game
;only checks DIP for freeplay mode at start of game
;press P1 and P2 at power-up to clear high score
;fixes the "player 2 doesn't get the high score" bug that I just found this afternoon
Will also save the high scores to NVRAM on a real board.
Photos of it running in Mame are below, 4 screenshots showing "FREEPLAY" in attract mode, and no asking for coins to be inserted
Then using the unused DIP switch you can change between Freeplay mode and non-Freeplay mode (only checked on power-up/reset). Below shows it in normal mode
Finally the game playing. And if you're playing as Player 2 your high score will now register!
Note that it only works with the Tehkan version of code. When you first run it ensure you press P1 & P2 on startup
to clear the scores and high score RAM to a known state.
The modified ROMs you need (not the full set) can be found here http://www.ukvac.com/forum/uploads/183/Pleiads_freeplay_ROMs.zip
