Is This a Rare, Undumped Arcade Rom? | Ripping With Richard 

Top tip: You can use an empty BIC pen to remove those plastic board fixings. :)

Digging through old operators' clearance stuff is where the gold has always been frankly. Back in the late 1980s, a buddy of mine (since passed, sadly) made a wedge of cash from writing games, and we went to our local seaside town (Skegness) and asked arcades if we could nose through their crap to see what was hanging around they didn't want. We got a dozen in our first jaunt that were due to be just thrown in the sea (I'm not sure whether they were joking about that). Much of what we saw then, and through later visits, was the stuff abandoned in corners were often the rare stuff that didn't do well or people didn't understand or whatever. These were often games we loved. I had a Quasar unit (as I was familiar with that from my parents having it in their pub), but I always worried about those we couldn't get or maybe missed. I find it so brilliant that people like yourself are doing their best to rescue and restore a lot of these games which would otherwise be lost forever.

OMG this game has eluded me for many years and I thought I was imagining it. Asked on FB a few year back and got the usual Buck Rogers or Galaxy Force replies! I remembered playing this on the Ferry to France from Dover mid 80's on a school trip to Holland. Bombjack was on the other side of the room in a lounge area and this was sat there drawing you in but most of the kids were on playing Bombjack. Finally after all these years!!

The collective you guys are creating is amazing, thank you for sharing all the hard work!

Superb , it’s like going back in time finding that writing from 1985 , unveiling another era hidden away for years . Fascinating, great video thanks guys. Where were we on the 12th February 1985

Trick for cutting paint brushes down cleanly: Wrap the bristles in tape, as tightly as you can get, then cut through the tape.

Longer bristles work better but get a firm brush type. Splendor Blast is tremendously expensive by the way and highly desirable, look after it.

I see Turf Masters at the beginning. My all time favorite Neo-Geo game and still to this day my favorite golf game.

Great video! Loved seeing and hearing a bit about the process of dumping arcade roms. The game looks really cool, too!

Really enjoyable video guys thank you! Almost verged on an Antiques Roadshow style reveal there! "Well Sir, your ancient historical dusty old PCB is... THIS valuable!" 😄

I'm only 59 seconds in and I'm already blown away by the production quality of this video. Very good stuff. Looking forward to the rest!

I really like the steep rise in quality of your videos lately! I know how much work is behind that. so grats on pulling it off! Thanx for a great video.

I absolutely love your video, I have no idea how I got here, but I'm happy to have found it. I once had a friend here in Michigan, bring over an EPROM programming board/cartridge for the Commodore 64. This allowed him to read and write (flash) ROM's. He left me with a couple of games that he had put together on one cartridge. This was in the early 80s, and I had forgotten all about it until I saw your video. The second part of these memories, was his tool kit. He had a few different EPROM and ROM pullers. You'd just push down and hold to remove the ROM and reverse it to install a ROM. Probably be real handy for someone in your line of work. Anyways, I just wanted to take a moment and say Thank you so much for the memories, and I look forward to viewing more of your work.

It's really great to see your enthusiasm and dedication on restoring these old games. One peice of advice, get large antistatic bags, install a high quality antistatic mat, don't forget to wear an antistatic bracelet all the while follow exactly the installation instructions and use of the aforementioned gear. This simple but effective setup can save you much time and effort by not damaging the ICs / electronics from a static discharge of any kind. Good luck and don't loose your drive. Cheers !

What a great find well done. Looking forward to seeing other rarities, hopefully.

Didn't know such a game was possible in 1985. 1989 perhaps, but this really shows how quickly this tech evolved in the eighties. Eye opening

I remember seeing and playing that as a wee nipper 🙂 It looks impressive even now!

Really liked this Alex. Everything about this video is great to watch. From the unknowning of what's in the box, to peeling back the layers, hidden in the code. Shame the pcb didnt work as that would have been a nice end to the video, but hey, that's for Hollywood, this is the reality of the struggles to get and keep these old boards working. Hope you decide to do some more tech related videos as well as the restoration and game play stuff. Really good video, pal.

Ah... Memories. Reminds me of working with a retired vendor from Covington, KY, replacing BAD ROMs on the PCBs on the games he distributed using the EPROM tools.

Glad this came up in my suggested videos as for some reason youtube had decided to unsub me from your channel! Which youtube seem to be doing quite a bit recently and I don't know why and its really annoying! Anyway rant over. Good to see you Alex what a cool and interesting video! That game looks incredible for 1985! And I've not seen anything like that before the snes came out which was 1992 that's just mind-blowing! Well now I'm resubbed to your channel I'm going to go back and see what else I've missed 😂 bloody youtube. Anyway hope your keeping well Alex and hopefully I'll be able to make another trip to the archive soon once my funds have recovered a bit after Christmas! Take it easy mate and hopefully see you soon cheers

I might sow the seeds of an idea here. You know the big carousel jukeboxes which would spin round, an arm would pick the chosen record and place it on the turntable? Think of that with arcade boards. You'd want interposers to bring JAMMA or whatever standard out to a wide-pitch contact assembly, keeping inputs, outputs and voltages all apart from each other. Two ways to do the jukeboxing, one option is a big, difficult to make carousel. The other is all the boards shelved, contacts-downwards, with a contact sled and ribbon run on a track, moving to the correct position then pushing up (either push the sled or push the entire track) to activate the board. If only I had the space, the time and all the parts :D

Interesting to see the process and it looks like you may have come across a not so common title. Looking forward to seeing the board up and running.

