The gameplay kinda reminds me of an obscure game I used to play in my youth. I can't remember the name, but you guys have probably never heard of it. Instead of police cars, it was ghosts trying to stop you from getting the money. And the money was pellets. And you were Pac-Man.
We get people coming into our shop all the time, asking if we have Galaxy. When we say "No I don't have that one, do you mean Galaga?" they go "No, it was Galaxy. You were a little ship at the bottom and you shot these other little bugs at the top of the screen". Now some people would argue with them but I have way too much class to argue with somebody over something as trivial as that, so I just tell them I don't have that one.
@@LyonsArcade -- That reminds me of some pet store conversations I've heard. "Do you have hampers?" "You mean like to put clothes in?" "No, they are like gerbils without tails." "How big will my marijuana get?" "Well, if you give it plenty of water and sunlight, it should get big." "I mean the large lizard thing." "Have you got the crabs yet?" "That's quite a rude and personal question." "I mean the hermit crabs you have on order for me."
I love the ingenuity of the tape deck using the left and right channels for two different sound effects. That’s a really clever solution, especially using auto-reverse so that it can be always running.
What a cool setup, and a cooler upgrade. As a person working in radio, that's a cool use of the old tape system. Should add "Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers HAS been approved." Thanks for the video.
Now here is one I don't think I have seen before. I love how they made use of the tape drive (very established technology for the time) and multiple speakers out for audio. Very Cool, thanks for sharing another great video!
The use of audio tape in that game is pure genius for the time 😄... Another game from the same era which also used tape was "Journey" by Midway released in 1983 where you could hear the track "Separate ways" during attract mode and as well if you managed to complete the game which led you to attend a Journey venue. The track was also recorded on an autoreverse stereo tape player located at the bottom of the cabinet, hooked to the sound board amp and triggered by a relay when needed. Anyway excellent video Ron (as always) and i love the idea of the replacement mp3 player which works really fine and will make that audio part of the game bulletproof.
Wow! I remember I used to love playing this game back in the day. I had NO IDEA that it actually had a tape player inside making some of the sound effects! That's pretty wild!
Definitely at the end of the 8 minutes insert a clip of the "Bad Boys" theme. It will form a bridge to the modern era making people think the game is much newer than it is. Make a backup copy of the SD card. Put it in a paper envelope and either tape or staple it next to the player with instructions. "Do not use, make a copy."
They make small PCBs which are just for playing MP3s. You just apply power to them and they will play the files in an endless loop. They work on 3-5V and just require an SD card with the files on them. Some of them also have a built-in 2W audio amplifier.
Nice game, unusual approach on making the sounds work. I would not use the switching 12 to cut power to the mp3 player. That way the police talk keeps running in loops and the file doesn't start at the same spot on each new game. Or does the player remember where it was in the audio file. During attract mode the the sound is cut off by the relais and the mp3 player doesn't use much power, it also doesn't wear as much as a cassette deck or the tape.
Switching Ground (Low Side Switching) allows the use of cheaper, higher powered NPN mosfets. high side switching requires PNP which are slightly harder to manufacture, and therefore more expensive.
What an ingenious idea, very clever way of working with the limitations of that time! Loved it, and would totally put the CHiPs or SWAT themes on the loop! haha
Wow! A tape recorder? Haven’t heard that before! Just saw a picture of Thief on the inter webs for Pacific Novelty and their games and happened to recognize the carpet! ;)
That's a very cool game from 41 years ago - and an ingenious way to get the sound working again. And the audio from the original was hilarious. Car 69 here, lol. Nice work Ron.
Thanks for sharing this one. I never heard of this game before. I checked my MAME cabinet and this title wasn't listed (among the thousands). I got the game ROM and was surprised to see sound samples for it as well. It all plays great, just like what you have in your video.
Always interesting seeing these vintage units. Before my time, I can only imagine what it must of been like growing up with them. For this application, an ISD ChipCorder was the first thing I thought of. I used many in projects. Quite handy voice memo ICs. Through hole, so keeps with the vintage asthetic. Very capable if you use SPI. Arrange multiple chips and a random generator and you have a random sound effects bank :) Fascinating to see how they originally did it though!
Pretty cool game! And, very clever solution to the missing tape deck. I would imagine that after several hundred hours of playing, that tape would have sounded pretty bad.
Unit may have balance setting accessible through menu on front. Only issue with this setup is you may have to switch to the sd card every time you power up the cabinet. Great job and I love the videos as always!
