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new Home ROM patch for Pin-Bot

idealjoker

Registered
Joined
Nov 15, 2020
Messages
2
Location
New Forest
Hi all. I am not part of the UK pinball community but I have spent a few enjoyable years in your country. Haven't had a really good fish and chips since I left 20 years ago...

“PEMBOT (no relation)” is a ROM patch for the 1986 Williams PIN BOT pinball game. It is an ambitious patch based on a full game disassembly and includes several new game features, including a ball saver, three announced million-point shots, adaptive difficulty with a built-in "noob" mode for casual players, a tournament preset, as well as options for the players to disable lock stealing and to mute the game sound with the flipper buttons. Many changes to the game rules have been implemented with several simultaneous goals: i) to improve integration of the different game elements to add depth and make the game more interesting in a collection, ii) to make the game more fun for casual players (ball saver, easier path to multiball), ii) to make the game harder for experienced players (adaptive difficulty). Finally, a surprising number of fairly serious bugs in the original game code have been fixed in PEMBOT. These affect the solar value, the energy value, dual-scoring during multiball, and the chest skillshot. A number of more minor bugs were fixed as well.

The attached zip file contains a README with the game rules as well as patch files in BPS format. (This format ensures that no original IP is included in the patches.) There is more information in a thread on Pinside (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pembot-no-relation#post-5963131). Below is a gameplay video that shows many of the changed rules. If you watch it on youtube.com there's a clickable list with timestamps in the video description.

I hope you'll enjoy. (Feedback and reviews most welcome, of course!)

- idealjoker

 

Attachments

  • PEMBOT_J1.zip
    24.7 KB · Views: 20
To the best of my understanding (and certainly my intention) the patch is completely legal. The zip file does *not* contain ROM images and the patches are in "Delta BPS" format, which ensures that no original IP is included. I created the patch from the backup copy I made of the ROMs that came with my Pinbot game and I carefully checked the patch files to ensure that they do not contain data tables from the original game.
 
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