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STAFF
GameDesign
by
Yoshiyuki
Urushibara
Assistant
GameDesigner
&
MainGraphic
Designer
by
T.Adachi
Programmed
by
RYOJI
Sound
Effects
by
AZUSA MA
Graphic
Designer
by
A.Kaneko
MIX MAN
Y.Kaiho
Programmer
by
Mr. Deco Men
K. Takahashi
S.Tamura
M.Tamura
Music
Composed
by
MARO
HIROYUKI
HITOMI
Special
Thanks
by
J.Satou
T.Koizumi
&
etc...
Produce
by
DATA EAST®
CORPORATION
DE®
&
An ORION
Pictures
Release
© 1987 Orion
Pictures Cor
poration.
All Rights
Reserved.
THE
END
&
ALL OVER
|
This boardset is a Data East conversion of the Orion movie of the same name, licensed from Ocean (in the mid-to-late 1980s, Ocean Software was snapping up the game rights for all the major movie releases, and sublicensing them to other companies). The game features a few sampled speech snippets from Peter Weller, who played Robocop in the first two movies. The gameplay is a standard sort of 4-way scrolling platformer, with a 10MHz 68000 running the main game code, and a 6502 running the music. Robocop is quite advanced, making extensive use of large surface-mounted ASICs. As you can see from the photos below, someone chewed the extreme top right corner off my boardset. Grrrrr!! But it works fine; I just can't use that screw-hole.
 
Hardware Note: At least three other games, Birdie Try (a golf game), Heavy Barrel and Dragon Ninja (Bad Dudes) run on the same basic hardware platform. I believe that Karnov runs on a VERY similar board, but as my Karnov is apparently a bootleg I can't be sure. The bottom board is interchangeable, and contains all the game-specific features (ROMs, PALs, and anything else that's necessary). Robocop and Dragon Ninja run on the same bottom board; you can convert one to the other by simply swapping ROMs. Heavy Barrel, however, has a larger and more complex bottom board which has a slave MCU (Intel 8751, apparently used to descramble the 68000 code ROMs), and inputs for 8-way rotary joysticks. There are also unpopulated spaces on the Heavy Barrel board which appear to be inputs for two trackballs, implying the existence of some other game(s) which run on the same hardware, and use trackball inputs. The Heavy Barrel and Dragon Ninja test modes both read these trackball inputs and display them onscreen. Robocop's ROMs are entirely unencrypted, which makes it easier to emulate than some of the other games on the same hardware.
A few notes in no particular order - Sprite animations (such as Robocop's leg movements as he walks) are performed by an ASIC on the daughterboard without intervention from the host CPU. The game has three layers; two tile-based bitmaps with tiles approx. 32x32 pixels in size, and a top text layer with an 8x8 matrix.
For repair information, please refer to the Heavy Barrel page.
Level 1 Boss
Level 2 Boss
Robocop uses a horizontal low-res monitor, one or two 8-way joysticks with two buttons, and it has a standard JAMMA pinout. DIP switch settings are as below:
DIP Switch Bank 1
* indicates a factory default setting.
| Setting |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
| Coins per credit, right coin mech |
1 coin 1 play |
0 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 1 coin 2 plays |
1 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
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| 2 coins 1 play |
0 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 coins 1 play |
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Coins per credit, left coin mech |
1 coin 1 play |
|
|
0 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
| 1 coin 2 plays |
|
|
1 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
| 2 coins 1 play |
|
|
0 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
| 3 coins 1 play |
|
|
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
| Reserved |
Leave off |
|
|
|
|
0 |
|
|
|
| Attract mode sound |
Yes |
|
|
|
|
|
0 |
|
|
| No |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
| Screen rotation |
Normal |
|
|
|
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|
|
0 |
|
| Reverse |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
| Cabinet type |
Cocktail |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
0 |
|
Upright |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
* indicates a factory default setting.
| Setting |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
| Player's energy meter |
Medium |
0 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| High |
1 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Low |
0 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Very high |
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Game difficulty |
Normal |
|
|
0 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
| Easy |
|
|
1 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
| Hard |
|
|
0 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
| Harder |
|
|
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
| Continue mode |
Yes |
|
|
|
|
0 |
|
|
|
| No |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
|
| Player's energy in bonus stage |
High |
|
|
|
|
|
0 |
|
|
| Low |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
| The brink time for no kill mode when the game is continued |
Normal |
|
|
|
|
|
|
0 |
|
| Less |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
| Reserved |
Leave off |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
0 |
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