Star Tech Journal

14
Atari Road Blasters
< August 1988
)
Capcom. Bowling
Linda Benzler
Atari Games Corporation
Milpitas, California
Patrick Groom
Liaros Vending
Buffalo, New York
You, Atari and the coin-op industry have a
major problem that you can help to solve. In
1986 Atari introduced Road Blasters, a
game with a direct-to-player contest de-
signed into the game. The contest was an
enormous success and goodwill has been
passed on to our player base. Unfortunately,
the contest deadline has passed but many
players are not aware of this fact. Hundreds
of letters are coming in each week from
players across the country regarding the
contest.
PROBLEM
I encountered a coin-up problem with this
kit. During the attract mode, as the pins are
being knocked down, when a coinswitch is
tripped credit is not given. It appears that the
CPU is not looking at the coin switches at
this time period of the attract-mode subrou-
tine. It does look at the switches the rest of
the time.
Obviously, it was never Atari's intention to
cause ill will with our players. This direct-to-
player contest was intended to benefit play-
ers, the industry as a whole and operators in
particular. Atari has a long term commit-
ment to this industry and we feel it is very
important not to make our players feel
cheated in any way.
The Road Blasters contest option can be
easily disabled by putting the game into self-
test and following the directions on the
screen to switch the "Rally 50 contest en-
able" option from "Yes" to "No." Please take
a few minutes of your time and follow
through on this request, it will benefit all of
us involved in the coin industry.
Thank you for your continued support of
Atari Games and our products. Please take
a few minutes to check your Road Blasters
games that are on location and disable the
contest if you have not already done so. If
you have any questions, or if I can be of any
assistance to you in the future, please call
me direct at (408) 434-3750.
SOLUTION
Capcom has informed me that there is a bug
in their VER. 2.0 chip at location U6. A later
update (VER. 2.1) will solve this problem. It
is available from your distributer. Also if you
have a Ver. 1 or Ver 1. 1 chip, your game
might be · experiencing lockup (when press-
ing start) and poor trackball control.
NOTE
There are actually 3 update ROMs available
for the Capcom Bowling game. The first one
was just an updated U6. It corrected the
lockup caused by pressing the start button
after a game was already underway, and
some trakball problems. The second update
consists of a new U6 AND a new U30. It
corrects some of the other Video CPU prob-
lems and some problems they were having
with the sound CPU. Both I Cs are available
from your local distributor.
I