BAM!BAM!BAM!
BAM!
BAM! BLUE AZURE MONDAY BAM!
BAM!
BAM!BAM!BAM!BAM!
(Now I release my games on Mondays, so I can fill your week with game-playing instead of on weekends).
Here it is, finally, the vaunted ROBOTRON X. There was a bit of a delay here, cuz we needed to verify some things, which it turns out still haven't been completely verified. The game is released (below), as the show must go on! But first, let's back up for a bit (or a byte). The source list, in simple turns, is a mess. The more I look at it, the more confused I get. So I don't want to look at it anymore. Frustrated, I gave up, thinking the source listing went encrypted over the decades to match the BIOS!!! And then a major thanks to Groovy Bee - he referred me to the 7800 Programmer's section I never looked at, and there was a major effort started by Dan Boris in 2006 and finished by Scott T. in 2012 to bring it together. Groovy. I converted it to .rtf so everyone can view it…
ROBOTRON DISASSEMBLY 2012, compliments of DB & ST...converted to .rtf so everyione can read it.
![Attached File]()
RobotronDisassy2012.rtf 906.98K
12 downloads
It's a case of building blocks. It's clearly too big a job for one person to complete, so I'll be #3 to try it. We're still not where I want to be with this. I will be reviewing this and bringing it up to my unconventional format and post it when done. I use my format on my 10+ hour plane flights and for educational purposes for those who don't/can't/won't use DASM or other tools to be able to view and use C files.
As a side note I see Dan Boris also worked on FOOD FIGHT and I haven't searched 7800 Programmer's section yet for that. If anyone has a usable FOODFIGHT.asm or FOODF.asm that actually matches the released binary, please drop it here…
Now back to ROBOTRON (1984) vs. ROBOTRON X (19113, for those who know how the millennium bug works). Back in the Middle Ages, er, uh, Middle 1980s, as a kid I was playing 7800 Robotron. It was a riot of a game, always with the same result - I LOSE. Maybe I got to level 10, I can't remember. I was whooping it up - yelling and screaming and the neighbors were yelling and screaming as well…"Shuuuuut Uuuuup!". Frankly, the game was just plain too doggone hard to play. Who do you know who's playing Robotron these days? Nobody. Shelved decades ago, it's collecting about as much dust as Centipede was.
Something had to be done about it. Looking at the source list, it's a relatively easy read, so I went to the binary code to key in the change, and yikes, it doesn't match. Another victim of the grey area known as 1984-1986. I worked it, basically "guessing" what might work and on the second try I got it. I actually received a phone call while keying in the codes to "fix" Robotron, and yelled out "I CRACKED ROBOTRON!" And of course the other end of the line was saying, "Huh, what?" So they got the e-mail with ROBOTRON X attached, and I haven't heard from them since. Hope they didn't DIE in real life. Cuz this game is addictive and kills your hand after about an hour. Be sure to use a sacrificial Proline Joystick so when/if it breaks - you won't care!!! And a headache as well - turn down the audio!!! It's totally obnoxious on the TIA!!! Too bad not on Pokey.
At first we played it on ProSystem Emulator, and all was well. But you get tired around level 15 or 20, when things really start heating up every 5 levels with enemies and bullets (actually, "cruise missiles" according to the instruction manual) everywhere. The game starts to pixelate and actually even crash. I found if I started immediately shooting everything in sight this would defer or alleviate the emulator crashing. Now I was at first running XP on my Mac running as a Mac as just about everything I do is on a Mac. Eventually I did fire up my old 2004 PC and run ROBOTRON X on it as well. And even at level 5 you can enter level 5 and do nothing and eventually it crashes as well. So off to EPROM, program the 27256 and install on a real 7800 which never saw this version of the game before, and it PURRED. No errors, no crashing, NO DYING. This is sweet, for those who know how to program an EPROM and have a 32K+ board laying in wait.
Game play results… The game displays 7 digit scoring (millions of points displayed) so your High Score Card will be busy with this one. The game only displays up to 99 levels and then restarts at level 0. At about level 262 or so, you can achieve 10,000,000 points but the game will reset to zero points and start over. It takes about 100 minutes of non-stop gameplay, so get your comfy chair ready for this one... The object of the game is to save Humans - Mommy, Daddy, and Mikey (the owner of GoodDealGames.com, but don't tell him I said so), and shoot everything else in sight. Too bad your bullets don't pass through or kill the pesky & indestructible Hulk robotron, or the game would be even easier. The best fun is sitting in the middle of the screen and everything is swarming around you, in fact you purposely let them swarm. Then you press and hold the fire button and continuously swivel the joystick around and around and around firing in every direction. Eventually everything is dead and you move onto the next level. Hurrah. Forget 2-player mode unless you have a little brother or sister you don't prefer, and you sit them down as Player 2. "I'm almost done…" (after a day or two).
