June 1991
1991 ACME Show Tech Notes
Sam Cross
Godwin Distributing Company
North Little Rock, Arkansas
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DATA EAST
Data East first used it on Checkpoint, Williams is
the first to use one twice as high on Slugfest
baseball game. I'm speaking of a gas discharge
display consisting of 128xl6 dots which re-
places all of the alphanu-
meric and regular displays.
Measuring l" high and
around 8" in length, it re-
quires + 100v, -l0Ov, 68v,
12v, and 5v for it's opera-
tion. On the backside of the
display there is the 280
controller board which
runs it. The big advantage
of this dot pattern is the
ability to display graphics
in much more detail than
previous games, although I
thought the programmers
did some very clever things
just using alpha/ digital
ones. Thanks to Jim
Gorman of Data East for his
helpful information.
In the case of lamp intensity, it will turn on the
lamp for a different portion of the AC sine wave
in order to achieve varying brightness. And in
the case of burned connectors, it turns on the
heavy current circuits as the AC sine wave
passes through zero. This way there won't be a
surge of current that would result, had they not
turned on the circuit as it crossed zero, let's say
for example, the AC peak
which would cause burned
connectors from a large
current inrush.
SEGA
Sega introduced Time Trav-
eler, its first hologram ma-
chine using a laser disc
player, monitor and static
lenses to produce its effect.
Generating quite some in-
terest, players took turns
con trolling a cowboy travel-
ing across time through dif-
ferent hazards, with a
graphic demise of the cow-
boy if the player didn't
make the right move.
Game play is very similar to
Dragon's Lair. Characters
WILLIAMS
During a talk with Tom Cahill of Williams. who
has been very helpful over the phone when I had
troubleshooting questions. he explained Wil-
liams' new system setup used on Funhouse and
other games of recent release.
Toe most notable features are its ability to
control intensity of lamps and reducing the
tendency toward burned connectors by making
extensive use of a zero-crossing feature which
looks at the AC line.
are about 3" tall on a mini
stage the player looks down on when controlling
the character. Great effort. Sega.
MURPHY'S LAW
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#1304
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