I dreamed last night about the MP3 player in this game and the audio clips and how they used 2 channels for the game and I just saw this on my TH-cam list just now. You know you are a geek when you dream about technical stuff
Hey Ron, I remember this game from when I was a kid and I immediately pulled it up on MAME and had to play. I forgot how funny the audio commentary was. The interaction between Dispatch and the Deputies at times can be quite funny. One of the clips I heard when I was just playing the game is the dispatcher saying "We need to get the thief out of here. One of the deputies responded with "Let's take up a collection and send him to Cleveland. I will say this, if it wasn't for the commentary, this would just be another boring Pac-Man clone. Ron here is a little trivia regarding the classic TV show "Car 54 Where Are you." Fred Gwen and Al Lewis co-starred in that show prior to working together in the Munsters.
Hey Joe, thanks for posting this video. I just learned of this game on Facebook today. Interesting set-up with cassette sound. It seems like a mash up of Pac Man and Rally X.
Very cool. This is really a unique solution as to how to generate more realistic sound including people talking back before the digital technology really existed to do this.I just want to create a little Digital sound playback module to replace the tape recorder.
They could had used a Harris CVSD chip to do it. But I believe that was a very expensive chip back then and it would had needed a separate processor to stream the data to the chip.
The only other arcade game I know of that utilized a tape player was Bally/Midway’s JOURNEY game, which used a partial loop of the song SEPARATE WAYS during the “bonus” game where you use their roadie to block concertgoers from overtaking the stage.
Great video Ron. Wondered how digital music players could replace these taped sounds. Thanks for showing us how. Old EM gun games sometimes used 4 track players for sounds. Mechanically they would switch from the background sound to the sound effect tracks and then back to the background sound no sound board needed. I replaced the broken 4 track on my CC Playland with a cheap cassette player that I had recorded a loop of carnival sounds off of the internet and had that play whenever a game was running. Hits sounded a bell anyways so no need for another track. Pretty effective actually considering the easy hack it was. It would be great if you could show an old EM gun game repair sometime. Thanks.
Pacific Novelty tweaked this game and created "NATO Defense" that had different mazes and character/sprite graphics but gameplay was the same. The audio in the tape was obviously changed too.
There's a 1981 movie named Thief starring the late James Caan. I'm amazed they didn't try to make THIS game a movie tie-in! Obviously, though, it's a Pac-Man clone in an era where they shamelessly shoveled out clone upon clone of successful games. Also, copyright IP was not a huge thing back then for videogames and they generally looked the other way until KC Munchkin came out for the Odyssey 2. THEN, Atari sued because they had the official Pac-Man license for home consoles! That Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man REALLY sucked! KC Munchkin was a much better game!
If it is just muting and unmuting the crash sound how does it know when to unmute? i.e. why don't you get half a crash sound if it unmutes at the wrong time? Maybe I'm overthinking this!
Using a tape deck to do the chatter was a brilliant idea! Imagine the cost if they had to do it in memory using 1980's ROM technology. The cost alone would have made the game commercially unviable due to it's manufacturing costs.
Interesting take on the Pacman idea. It's innovative to use audio chips and a tape player, though I have to wonder if they are using all three channels on each chip. The sounds are very basic, so I would imagine one chip could've handled both sounds and still have one channel to spare.
Mixing up the audio would be an easy and fairly cheap way to add replay value to the cabinet And keep players coming back, you could even add different crash sounds too.
Joe your videos are great. Made me buy pinball machine. Wondered if you could tell me where to get parts. Have 1978 galaxy bally. I found the short in the fan motor need that for now. Thanks Greg
That must be one of the Bingo machines, does it have a bunch of holes in the playfield and no flippers? Unfortunately I haven't worked on many of those, I didn't even know they had a fan! Does it move the screen in the back? Your best bet would probably be sending it to www.PBResource.com , they repair motors or may have a new one.
John from John's Arcade TH-cam made a custom version of the recording in his voice. Very funny. I always wished I could hear his version in the real game on tape.
Interesting that the clipping sound is exactly in sync with the blanking line that the camera shows.. Maybe coincidence :) I never saw this one in the day. It looks a bit like a pacman spinoff. It's pretty clever how it seems to keep the "tape" track in sync. Never really here it cut in half way through a message.