By the by, the ProSystem Emulator I am using is Version 1.3 © 2005 Greg Stanton, modified by Leonis, 2008. Not sure this is the latest and/or the one to use, or if this is 1.3e or not. Maybe other users can tell me this. Does your emulator version crash at Robotron levels 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.? What about SDL/MESS? I'm still not running that yet.
HOW IT WAS DONE...
THE CHANGE...
$D8B1 (EPROM $58B1) changes from $C9 $0D $D0 etc. to $4C $40 $D9, a jump to a magic invincible place. Just 3 bytes out of the 32768 in the entire code are changed and the game transforms into this raucous shooter for the ages…my bid for 7800 HACK OF THE YEAR - 2013. Unfortunately, looking at the disassembly provided by DB and ST it's not obvious why this works. Too bad.
NTSC ROBOTRON X
![Attached File]()
ROBOTRON_X_NTSC_BE52.bin 32K
10 downloads
![Attached File]()
Robotron_X_NTSC_32K.a78 32.13K
24 downloads
PAL ROBOTRON X
There was no Robotron originally produced/released for the PAL 7800. Can we make one?
ELECTRONIC HOBBYIST CHALLENGE...
Then the question is, how many lives would you actually lose playing this game up to 5, 10, 15, 20 levels (thousands of lives?)? There's a way to do this, with hardware. This is a electronic hobbyist's dream, to have another project to play with. You will need a solder iron and solder, wire, an electronic counter, an EPROM burner and these binary files, two 27256 EPROMs, and a 7800 EPROM board capable of handling a 27256. I created an EPROM, named DEATHCNT.bin (death counter), with all bytes $FF except the one byte at address $D8B1 (EPROM $58B1) is a $00. Program the ROBOTRON X chip and verify it's working. Then burn the DEATHCNT.bin on another 27256 EPROM and solder all pins to the original ROBOTRON X EPROM, EXCEPT the data bus pins 11(D0),12,13,15,16,17,18,19(D7) remain unsoldered and bent away from the ROBOTRON X EPROM. Any one of these pins 11,12,13,15,16,17,18,19 with pin 14 (ground) can be wired to an electronic counter and you should be able to count the deaths. EPROMs are noisy so you may need to add a 100pf (or higher?) capacitor across the electronic counter input to make it work right. Obviously, the counter shouldn't be registering deaths when you're not dying. Video this exercise and share it with us…
DEATH COUNTER (THIS IS NOT A VIDEO GAME)
![Attached File]()
DEATHCNT.bin 32K
7 downloads
ENJOY THE GAME!!!
NEXT UP > GALAGA
BAM!
BAM! BLUE AZURE MONDAY BAM!
BAM!
BAM!BAM!BAM!BAM!
(Now I release my games on Mondays, so I can fill your week with game-playing instead of on weekends).
Here it is, finally, the vaunted ROBOTRON X. There was a bit of a delay here, cuz we needed to verify some things, which it turns out still haven't been completely verified. The game is released (below), as the show must go on! But first, let's back up for a bit (or a byte). The source list, in simple turns, is a mess. The more I look at it, the more confused I get. So I don't want to look at it anymore. Frustrated, I gave up, thinking the source listing went encrypted over the decades to match the BIOS!!! And then a major thanks to Groovy Bee - he referred me to the 7800 Programmer's section I never looked at, and there was a major effort started by Dan Boris in 2006 and finished by Scott T. in 2012 to bring it together. Groovy. I converted it to .rtf so everyone can view it…
ROBOTRON DISASSEMBLY 2012, compliments of DB & ST...converted to .rtf so everyione can read it.
RobotronDisassy2012.rtf 906.98K
12 downloadsIt's a case of building blocks. It's clearly too big a job for one person to complete, so I'll be #3 to try it. We're still not where I want to be with this. I will be reviewing this and bringing it up to my unconventional format and post it when done. I use my format on my 10+ hour plane flights and for educational purposes for those who don't/can't/won't use DASM or other tools to be able to view and use C files.
As a side note I see Dan Boris also worked on FOOD FIGHT and I haven't searched 7800 Programmer's section yet for that. If anyone has a usable FOODFIGHT.asm or FOODF.asm that actually matches the released binary, please drop it here…
Now back to ROBOTRON (1984) vs. ROBOTRON X (19113, for those who know how the millennium bug works). Back in the Middle Ages, er, uh, Middle 1980s, as a kid I was playing 7800 Robotron. It was a riot of a game, always with the same result - I LOSE. Maybe I got to level 10, I can't remember. I was whooping it up - yelling and screaming and the neighbors were yelling and screaming as well…"Shuuuuut Uuuuup!". Frankly, the game was just plain too doggone hard to play. Who do you know who's playing Robotron these days? Nobody. Shelved decades ago, it's collecting about as much dust as Centipede was.
