Galaxian-based hardware
From Sega Retro
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| Galaxian-based hardware | |||||
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| Manufacturer: Namco (variants by Sega) | |||||
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Galaxian-based hardware was used for several Sega licensed arcade games in the early 1980s, based on Namco's Galaxian arcade hardware, which debuted in 1979.[1]
Sega's hardware variants were based on the arcade hardware used by the companies it licensed from, such as Konami, Nihon Bussan, and Alpha Denshi, which all used Galaxian-based hardware at the time. Several modifications were made to the hardware, with Super Cobra (and its predecessor Scramble) adding side-scrolling capabilities, and Jump Bug adding multi-directional scrolling and parallax scrolling capabilities.
Technical Specifications
The technical specifications for this hardware include:[1][2][3][4]
- Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 3.072 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.45 MIPS)
- Sound chipset: Namco Galaxian sound hardware (one programmable 4/8-bit waveform channel, three 4-bit square wave channels, two 17-bit noise channels, one modulated noise pulse channel)
- GPU chipset: Namco Galaxian video hardware
- Display resolution: 256×224 (horizontal), 224×256 (vertical)
- Overscan resolution: 384×264 (horizontal), 264×384 (vertical)
- Refresh rate: 60.60606 Hz (V-sync)
- Color model: RGB
- Background planes:
- Sprite plane: Line buffer, sprite flipping, sprite animation[6]
- Sprites on screen: 65 sprites (57 character sprites,[7] 7 shells, 1 missile)
- Sprites per scanline: 10 sprites (8 character sprites, 1 missile, 1 shell)
- Character sprite sizes: 8×8, 16×16
- Shells/Missile sizes: 1×4, 4×1
- Colors per character sprite: 4 colors (3 opaque, 1 transparent)
- Colors per shell/missile: 2 colors (1 opaque, 1 transparent)
- Texels per scanline: 136 texels
Modifications
Super Cobra (and its predecessor Scramble) added the following upgrade to the hardware in early 1981:
- Background planes: Side-scrolling
Jump Bug made the following modifications to the hardware later in 1981:
- Sound chip: AY-3-8910 @ 1.78975 MHz
- Background planes: Multi-directional scrolling, parallax scrolling[8]
List of Games
Sega licensed arcade games that ran on this hardware include:[1]
- Moon Cresta (1980)
- Frogger (1981)
- Jump Bug (1981)
- Super Cobra (1981)
- Turpin (1981)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Namco Galaxian (MAME)
- ↑ Namco Galaxian video hardware (MAME)
- ↑ Sega Z80 Based Hardware (System 16)
- ↑ Namco Galaxian Hardware (System 16)
- ↑ Galaxian (Arcade Museum)
- ↑ Galaxian CSEE 4840 Embedded System Design (University of Columbia)
- ↑ Galaxian MAME Footage (YouTube)
- ↑ Games vs. Hardware. The History of PC video games: The 80's
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