I didn't notice that but I don't completely understand the timing of all that, I know the camera is at 60fps and I guess the refresh is at 15K? It's CGA of course, old school. If they're running the crystal oscillator of the video, on the same clock that's running the audio, maybe that would do it :)
It looks like there are two AY-3-8910s in there. They must be using those two chips to each play just one sound which is a tremendous waste. And the coprocessor is something I just could not understand them needing in such a thing...they must had not been very good at designing video game hardware. I think this would had been a very good Intellivision game.
One of them also does some melodies so they use it a little more, like other people pointed out though this sound board was used on a few other games before the company went out of business. They likely wanted it to be very versatile and spent too much money on the design...
LS32 gates are used as inverters, circuit switches between 1st or 2nd chip. Interesting way of sound, I wonder how long it would run until the tape is worn out._
Hey Ron, I'm so glad you posted this game. Past Times Arcade has this game but the shuffle sound when picking up the dollar bills isn't working. The siren sound works fine, the crash sound works fine but the police car radio simulator has a 120 cycle hum. You can hear the speech but the hum is underneath the speech. What is the simplest fix for this problem? All four speakers are working including the right center where I think the paper sound should be; being the other three have their own sound. How easy is it in fixing the grayscale on the monitor? The background is slightly green instead of black.
Just from what I gathered watching this, you might want to try another PSG chip to fix the money sound. As for the hum in the audio, it could be a ground loop issue or a loose connection. Sometimes one can add a capacitor in series with the audio, or if there is already one on the game side, maybe change it.
@@PlumGurly Thank you for that information. The hum only occurs during game play when the simulated police calls are active and its only the left side. The crash sound on the right works great.
A guy that I worked with back in the 80s, he was a retired detective that had his own private investigator company after he retired from the police department. He told me a lot of the time of both jobs was very boring. Lots and lots of cold nights sitting in a car watching and watching till the " tomato " comes out so he could snap some pictures Back in the day of 35mm film cameras. The reason I thought about this guy, he was a bonded payroll driver working with me, during the day, and at night he worked for a car service. One night he picked up a passenger from the airport in Albany NY and drove him to the hotel. I don't remember the actors name, but he was Herman Munster, who played a character in the show CAR54 before he did the Munsters The guy that I worked with said he was a really nice guy. A lot of the famous people and especially the rich non-famous people treated him like crap. Herman Munster gave him a 100 dollars for a 20 min ride And that was back when min wage was 2.35 Even back then I thought about how awful it was that this poor guy who was in his sixties and should have been able to enjoy life had to work two jobs. I mean you think about he had his full pension from 20 years on the police force and he worked after that as a private detective full time with his pension from the police department and I'm guessing he just got too old to do PI work, So he went to work 8 hours during the day doing payroll and 8 hours at night for the car service. And he had his pension from the police department and his Social Security. So 4 incomes to pay for his kids to go to college and the alimony and child support and mortgage on the ex-wife's house and the mortgage on his house. I've actually known several guys like this over my lifetime who had to work constantly to pay the bills and they were always working three or four jobs. Another retired police officer that I knew he worked as Santa at a local department store back in the seventies and at night he directed traffic and sold Christmas trees and worked the third shift as a midnight watchman at a factory. People nowadays don't know what it was like for the men after the 1950s when all of the companies started shipping business overseas. Those men still had mortgage payments and without the Union jobs they had to work three or four jobs to make up the difference. Throw in a couple kids and God help them a divorce and they are working literally till they die on the job Another guy that I knew who worked three full-time jobs worked the third shift at the Ford plant doing security and they had these boxes all around the exterior of the plant and they had a key that you would insert and you would turn and inside was a wheel that was a clock that ticked off 24 hours and when you would turn that key it would put a little mark on a paper wheel inside and that's how management would make sure that you were doing your job walking around the plant You had to walk around once an hour and what he had figured out was he could do the route in 15 minutes and he would come in and go and do the route and then he would sleep for 90 minutes and then go and do the route and sleep another 90 minutes. I'm not sure of the exact timing but he had it down so that he could get four or five hours of sleep a night but it wasn't quality sleep by any means. A lot of people did a lot of things to try and keep the middle class lifestyle in the 60s and the seventies and the early 80s were the end of the middle class and everyone was working two jobs lots of latchkey kids and our society spiraled down so fast to what it is now. We should have protected our jobs and we should have had better politicians that would have fought for us instead of selling out to the 1%.
