Atari Star Wars Color Modification
Matt J. Mccullar
Forum Fair Arcade
Arlington, Texas
LIFE AFTER DEATH
Star Wars has been around for several years and still
enjoys a dedicated following. Since Atari has thank-
fully provided us with a new high-voltage transformer
for the monitor, this game is now making money for
us again. But there are hundreds of them out there,
and evecy single one of them looks alike. To make
your Star Wars stand out from the crowd and pull in
some new players, this fifteen minute mod will clearly
show a difference in how the on-screen graphics look
as well as the amount in the cashbox. No parts are
required, so this won't cost you anything. It will work
on both stand-up and cockpit models.
INITIAL CHECK
Before we get started, keep in mind that this will work
only with the original .Amplifone color X-Y monitor. I
have seen some Star Wars machines with Wells-
Gardner monitors from Tempest and they are not
compatible. I will cover how to work on the Wells-
Gardner units in a later article. But this month will
cover only the .Amplifone.
makes some of the on-screen characters different
colors than your players are used to. This will grab
their attention!
Simple, yes? Well, let's take it one step further and
swap all three color signals. But before we do, let's
take a look at what Star Wars looks like before
working on it. Here is a list of some of the more
prominent objects and their colors:
Red
Bunkers (the things that shoot at you
in the trench and tower sequence), and the
flight instructions during the attract mode.
Green
T.I.E. fighters, the towers, and the trench. '\7
Blue
High scores, the Star Wars logo during attract r.._.
mode and the player's laser fire.
•
THE MODIFICATION
The color X-Y monitor accepts three color signals
from the game computer: red, green and blue. These
signals pass through three separate color amplifiers,
but the amps are exactly the same. The computer's
output color signals have the same amplitude, and
are almost exactly alike. Figure I helps illustrate this.
All this system does is determine the color each on-
screen object will have. If you disconnect the red and
green color signals and swap them around, then the
red signal will go into the green amplifier; conversely,
the green signal will go into the red amplifier. This
PROCEDURE
Now let's get our hands dirty and get to work. Warm
up the soldering iron, then turn off the Star Wars
machine you want to modify. Remove the X-Y deflec-
tion board and use Figure 2 to locate the general area
to concentrate on. Look for a red wire, a green wire
and a blue wire. They will have black wires entwined
around them, but these are just ground wires and
there is no need to worry- about them. These color
wires represent the inputs for the individual color
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Figure 1
Color Amplifier Of X-Y Deflection Board. Block Diagram.
Flgure2
Map Of X-Y Color Deflection Board.