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Official ROM updates for classic Bally/Williams titles

Wizcat

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Sep 9, 2011
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Lancashire
Alias
Paul G
Soren has been providing ROM tweaks for a few years now, fixing old bugs and make minor rules changes to fix exploits for competition. Seems things have now gone official with Planetary Pinball being the reseller of these updates:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/official-williams-and-bally-software-upgrades

Planetary Pinball, the sole licensee for Williams Electronics Games, Inc is proud to announce that we will start to release software upgrades for Williams™ and Bally™ pinball machines.

Ever since WMS closed the pinball division in 1999, the games developed and manufactured by them have been in high regard with players and collectors of pinball machines. And games are continuously being restored to like-new condition. Thanks to a steady supply of new and improved parts, from small mechanical and electrical units, to circuit boards and playfields. Parts made available by Planetary Pinball and domestic and international collaborators. Recent years have also given us a number of new innovations. Bringing the games of yesteryears into a more contemporary look and feel.

Software is the heart and soul of a pinball machine. While a lot of effort went into making software for games, the framework, rules design and special effects, on some games the time has shown a few shortcomings. These might be bugs, like incorrect scoring, game progression being lost, modes being messed up etc. Or rooted in the fact that games were developed with coin drop play on locations in mind. In some cases making them less than ideal for the more contemporary use of home play and high level competition play.

The goal of software upgrades is not to make fundamental changes or redesigns. Neither to upgrade display graphics or sound. The goal is to make minor tweaks and fixes, while keeping the spirit of the game intact. And to strive for having rule changes under the users control via new and expanded feature adjustments.

The premier release is new software for the four games Red & Ted's Road Show™, Creature From The Black Lagoon™, Junk Yard™ and Radical™. Please see individual release notes for details. They are designed and implemented by Søren Worre. A professional software engineer and pinball enthusiast who has obtained the knowledge and the craft to make software upgrades to Williams and Bally pinball machines. They are now available for purchase from our authorized distributers.

This Pinside thread will serve as the official social media platform for these upgrades.

https://www.planetarypinball.com/

ROMs here: http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=ES
 
They will be dumped soon enough once the pinmame lot get their hands on them.
 
What’s their protection mechanism on this?

EDIT: It’s a moral one...

PLEASE support this effort as we have setup a number of authorized suppliers. If we have people selling this without authorization or distributing binary files (both of which are a violation of copyright as well as WMS licensing agreements), then we may stop this activity. We are planning enhancements to many games, and support within the pinball community will help fund Soren so he is motivated to continue.

The following suppliers are authorized - you can verify as these EPROMS will ONLY have a BLUE serial numbered hologram on them - without these they are counterfeit, and please contact PPS in that case!

- Matt's Basement Arcade
- Classic Arcades
- Action Pinball
- Astill Amusements
- dotsandloopspinball.com (Soren Worre)
- Planetary Pinball
 
Soren asked me to share this (who is a top bloke and the guy who did this work so if you use these roms please contribute).

We have the CFTBL soren rom at the club and it fixes a lot of issues.


——————-
Official Williams and Bally software ROM chips

I am authorised re-seller of Williams and Bally software ROM chips. Shipping from Denmark.

I offer chips for all games including the following brand new upgrades.

Creature From The Black Lagoon
Junk Yard
Radical
Red & Ted’s Road Show

For more information and details on the new releases, please visit


Cheers

Soren



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
People happy to spend megabucks on some plastic mods, but not a few quid on a ROM update 'because it's software'? I despair :(
I will wait to quote this when Stern/JJP start charging for new media etc in the games :)

Got a threat of a CnD from Wayne in Australia many years ago when I used to sell eproms on ebay (many years ago).

I informed him that you were paying for the chips and the software is FOC.

I dare say he puts as much work into what Jim has on RFM but he is not allowed to charge for it. You can optionally donate.
 
I'll happily buy them in .rom format and burn for myself given the amount of time Soren has spent on them. Just a fact that they will be dumped regardless of how many mechanisms are in place.
 
Soren asked me to share this (who is a top bloke and the guy who did this work so if you use these roms please contribute).

