Thank you so much for posting. The Spaceport arcade in King of Prussia mall had this right inside the entrance on the right side. In 77/78 my ten year-old brother was playing it and I wanted a go. At four years old I smoked his score so badly on my first try that I made him cry LOL. Now I'm fifty and my brother and father that were there are both gone now, so even silly moments like that make me feel good to remember. Now I have to find the game that they had all the way on the back wall, it was another electromechanical one where you had a rifle and shot down black-and-white stock footage movie aircraft on a really big (for the time) screen.
I played this constantly at the Sega Center at Seaport Village in San Diego around 1979 when I was a little kid; it was side by side with early video games. It was one of the most fun games I've ever played. I've never seen it since. Thanks for posting!
Do you own this, or is it near you? If so, could you provide a higher res video, exploring the inner workings? This is literally the only imagery of this cabinet on the internet right now. I'd love to see how the optics project that image- it looks like there's a little transparent, 3d miniature city, but I'd like to know how that's getting converted into a perspective projection on the screen. If you do upload such a video, please reply to this comment with a link, so I'll be notified. Thanks :)
From what I can see, the image projected on the screen might simply be the city-disk's shadow, casted by the single light shining above it. In fact, the rotor blades seem to be projected this way too. I too believe that the image is coloured by the city-disk being made of coloured transparent plastic. Whereas the white aura around the island, the sea and the horizon, seem to be simple static drawings on the screen itself. Note that the city-disk both rotates on its center and moves across an orbital trajectory, according to the player's input. Now, while all of that might be somewhat close to the truth, I can't for the life of me get a grip on how the internal logic, sound and missiles/explosions are supposed to work.
It looks like the two motorized mirrors on the side are used for the shooting animation (it some time to "rewind" so two of them are used). It's not clear what the mirror in the center (that moves back and forth) is used for. Behind it, there is a black piece with holes that rotate every time it hits something. Is this for fire/explosion effect ? (that is supposed to grow quickly) The "chopper" sound is definitely tapped. Not sure about the other samples (shooting and hitting target). Sound chips from very late 70's (such as AY-3-8910) could produce simple sounds such an explosion but those were only available after this game. Could those be stored in the ROM (since it use a CPU) with extra low quality ?