Something had to be done about it. Looking at the source list, it's a relatively easy read, so I went to the binary code to key in the change, and yikes, it doesn't match. Another victim of the grey area known as 1984-1986. I worked it, basically "guessing" what might work and on the second try I got it. I actually received a phone call while keying in the codes to "fix" Robotron, and yelled out "I CRACKED ROBOTRON!" And of course the other end of the line was saying, "Huh, what?" So they got the e-mail with ROBOTRON X attached, and I haven't heard from them since. Hope they didn't DIE in real life. Cuz this game is addictive and kills your hand after about an hour. Be sure to use a sacrificial Proline Joystick so when/if it breaks - you won't care!!! And a headache as well - turn down the audio!!! It's totally obnoxious on the TIA!!! Too bad not on Pokey.
At first we played it on ProSystem Emulator, and all was well. But you get tired around level 15 or 20, when things really start heating up every 5 levels with enemies and bullets (actually, "cruise missiles" according to the instruction manual) everywhere. The game starts to pixelate and actually even crash. I found if I started immediately shooting everything in sight this would defer or alleviate the emulator crashing. Now I was at first running XP on my Mac running as a Mac as just about everything I do is on a Mac. Eventually I did fire up my old 2004 PC and run ROBOTRON X on it as well. And even at level 5 you can enter level 5 and do nothing and eventually it crashes as well. So off to EPROM, program the 27256 and install on a real 7800 which never saw this version of the game before, and it PURRED. No errors, no crashing, NO DYING. This is sweet, for those who know how to program an EPROM and have a 32K+ board laying in wait.
Game play results… The game displays 7 digit scoring (millions of points displayed) so your High Score Card will be busy with this one. The game only displays up to 99 levels and then restarts at level 0. At about level 262 or so, you can achieve 10,000,000 points but the game will reset to zero points and start over. It takes about 100 minutes of non-stop gameplay, so get your comfy chair ready for this one... The object of the game is to save Humans - Mommy, Daddy, and Mikey (the owner of GoodDealGames.com, but don't tell him I said so), and shoot everything else in sight. Too bad your bullets don't pass through or kill the pesky & indestructible Hulk robotron, or the game would be even easier. The best fun is sitting in the middle of the screen and everything is swarming around you, in fact you purposely let them swarm. Then you press and hold the fire button and continuously swivel the joystick around and around and around firing in every direction. Eventually everything is dead and you move onto the next level. Hurrah. Forget 2-player mode unless you have a little brother or sister you don't prefer, and you sit them down as Player 2. "I'm almost done…" (after a day or two).
By the by, the ProSystem Emulator I am using is Version 1.3 © 2005 Greg Stanton, modified by Leonis, 2008. Not sure this is the latest and/or the one to use, or if this is 1.3e or not. Maybe other users can tell me this. Does your emulator version crash at Robotron levels 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.? What about SDL/MESS? I'm still not running that yet.
HOW IT WAS DONE...
THE CHANGE...
$D8B1 (EPROM $58B1) changes from $C9 $0D $D0 etc. to $4C $40 $D9, a jump to a magic invincible place. Just 3 bytes out of the 32768 in the entire code are changed and the game transforms into this raucous shooter for the ages…my bid for 7800 HACK OF THE YEAR - 2013. Unfortunately, looking at the disassembly provided by DB and ST it's not obvious why this works. Too bad.
NTSC ROBOTRON X
ROBOTRON_X_NTSC_BE52.bin 32K
10 downloads
Robotron_X_NTSC_32K.a78 32.13K
24 downloadsPAL ROBOTRON X
There was no Robotron originally produced/released for the PAL 7800. Can we make one?
ELECTRONIC HOBBYIST CHALLENGE...
Then the question is, how many lives would you actually lose playing this game up to 5, 10, 15, 20 levels (thousands of lives?)? There's a way to do this, with hardware. This is a electronic hobbyist's dream, to have another project to play with. You will need a solder iron and solder, wire, an electronic counter, an EPROM burner and these binary files, two 27256 EPROMs, and a 7800 EPROM board capable of handling a 27256. I created an EPROM, named DEATHCNT.bin (death counter), with all bytes $FF except the one byte at address $D8B1 (EPROM $58B1) is a $00. Program the ROBOTRON X chip and verify it's working. Then burn the DEATHCNT.bin on another 27256 EPROM and solder all pins to the original ROBOTRON X EPROM, EXCEPT the data bus pins 11(D0),12,13,15,16,17,18,19(D7) remain unsoldered and bent away from the ROBOTRON X EPROM. Any one of these pins 11,12,13,15,16,17,18,19 with pin 14 (ground) can be wired to an electronic counter and you should be able to count the deaths. EPROMs are noisy so you may need to add a 100pf (or higher?) capacitor across the electronic counter input to make it work right. Obviously, the counter shouldn't be registering deaths when you're not dying. Video this exercise and share it with us…
DEATH COUNTER (THIS IS NOT A VIDEO GAME)
DEATHCNT.bin 32K
7 downloadsENJOY THE GAME!!!
NEXT UP > GALAGA