Using an 8 track deck would allow 8 separate sound fx channels in continuous loop no auto reverse needed. Of course post 1980, and by 82-83, 8 track was dead thanks to the cassette walkman and clones. Would require another relay or switch to change 4 tracks as needed, not a big deal
They really were smart back then. They could have had the game with just the 2 sounds and no tape deck. I imagine they designed the game and it had no tape deck. And the crash they could have had a small sound like the cheddar and whoop, and someone else said " wouldn't it be cool if we had actual audio, full audio, that we had police transmission like a police radio and what if we put a tape deck in the machine and had it play with a relay and then someone else said Hey, we have 2 channels left and right and we can record 2 different audio tracks on one tape and 2 relays for the police chatter and the other we can do a car crash sound. It must have been a great time to be in these companies in those days. Small companies and people meeting up at work and coming up with these ideas.
Hey Ron, you mentioned about the tape player in this game. I'm sure the one that is located at Past Times Arcade is an original player. As mentioned the audio is good on the extreme right and 90% good on the left because of the hum. Can a home cassette deck be put into the game or does it need to be a car cassette deck that went under the dashboard? Is the player very easy to get to without taking a risk at getting zapped by high voltages inside the cabinet because maybe the heads might need cleaned and could reproduce a new cassette if that's an issue.
The police chatter is like the original screening of it's a mad mad mad world...they played police transmissions during intermission...even in the bathroom. .
The gameplay kinda reminds me of an obscure game I used to play in my youth. I can't remember the name, but you guys have probably never heard of it. Instead of police cars, it was ghosts trying to stop you from getting the money. And the money was pellets. And you were Pac-Man.
We get people coming into our shop all the time, asking if we have Galaxy. When we say "No I don't have that one, do you mean Galaga?" they go "No, it was Galaxy. You were a little ship at the bottom and you shot these other little bugs at the top of the screen".
Now some people would argue with them but I have way too much class to argue with somebody over something as trivial as that, so I just tell them I don't have that one.
@@LyonsArcade -- That reminds me of some pet store conversations I've heard.
"Do you have hampers?" "You mean like to put clothes in?" "No, they are like gerbils without tails."
"How big will my marijuana get?" "Well, if you give it plenty of water and sunlight, it should get big." "I mean the large lizard thing."
"Have you got the crabs yet?" "That's quite a rude and personal question." "I mean the hermit crabs you have on order for me."
I love the ingenuity of the tape deck using the left and right channels for two different sound effects. That’s a really clever solution, especially using auto-reverse so that it can be always running.
I have a crystal clear memory of my sister playing this game at a Space Port arcade back in the 80's. Great times.
What a cool setup, and a cooler upgrade. As a person working in radio, that's a cool use of the old tape system. Should add "Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers HAS been approved." Thanks for the video.
On the next video we'll get to hear more of it, I'm going to try to play my modded sound too we'll see if TH-cam allows it...
@@LyonsArcade -- "The suspect is reported to have a g, uh, pew-pew thing."
Now here is one I don't think I have seen before. I love how they made use of the tape drive (very established technology for the time) and multiple speakers out for audio. Very Cool, thanks for sharing another great video!
The use of audio tape in that game is pure genius for the time 😄... Another game from the same era which also used tape was "Journey" by Midway released in 1983 where you could hear the track "Separate ways" during attract mode and as well if you managed to complete the game which led you to attend a Journey venue. The track was also recorded on an autoreverse stereo tape player located at the bottom of the cabinet, hooked to the sound board amp and triggered by a relay when needed. Anyway excellent video Ron (as always) and i love the idea of the replacement mp3 player which works really fine and will make that audio part of the game bulletproof.
I was wondering if anyone else would mention the Journey game. That’s the only other game I ever knew of that had a cassette player in it.
Thanks
Thank you very much Les!
Wow! I remember I used to love playing this game back in the day. I had NO IDEA that it actually had a tape player inside making some of the sound effects! That's pretty wild!
The best part of the whole video is hearing you enjoy the game! Thx Ron
Definitely at the end of the 8 minutes insert a clip of the "Bad Boys" theme. It will form a bridge to the modern era making people think the game is much newer than it is. Make a backup copy of the SD card. Put it in a paper envelope and either tape or staple it next to the player with instructions. "Do not use, make a copy."
They make small PCBs which are just for playing MP3s. You just apply power to them and they will play the files in an endless loop. They work on 3-5V and just require an SD card with the files on them. Some of them also have a built-in 2W audio amplifier.
You could also use a rerecordable greeting card and connect the button over the relay, but that probably would require a external amplifier
@@MrHack4never Not enough storage space.
Adafruit and sparkfun had them. You could configure it to do anything.
