Dumping Heavyweight Champ 1976.

[ReTro2600]

In 1976, Sega released the game "Heavyweight Champ". It is called the first fighting game in gaming history.

Like Computer Space, this historical game has not been dumped to MAME yet. The issue is that there is a lack of chips.

Can we get this game archived and playable for everyone? If there is still some of these machines left.

[mr_me]

It hasn't been dumped because these games based on discrete logic circuits have no program to dump. Simulating the electronics is much different than simulating a computer processor like most emulators. Another example is Sega's Monaco GP. Here's an emulation project that is similar.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/dice/

Edited July 18, 2018 by mr_me

[AguyinarRPG]

Well you can dump certain parts of a TTL game, like the ROM. Several TTL game ROMs are sitting in MAME, waiting for a team dedicated enough to find and properly emulate the myriad of other components.

 

There are several problems here. Manpower is the main one. MAME is a volunteer project so you can't force people to work on things you think are important and there's not enough people to go around. Availability of original schematics and boards are also difficult. Not even having gameplay footage makes it pretty darn difficult to figure out if everything functions properly, even if you do have a schematic to work from. Last is just the ability to emulate these chips properly. It's hard hard work and I doubt that even of the small pool of people trying to work on accurate emulation, very few actually understand how the early 74xx series chips actually work.

 

I think it's something that should be made a priority, to get all the 1970s TTL games emulated, but there's just not enough interest in that. A damn shame but that's the nature of it.

[mr_me]

Well I have Breakout and Pong working in mame and as far as I can tell there is no rom file. Breakout has no file associated with it and Pong has a text file with something called a .netlist. Maybe some of these TTL games have a PLA that can be dumped.

[AguyinarRPG]

Perhaps there's a misunderstand here. The ROM isn't what we would associate with a cartridge ROM. It doesn't store any program data, it only stores images. Games like Death Race, Tank, and even some Pong clones used ROMs to store their images rather than using diodes. So what we get are the graphics, not the game itself. That can be dumped.

[Magmavision2000]

We gotta find a working cabinet before we can dump it.

[Atariboy]

3 hours ago, Magmavision2000 said:

We gotta find a working cabinet before we can dump it.

Did you not even read the thread? It's a discrete logic game. 

[Magmavision2000]

1 hour ago, Atariboy said:

Did you not even read the thread? It's a discrete logic game. 

Yes I did read the thread. By dumping the game I meant dumping the circuits. You can use something like DICE (Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator) to play a game like this. I should of been more clear.

Edited September 17, 2019 by Magmavision2000

[Atariboy]

You don't dump things like resistors. There is no way to take something like Tank 2 from Atari/Kee Games, somehow interface it with a PC running some sort of software program, and click the "dump" button to get everything that makes it sound, look, and play like Tank 2 with you then only having to then build a virtual environment to be able to take advantage of that information you just extracted. 

 

Some rudimentary attempts to replicate some of these have taken place. Most are just old fashioned rewrites that are only as good as the author's attention to detail is, as they attempt to replicate how a game acts in their hands when they play the original. Some have just done by memory with no data or arcade machine to even reference, which obviously means they're far from any sort of accuracy. And when it's done in a more scientific manner, it's still a job done solely by hand after painstaking research of things like schematics, with hopefully the original hardware on hand to serve as a reference point.

 

As I understand it, so far we've not even seen Pong be 100% replicated, let alone the hundreds of less well known games that followed through Monaco GP around 1979 or so which seemed to mark the end. I believe Digital Eclipse once tried 20 some years ago with Pong, but quickly realized that it was a daunting proposition that needed exponentially more processing power than consoles and many computers at the time had to offer. So instead of fully simulating the TTL circuits and such virtually in a software program, they settled for building a replica that acted exactly like the arcade game did, but which wasn't a full 100% replica (And which had a new a single player mode, with computer AI that acted like Video Olympics does on the 2600). 