We have the CFTBL soren rom at the club and it fixes a lot of issues.


——————-
Official Williams and Bally software ROM chips

I am authorised re-seller of Williams and Bally software ROM chips. Shipping from Denmark.

I offer chips for all games including the following brand new upgrades.

Creature From The Black Lagoon
Junk Yard
Radical
Red & Ted’s Road Show

For more information and details on the new releases, please visit

[/URL][/URL]

Cheers

Soren



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Neil,

Do you know if this version supports pay per game or is only for free play?
Will buy it anyhow, just wondering
cheers
 
People have no compunction about copying software because the belief is that a copy doesn’t deprive anyone of anything.

Hopefully this guy gets an update out for TAF Gold to remove the random awards before the whole project gets canned because of people warezing it. TZ 9.5H would be nice too.
 
Did he get access to the original source, or is it purely reverse engineering?
PPS own the WMS IP I think, or are the only official licensee? So I presume they have the source. I don’t think it would be possible to do some of the changes that have been announced with reverse engineering, though willing to be told I’m wrong.
 
All reversed engineered. From binaries. Quite an impressive achievement in itself.

He's been doing it for years, well before the pps agreement. And I very much doubt even pps has the source
 
PPS own the WMS IP I think, or are the only official licensee? So I presume they have the source. I don’t think it would be possible to do some of the changes that have been announced with reverse engineering, though willing to be told I’m wrong.
I wouldn't be surprised if the original code was written in assembly (anyone know?) - makes it easier to decipher than something generated by a compiler. Also the value of a full-system emulator (pinmame) mustn't be underestimated.

That being said, I'm in no way belittling the effort here - it's massive especially if he doesn't have access to the original source. At the end of the day it's a lot of work and people shouldn't be so reluctant to pay a few bucks for it. I do hope he open sources it at some point (when he stops doing it or whatever) -- mainly because I'm curious :D
 
Pretty sure I remember an old Lyman interview where he said he was using C.

That said, I would bet the very earliest solid state games were in ASM, but probably around WPC they are in C. Maybe Whitestar was C++ ? Would be mad not to modernise to higher level languages

Spike games are written in Scratch on an ipad
 
so depends on how far you go back. I'm sure the first electronic games would be assembler but then I think from System 7 it was TASM which was an assembly language with some C like constructs but then in the late 80's moved to C for some parts of the game logic, then to C for most of it from WPC, then C++ for some games (inc I think WPC2000). Stern is C++.
 
or I might be thinking C in the later 90's I talked to Lyman about this one time but brain fade.
 
my old school pal wrote a full version of defender for the zx81 all in machine code in 1981. soon after it came out as an arcade game. the guy was an absolute genius. he went on to work for a fruit machine company. he’s still there 40 years later. he pioneered many innovations in the fruit machine world. even has patents he is named on for some of them. me. i just drank beer and chased skirt.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
one of the developers at Stern that I know just confirmed they use C++
 
my old school pal wrote a full version of defender for the zx81 all in machine code in 1981. soon after it came out as an arcade game. the guy was an absolute genius. he went on to work for a fruit machine company. he’s still there 40 years later. he pioneered many innovations in the fruit machine world. even has patents he is named on for some of them. me. i just drank beer and chased skirt.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I sold my first software when I was 11 :D CP/M based EPOS system. Written In PL/M - what a brainfart of a language that was. Then accountancy and hotel systems for years, then device drivers, then networking code.

Neil.
 
my old school pal wrote a full version of defender for the zx81 all in machine code in 1981. soon after it came out as an arcade game. the guy was an absolute genius. he went on to work for a fruit machine company. he’s still there 40 years later. he pioneered many innovations in the fruit machine world. even has patents he is named on for some of them. me. i just drank beer and chased skirt.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Which company does he work for bellfruit? Blueprint? Think only 2 left :)

I went to PCP (any one remember them lol) in bath for a summer job when at school and all there stuff was written in pure ASM on z80 cpu board sets. And this was when Barcrest has MPU5 etc... that was definitely c
 
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