Wow... I have been seeing a bunch of firsts lately. That sound system was way better than most of the blips and bloop games. Really cool.
1981 too... they didn't have a lot going on back then yet!
Nice game, unusual approach on making the sounds work. I would not use the switching 12 to cut power to the mp3 player. That way the police talk keeps running in loops and the file doesn't start at the same spot on each new game. Or does the player remember where it was in the audio file. During attract mode the the sound is cut off by the relais and the mp3 player doesn't use much power, it also doesn't wear as much as a cassette deck or the tape.
That's really cool you now make me want to go look for that same amplifier for another project of mine thank you so much
Switching Ground (Low Side Switching) allows the use of cheaper, higher powered NPN mosfets. high side switching requires PNP which are slightly harder to manufacture, and therefore more expensive.
What an ingenious idea, very clever way of working with the limitations of that time! Loved it, and would totally put the CHiPs or SWAT themes on the loop! haha
Add in songs like _Ridin',_ and _F*** Tha Police._
Thanks!
Thank you Ray!
Don't think I've ever seen/heard this before! Thanks! How cool! This is unique and you did a great job with getting the sound restored. NOICE!!!
What an absolute pleasure to watch! That MP3 upgrade worked amazing! You sound like someone that really enjoys their work. Keep it up!
Wow! A tape recorder? Haven’t heard that before! Just saw a picture of Thief on the inter webs for Pacific Novelty and their games and happened to recognize the carpet! ;)
That's a very cool game from 41 years ago - and an ingenious way to get the sound working again. And the audio from the original was hilarious. Car 69 here, lol. Nice work Ron.
Thanks for sharing this one. I never heard of this game before. I checked my MAME cabinet and this title wasn't listed (among the thousands). I got the game ROM and was surprised to see sound samples for it as well. It all plays great, just like what you have in your video.
Wow, so cool to see and hear a rare arcade game such as this one working again.
Ron, I swear I could "hear" the complaints about the uncovered ROMs just seconds before your comment. 😀 Another great video, thank you!
Thank you Neil... they're all over me lately, LOL
It isn't like he is even outside. Those chips lasted 40 years and they will keep working.
You've just gotta love the charm of these old rare arcade games, so cool.
guess who`s back ? ;) lovely to see you all guys...much love 😘x
Welcome back!
@@LyonsArcade busy busy busy......lots to catch up..thanks Ron x
Awesome information. It’s neat to see yet another method to get advanced sound for the time. They threw everything at this one.
Yeah it's pretty wild how they designed it, as you can see there's a lot of wasted parts! I think they were trying to make it expandable.
I never heard of this game before, but it's kind of amazing that someone even thought to do this with a cassette deck back in 1981.
Holy cow!!! I remember holding a record in my local arcade that wasn't broken for 5 years...and it was yours truly that beat it...
you are constantly teaching great hacks ! That's why I keep coming back over and over and..... what would we learn without you?!
Definitely one of the coolest, I REALLY like that, cool use of audio.
That is pretty cool!!! Tape deck that is clever. Can not wait to see the next video. Thanks Ronnie
Cool cool game and love the idea of you working away late at night repairing arcades then playing them keep up the good work
Always interesting seeing these vintage units. Before my time, I can only imagine what it must of been like growing up with them. For this application, an ISD ChipCorder was the first thing I thought of. I used many in projects. Quite handy voice memo ICs. Through hole, so keeps with the vintage asthetic. Very capable if you use SPI. Arrange multiple chips and a random generator and you have a random sound effects bank :) Fascinating to see how they originally did it though!
Pretty cool game! And, very clever solution to the missing tape deck. I would imagine that after several hundred hours of playing, that tape would have sounded pretty bad.
Thanks Ron!
This video is gonna be super hepful in getting our old Thief cab Running
I remember this game from back in the day. You could add all kinds of audio to that set up if you wanted. Very clever and very cool.
Unit may have balance setting accessible through menu on front. Only issue with this setup is you may have to switch to the sd card every time you power up the cabinet.
Great job and I love the videos as always!
Cool game! thanks for sharing, Ron!
Great video Ronnie. Donkey Kong uses an 8035 though. 😁
Now that’s stinking AWESOME! I don’t remember playing that game back in the arcades.
“Car 69, Roger” 😂😂😂 I remember playing this game at the local arcade back in the 80s I don’t think anyone but me played it, I didn’t mind 😊
Nice work troubleshooting!! Good video
Wow that was unironically a neat cabinet. And it actually looks like a lot of fun! Good repair like usual man! 👌
I dreamed last night about the MP3 player in this game and the audio clips and how they used 2 channels for the game and I just saw this on my TH-cam list just now.