 

I imagine the same holds true for Pong from Code Mystics today on the Atari Flashback Classics collections and Atari Vault. Although these systems of today probably are at the point where they have the computing power to run a full simulation of every transistor and such of a real Pong arcade cabinet in real-time, it's probably not commercially viable when the mechanics of Pong are understood well enough by them to not have to go to such lengths to construct a convincing simulation of it. 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Atariboy

[Shaggy the Atarian]

To Magmavision2000's point about the cabinet, I've long seen Heavyweight Champ listed on arcade tracking sites like System16, but have never seen a cabinet, never seen a collector post that they have the cabinet, not seen a video of it in action (even among Japanese retro arcade collectors, who tend to have stuff like this).  I question whether or not the game really got a wide release - it might have been a prototype. If it did get mass produced, it was probably limited to Japan, but even then this seems to be extremely rare.

 

Beyond that, yeah, it's TTL, so even if one is found the chances of someone simulating it are pretty small

[Magmavision2000]

9 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

To Magmavision2000's point about the cabinet, I've long seen Heavyweight Champ listed on arcade tracking sites like System16, but have never seen a cabinet, never seen a collector post that they have the cabinet, not seen a video of it in action (even among Japanese retro arcade collectors, who tend to have stuff like this).  I question whether or not the game really got a wide release - it might have been a prototype. If it did get mass produced, it was probably limited to Japan, but even then this seems to be extremely rare.

 

Beyond that, yeah, it's TTL, so even if one is found the chances of someone simulating it are pretty small

There is (or at least was) a cabinet for sale on yahoo Japan but it looked like this:

 

 

However there is a "remake" which came out in 1987 that is a punchout clone, so the 1976 version probably was released to some degree.

 

Edit: here's a screenshot of the game 

Edited September 23, 2019 by Magmavision2000

[Shaggy the Atarian]

11 hours ago, Magmavision2000 said:

There is (or at least was) a cabinet for sale on yahoo Japan but it looked like this:

 

 

However there is a "remake" which came out in 1987 that is a punchout clone, so the 1976 version probably was released to some degree.

 

Edit: here's a screenshot of the game 

Awesome, that's the only cab I've ever seen apart from the listing on System16. Thanks for sharing. I've asked a big retro collector based in Japan if he knows about the production status of it - could've been a prototype with only a few made; a limited release (maybe a few dozen units) or a wide release (100s or 1000s).

[Keatah]

Simulating or emulating TTL is dirt easy. All you need is a truth table. Exactly like LE in FPGA. Simulating or emulating TTL signal timings is also easy, again look-up tables.

 

Simulating or emulating TTL signal propagation is a pain in the ass and takes a lot of processing power. But nothing a basic i5 or i7 can't handle.

 

So it comes down to the style of what you want to do. Simulate? Emulate? Recreate 1:1. And any of those methods can produce an extremely accurate Pong playfield.

[Magmavision2000]

12 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

 could've been a prototype with only a few made; a limited release (maybe a few dozen units) or a wide release (100s or 1000s).

Probably got a limited to nationwide release, doubt it went out of Japan. I feel like this is the doremon effect (when a company witch hunts the original version of an idea. E.g. Doremon 73 (look it up, it's pretty interesting if you're into lost media)).

[Jumpman1981]

Am I the only one who's confused about how the controls might have worked? Did one player use both gloves/rods or did two players use one glove/rod each?

[schuwalker]

Am I the only one who's confused about how the controls might have worked? Did one player use both gloves/rods or did two players use one glove/rod each?

I’m sure it’s the latter.

Majority of black and white games were either 2 player or on a timed mode. No cpu opponent.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Fourch]

I have been looking for this game for days, either in rom or video. No chance in hell, not even a video!! Just because it was Discrete TTL and not microprocessored so only a soft like DICE could make it run. Only if someone adds it to its library.

 

DICE remains the best way to properly play PONG or Breakout by the way. I tested many mame roms of those games and, for me, they all feeled weird.

 

Hopefully, one day, someone could get his hands on the original cabinet and simulate it on DICE or equivalent.

[peahix]

Sorry about resurrecting an old thread, but I recently digitized a 1977 TV news story from one of the local stations here in San Diego, and it has what I believe is the only known footage of the 1976 Heavyweight Champ game in action. You can see it here: