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War of the Worlds

  1. Game infos
  2. Parent and Clones
  3. Sound
  4. Driver
  5. Inputs
  6. Controls
  7. Display
  8. Dipswitchs
  9. Roms list
  10. Chips list
  11. Samples list
  12. Categories
  13. MAMEinfo
  14. History
  15. High scores
Download wotw.zip (17 KB)
Snapshot

Game infos

Description War of the Worlds
Name wotw
Manufacturer Cinematronics
Year 1981
Runnable yes
System arcade /
Number of players 2P alt
Added to MAME .087u3
Romset size 17 KB
Romset file 10 files
Romset zip 11 B
Language English
Evaluation 70 to 80 (Good)
Genre Shooter

Parent and clones

Parent This game is the parent

Sound infos

Sound_channels 1

Driver infos

Driver status imperfect
Driver emulation good
Driver color good
Driver sound imperfect
Driver graphic good
Driver cocktail
Driver protection
Driver savestate yes

Inputs infos

Input service no
Input tilt no
Input players 1
Input buttons
Input coins 1

Controls infos

type ways minimum maximum sensitivity keydelta reverse
joy 2 no

Display infos

type rotate flipx width height refresh pixclock htotal hbend hbstart vtotal vbend vbstart
vector 180 yes 38

Dipswitchs

Roms list

console name bios size crc md5 merge sha1 region offset status optional
arcade prom.c14 32 07492cda 32df9148797c23f70db47b840139c40e046dd710 proms 140 good no
arcade prom.d14 32 9a05afbf 5d806a42424942ba5ef0b70a1d629315b37f931b proms 120 good no
arcade prom.e14 32 29dbfb87 d8c40ab010b2ea30f29b2c443819e2b69f376c04 proms 100 good no
arcade prom.e8 32 791ec9e1 6f7fcce4aa3be9020595235568381588adaab88e proms 180 good no
arcade prom.f14 256 9edbf536 036ad8a231284e05f44b1106d38fc0c7e041b6e8 proms 0 good no
arcade prom.j14 32 a481ca71 ce145d61686f600cc16b77febfd5c783bf8c13b0 proms 160 good no
arcade wow_le.t7 4096 b16440f9 9656a26814736f8ff73575063b5ebbb2e8aa7dd0 maincpu 0 good no
arcade wow_lo.p7 4096 bfdf4a5a db4eceb68e17020d0a597ba105ec3b91ce48b7c1 maincpu 1 good no
arcade wow_ue.u7 4096 9b5cea48 c2bc002e550a0d36e713d07f6aefa79c70b8e284 maincpu 2000 good no
arcade wow_uo.r7 4096 c9d3c866 57a47bf06838fe562981321249fe5ae585316f22 maincpu 2001 good no

Chips list

name tag type clock
Cinematronics CPU maincpu cpu 4980750
Samples samples audio
Speaker mono audio

Samples list

name
cfire
drone
lexplode
pfire
sexplode
shield
star
thrust

Categories

MAMEinfo

0.35b6 [Aaron Giles, Zonn Moore, Jeff Mitchell, Neil Bradley]


Artwork available

Samples required


WIP:

- 0.152: hap added War of the Worlds internal color overlay.

- 0.146u1: Tafoid removed duplicate code which necessitated separate samples for clone 'War of the Worlds (color)'. Both display types now only need the one sample set (wotw).

- 7th February 2010: TrevEB - Added samples to War of the Worlds. The samples have been recorded from direct input, however the sounds are identical to Star Castle. War of the Worlds will need some driver work: 1. The sound of the player being removed and replaced is the same sound as the opening drone sound from Star Castle with the pitch changing from high to low. 2. The tripod sound often does not stop when the game ends. 3. The shields sound is not working for some reason. The shields callout is there, but it does not play.

- 26th July 2008: Mr. Do - On a disk that I forgot I had artwork sitting on, I found the TRUE overlay for War of the Worlds, which Tom M. from ionpool had made a scan of a long time ago. I took another shot at it, and it looks pretty good this time.

- 0.122u4: Zsolt Vasvari fixed initial entry screen is clipped on right side. Changed visible area to 1121x768.

- 10th September 2006: Mr. Do - Added color overlay to War of the Worlds, based on excellent eBay auction pics.

- 26th August 2006: Mr. Do - Added War of the Worlds bezel from MAME.net and Mean Arena. Some of these decent stuff are so-so; some are REALLY good.

- 12th May 2006: 3D ARCADE - New 3D cabinet model for War of the Worlds from BTribble.

- 0.97u1: Aaron Giles fixed 'Lives' dipswitch.

- 0.87u3: Aaron Giles added clone War of the Worlds (color) as the color hardware version (same ROMs). Made parent set to the black & white hardware which was commonly seen as a Star Castle upgrade. Added sound to Barrier, Star Hawk, War of the Worlds and Boxing Bugs (note that samples don't exist yet, but I'm working with Zonn Moore to get them for everything except Barrier). Added Samples sound (cfire, shield, star, thrust, drone, lexplode, sexplode and pfire.wav).

- 0.37b2: Added 3x 'Unknown' dipswitch.

- 0.35RC2: Mathis Rosenhauer added color to War of the Worlds (seems to be wrong compared to Retrocade).

- 0.35b6: Aaron Giles, Zonn Moore, Jeff Mitchell and Neil Bradley added 'War of the Worlds' (Cinematronics 1981).

- 7th March 1999: Brad Oliver has finally sent in the Cinematronics vector games driver with working support for Space Wars, Barrier, Star Castle, Tailgunner, Rip Off, Armor Attack, War of the Worlds, Warrior, Star Hawk and Solar Quest.

- 2nd January 1997: Zonn dumped War of the Worlds.


Other Emulators:

* Cinelator

* CINEMU

* Retrocade


Recommended Games (Defence):

The End

Missile Command

Arcade Classics (Missile Command II)

New York! New York!

Radar Scope

Space Zap

Speak & Rescue

Colony 7

Dark Warrior

Demoneye-X

Future Flash

Pleiads

Satan's Hollow

Satan of Saturn

Space Tactics

War of the Worlds

Liberator

Orbitron

Tactician

Raiders

Senjyo

Cosmoswat

Planet Probe

Repulse

D-Con

Alligator Hunt

History


Arcade Video game published 38 years ago:

War of the Worlds (c) 1981 Cinematronics.

This is one great looking game. You control a little tank that can move back and forth at the bottom of the screen, your enemies are martian walkers that advance on your position. Each martian takes several hits to destroy, as you are actually blasting their legs out from under them. You can protect yourself from their shots by using your shield button, but use it sparingly, as you only have a limited amount of shield time.

- TECHNICAL -

Main CPU: CCPU (@ 5 Mhz)
Sound Chips: Discrete circuitry

Players: 1
Buttons: 4

- TRIVIA -

War of the Worlds (or WOTW for shorts) is based on the HG Wells science-fiction classic.

WOTW was one of the last vector games Cinematronics created. This game was meant to be a 3-D vector version of "Space Invaders" but was never released due to it testing badly at the 1982 AMOA show. Less than 10 were made. They were all sold to distributors and sold at trade shows. The game did not generate enough interest to be put into production. The reason this game never went into wide production was twofold. The first reason was that it was simply too easy. Games that are too easy don't make a lot of money. The second reason was that the hardware simply wasn't good enough to run the game, it lagged a bit from time to time, and arcade games are not supposed to lag.

One interesting note is that the game was originally made with the B+W X-Y monitors, but a couple years later, it was resurrected with a color monitor around the time of "Solar Quest". Only one or two where made this way, and it is doubtful that they still exist.

The 'War of the Worlds' conversion kit came with a red and yellow marquee that had a fairly simple game logo on it. The monitor bezel showed the curved surface of an orange planet, along with some generic outer space stuff. The control panel has graphics showing a ruined city, and the legs of several giant martian walkers. The controls are all pushbuttons, no joysticks or anything like that at all. The game came with a plastic monitor overlay meant to give color to the black and white monitor, it made the upper and lower areas red, while the center area was yellow (it also had a hand drawn city scene way in the background).

- STAFF -

Designed and programmed by: Tim Skelly, Rob Patton
Cabinet Art: Rick Bryant

- CONTRIBUTE -

Edit this entry: https://www.arcade-history.com/?&page=detail&id=3138&o=2

High scores

MAMESCORE records : 02/04/2017 13:01

bald_bull______________________12.600
vikleroy________________________9.250
furohon_________________________8.400
hulkiii_________________________2.450