You know you are a geek when you dream about technical stuff
Hey Ron, I remember this game from when I was a kid and I immediately pulled it up on MAME and had to play. I forgot how funny the audio commentary was. The interaction between Dispatch and the Deputies at times can be quite funny. One of the clips I heard when I was just playing the game is the dispatcher saying "We need to get the thief out of here. One of the deputies responded with "Let's take up a collection and send him to Cleveland. I will say this, if it wasn't for the commentary, this would just be another boring Pac-Man clone.
Ron here is a little trivia regarding the classic TV show "Car 54 Where Are you." Fred Gwen and Al Lewis co-starred in that show prior to working together in the Munsters.
They did a great job with it!
@@LyonsArcade For such a simple video game released in 1981, in my opinion, it was ahead of its time
Hey Joe, thanks for posting this video. I just learned of this game on Facebook today. Interesting set-up with cassette sound. It seems like a mash up of Pac Man and Rally X.
Love it! Awesome job Ron.
Very nicely put together video and very entertaining as well. Thanks for posting this.
Man that board looks clean
Your videos are AWESOME. Just wanted to say thank you!!! I've learned alot watching. :)
Very cool. This is really a unique solution as to how to generate more realistic sound including people talking back before the digital technology really existed to do this.I just want to create a little Digital sound playback module to replace the tape recorder.
They could had used a Harris CVSD chip to do it. But I believe that was a very expensive chip back then and it would had needed a separate processor to stream the data to the chip.
An arcade cabinet with the name "thief" on it, now that's funny. Really like the police dispatch voices, it is and was quite immersive I think.
As a kid there was an Operator in PA that modded this game in the 80s with some ROM changes but also changed out the tape to play G&R.
Smart dude!
The only other arcade game I know of that utilized a tape player was Bally/Midway’s JOURNEY game, which used a partial loop of the song SEPARATE WAYS during the “bonus” game where you use their roadie to block concertgoers from overtaking the stage.
Great video Ron. Wondered how digital music players could replace these taped sounds. Thanks for showing us how. Old EM gun games sometimes used 4 track players for sounds. Mechanically they would switch from the background sound to the sound effect tracks and then back to the background sound no sound board needed. I replaced the broken 4 track on my CC Playland with a cheap cassette player that I had recorded a loop of carnival sounds off of the internet and had that play whenever a game was running. Hits sounded a bell anyways so no need for another track. Pretty effective actually considering the easy hack it was. It would be great if you could show an old EM gun game repair sometime. Thanks.
When the guy says car 69, this was a possible innuendo I never noticed before.
I can't imagine a tape deck being reliable. Pretty neat concept though. Thanks for the video
Probably tape deck more reliable than a cheap chinese mp3 player. I've had 3 so far and none lasted more than a year.
It sounds like the coin up tune is actually just the siren sound sped up really fast. It uses the same two tones. 18:48
Ah that makes sense, thanks!
Man, what a cool concept. I never played anything like this.
That is super cool, but it's bizarre they had this tech and chose to have police chatter, rather than a catchy song to play.
You think so?
Pacific Novelty tweaked this game and created "NATO Defense" that had different mazes and character/sprite graphics but gameplay was the same. The audio in the tape was obviously changed too.
Sparkfun has trigger boards that can do your sound effects in a single channel. Just pull the pins high to select the track.
There's a 1981 movie named Thief starring the late James Caan.
I'm amazed they didn't try to make THIS game a movie tie-in!
Obviously, though, it's a Pac-Man clone in an era where they shamelessly shoveled out clone upon clone of successful games. Also, copyright IP was not a huge thing back then for videogames and they generally looked the other way until KC Munchkin came out for the Odyssey 2. THEN, Atari sued because they had the official Pac-Man license for home consoles!
That Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man REALLY sucked!
KC Munchkin was a much better game!
I never saw this game on location in the 80s. Truly cool! I would have probably spent my allowance every week playing it
Me neither..most of my 20c coins went into either Gauntlet, Tutankhamen or Renegade
Clever way of doing sounds
Hello Joe! Great fix!!!
Have to admit the tape recordings make the game much more fun and interactive. It needed to be done. :)
If it is just muting and unmuting the crash sound how does it know when to unmute? i.e. why don't you get half a crash sound if it unmutes at the wrong time? Maybe I'm overthinking this!
It just plays that track for a set amount of time, and yes you do get half crash sounds sometimes. Thanks for watching Nivag!
Using a tape deck to do the chatter was a brilliant idea! Imagine the cost if they had to do it in memory using 1980's ROM technology. The cost alone would have made the game commercially unviable due to it's manufacturing costs.
Interesting take on the Pacman idea. It's innovative to use audio chips and a tape player, though I have to wonder if they are using all three channels on each chip. The sounds are very basic, so I would imagine one chip could've handled both sounds and still have one channel to spare.
Mixing up the audio would be an easy and fairly cheap way to add replay value to the cabinet And keep players coming back, you could even add different crash sounds too.
Joe your videos are great. Made me buy pinball machine. Wondered if you could tell me where to get parts. Have 1978 galaxy bally. I found the short in the fan motor need that for now. Thanks Greg
That must be one of the Bingo machines, does it have a bunch of holes in the playfield and no flippers? Unfortunately I haven't worked on many of those, I didn't even know they had a fan! Does it move the screen in the back? Your best bet would probably be sending it to www.PBResource.com , they repair motors or may have a new one.
Has a blade on it. Must be for ventilation. Like bath fan.
Have you seen the mechanical arcade games from namco and which 1 was it ?
I hope an archive of the cassette tape audio is out there
I wish I had the pcb’s. I have a thief cocktail that was converted to a SNK golf game. 😒
I've got some for sale but they're not cheap!
Great game. I played it for the first time at Funspot, but their sound track was not working either on it.
John from John's Arcade TH-cam made a custom version of the recording in his voice. Very funny. I always wished I could hear his version in the real game on tape.
This machine is pretty damn cool..
Doheny/Sunset, Hollywood/Vine, Capitol/Wilshire, Washington/Lincoln - had no idea this was in LA and all OVER THE PLACE!
Great job!
Interesting that the clipping sound is exactly in sync with the blanking line that the camera shows.. Maybe coincidence :)
I never saw this one in the day. It looks a bit like a pacman spinoff.
It's pretty clever how it seems to keep the "tape" track in sync. Never really here it cut in half way through a message.
I didn't notice that but I don't completely understand the timing of all that, I know the camera is at 60fps and I guess the refresh is at 15K? It's CGA of course, old school. If they're running the crystal oscillator of the video, on the same clock that's running the audio, maybe that would do it :)
Weird it sounds like crash plays from beginning of crash fx every time. By chance? If playing continuously?
It looks like there are two AY-3-8910s in there. They must be using those two chips to each play just one sound which is a tremendous waste. And the coprocessor is something I just could not understand them needing in such a thing...they must had not been very good at designing video game hardware.
I think this would had been a very good Intellivision game.
One of them also does some melodies so they use it a little more, like other people pointed out though this sound board was used on a few other games before the company went out of business. They likely wanted it to be very versatile and spent too much money on the design...
@@LyonsArcade They also could had used one of the AY-3-8910s for the crash sound. It sounds synthetic anyway.
I live just north of Charlotte , is this game for sale?
Yes it is, come on by and try it out. We have it on display in our showroom in Rock Hill
I have definitely not seen a game like this one before.
LS32 gates are used as inverters, circuit switches between 1st or 2nd chip. Interesting way of sound, I wonder how long it would run until the tape is worn out._
You need to contact John’s Arcade. He voiced over some of these call outs. It’s a hoot.
Hey Ron, I'm so glad you posted this game. Past Times Arcade has this game but the shuffle sound when picking up the dollar bills isn't working. The siren sound works fine, the crash sound works fine but the police car radio simulator has a 120 cycle hum. You can hear the speech but the hum is underneath the speech. What is the simplest fix for this problem? All four speakers are working including the right center where I think the paper sound should be; being the other three have their own sound. How easy is it in fixing the grayscale on the monitor? The background is slightly green instead of black.
Just from what I gathered watching this, you might want to try another PSG chip to fix the money sound. As for the hum in the audio, it could be a ground loop issue or a loose connection. Sometimes one can add a capacitor in series with the audio, or if there is already one on the game side, maybe change it.
@@PlumGurly Thank you for that information. The hum only occurs during game play when the simulated police calls are active and its only the left side. The crash sound on the right works great.
All you need is a regular cassette player with an endless loop tape like they used to use in answering machines.
Reminds me of Pacman, but with a cool twist. Cool game.
You should still wire in and get the tape deck to work, but hopefully the Chinesium mp3 player lasts a while.
A guy that I worked with back in the 80s, he was a retired detective that had his own private investigator company after he retired from the police department.
He told me a lot of the time of both jobs was very boring. Lots and lots of cold nights sitting in a car watching and watching till the " tomato " comes out so he could snap some pictures
Back in the day of 35mm film cameras.
The reason I thought about this guy, he was a bonded payroll driver working with me, during the day, and at night he worked for a car service.
One night he picked up a passenger from the airport in Albany NY and drove him to the hotel.
I don't remember the actors name, but he was Herman Munster, who played a character in the show CAR54 before he did the Munsters
The guy that I worked with said he was a really nice guy.
A lot of the famous people and especially the rich non-famous people treated him like crap.
Herman Munster gave him a 100 dollars for a 20 min ride
And that was back when min wage was 2.35
Even back then I thought about how awful it was that this poor guy who was in his sixties and should have been able to enjoy life had to work two jobs.
I mean you think about he had his full pension from 20 years on the police force and he worked after that as a private detective full time with his pension from the police department and I'm guessing he just got too old to do PI work,
So he went to work 8 hours during the day doing payroll and 8 hours at night for the car service. And he had his pension from the police department and his Social Security.
So 4 incomes to pay for his kids to go to college and the alimony and child support and mortgage on the ex-wife's house and the mortgage on his house.
I've actually known several guys like this over my lifetime who had to work constantly to pay the bills and they were always working three or four jobs.
Another retired police officer that I knew he worked as Santa at a local department store back in the seventies and at night he directed traffic and sold Christmas trees and worked the third shift as a midnight watchman at a factory.
People nowadays don't know what it was like for the men after the 1950s when all of the companies started shipping business overseas.
Those men still had mortgage payments and without the Union jobs they had to work three or four jobs to make up the difference.
Throw in a couple kids and God help them a divorce and they are working literally till they die on the job
Another guy that I knew who worked three full-time jobs worked the third shift at the Ford plant doing security and they had these boxes all around the exterior of the plant and they had a key that you would insert and you would turn and inside was a wheel that was a clock that ticked off 24 hours and when you would turn that key it would put a little mark on a paper wheel inside and that's how management would make sure that you were doing your job walking around the plant
You had to walk around once an hour and what he had figured out was he could do the route in 15 minutes and he would come in and go and do the route and then he would sleep for 90 minutes and then go and do the route and sleep another 90 minutes.
I'm not sure of the exact timing but he had it down so that he could get four or five hours of sleep a night but it wasn't quality sleep by any means.
A lot of people did a lot of things to try and keep the middle class lifestyle in the 60s and the seventies and the early 80s were the end of the middle class and everyone was working two jobs lots of latchkey kids and our society spiraled down so fast to what it is now.
We should have protected our jobs and we should have had better politicians that would have fought for us instead of selling out to the 1%.
whoa. i think this game needs a epilepsy warning. Great job, man:)
Using an 8 track deck would allow 8 separate sound fx channels in continuous loop no auto reverse needed.
Of course post 1980, and by 82-83, 8 track was dead thanks to the cassette walkman and clones.
Would require another relay or switch to change 4 tracks as needed, not a big deal
They really were smart back then. They could have had the game with just the 2 sounds and no tape deck.
I imagine they designed the game and it had no tape deck.
And the crash they could have had a small sound like the cheddar and whoop, and someone else said " wouldn't it be cool if we had actual audio, full audio, that we had police transmission like a police radio and what if we put a tape deck in the machine and had it play with a relay and then someone else said Hey, we have 2 channels left and right and we can record 2 different audio tracks on one tape and 2 relays for the police chatter and the other we can do a car crash sound.
It must have been a great time to be in these companies in those days.
Small companies and people meeting up at work and coming up with these ideas.
Hey Ron, you mentioned about the tape player in this game. I'm sure the one that is located at Past Times Arcade is an original player. As mentioned the audio is good on the extreme right and 90% good on the left because of the hum. Can a home cassette deck be put into the game or does it need to be a car cassette deck that went under the dashboard? Is the player very easy to get to without taking a risk at getting zapped by high voltages inside the cabinet because maybe the heads might need cleaned and could reproduce a new cassette if that's an issue.
Dang, the thief got robbed of his tape deck! Come on, people!
They did it on purpose out of spite
The police chatter is like the original screening of it's a mad mad mad world...they played police transmissions during intermission...even in the bathroom. .
car 69, lol....nice voiceover work!