Such an interesting video! Thank you very much guys for your hard preservation work!

I can see the similarity to F-Zero, but the perspective in Splendor Blast also reminds me of the vertical sections in Konami's 1992 SNES/SFC shooter, Axelay. It definitely looks like a graphically ambitious game for the era, one that I hadn't heard about before, so thanks for sharing.

Great work folks, interesting to see the whole process. Hope you keep posting this sort of stuff!

The game you played Earlier (the car based one) appears similar, though the jump is different to a game i used to play called spy hunter. instead of a jump you has machine guns and the cabinet usually had a steering wheel, triggers for the guns and a shifter for high and low gear

Fascinating video, really interesting. Thank you for sharing!

I really enjoyed the suspense and excitement to see what this game could be. I geeked out over the rom dump process. I really like what you all are doing over there for the retro gaming community.

Vibes of Spy Hunter

Thumbs up for the mention of "Equites". One of my favourite arcade games ever, and is one that's kept my interest in arcades going since I was a kid. The caravan park I used to go to had a tiny Equites cabinet with very many faults. It would often crash with a CPU exception error on the screen. I thought this was the same as "breaking" in a BASIC program. Waggling the joysticks and pressing buttons would make a letter appear, and I was convinced that if I could get LIST to appear, I could see the source code. Of course, I know now that I was just corrupting the data in the screen RAM, but it used to fascinate me. Every year, it would get worse, and in 1992, the last year I went there, it was just showing multicolours. I've never tried Splendor Blast, but it looks pretty frustrating!

I am amazed at the PCB's that went into Arcade cabinets. It must have cost a fortune to design and build them.

A really interesting episode, looking forward to the updates on this board in the near future.

i recently bougt a rom reader and old roms, there is something exciting about finding out what game is on that rom... thanks for the video

I always wondered how roms were riped. As someone who's enjoyed playing old roms and reliving times from my childhood I want to say thanks to all those who have put the work into ripping them.

That is so cool! Preserving history like this is amazing.

Just discovered this channel, and man, am i glad I have always been obsessed with arcade history and culturei 'm looking forward to watching more cheers!! Also sooo many questions why can't the computer be turned off on Mondays??

I've played that game before. I remember the garage then leaving in a helicopter to the next level

That's got to be the best intro on RU-vid right there.

What the reason for using a brush to clean the board over compressed air? Instant subscriber! Great channel! So glad it popped up on my home page

My uncle Dan, who worked on robotics at the Phoenix CPU plant, made each of us kids a gaming console. It had an EPROM input that you would place the game chip in and play. I had hundreds of copied games when I was a kid. Pirated of course. Poor Dan died a couple years ago.

Great stuff , very interesting seeing this

It's interesting to see behind the scenes at the mill

Missed that one back in the day. Impressive graphical effect for 1985, it would've eaten a lot of my pocket money. 😂

Cracking video, I love digital archaeology of hardware, old software and this really scratched that itch! Did I miss if you said this version was on MAME?

Subbed and bell rung! I don't care about arcade stuff, but you peaked my curiosity.

What a really fantastic video, very cool! One for the History 📚

that is a decent find... gotta love finding such gems from the past.

Super interesting video! It's amazing how many games still aren't dumped into MAME.

i assisted in a small number visual reads with the caps 0ff project. wish i'd done more before they finished. and i'd love to do it again, too, if anyone has to decap some chips in order to read them again!

This is a bit before my time but still very interesting, thank you!

Quite a cool looking game in the end, haven’t heard of it before. Nice discovery.

Haven't heard of the game, but genuinely fascinating watching Richard dump the EPROM 👍. Hope you get it running soon 👍👍.

Great stuff!

Make sure you use a brush with natural fibre bristles. Plastic bristle brushes can generate static when you move them around quickly..... I am not sure how cutting the brush down helps but I have a selection of natural fibre brushes in different sizes bought from a local art shop.

Interesting to see the process of discovering whats on the board, not a game i recall looks fun.

Great video mate..... I'm sure I've played that game at some point

Very cool find! The perspective motion seems odd on this game though, Hope you can get it up and running in the real machine! These finds are always one of the best things about collecting and emulation - preserving gaming history.

I love dumping roms, always exciting to see if it's not in mame. Also that first switch on to see if it works.

Cool looking game! Kind of like Zippy Race meets Xevious meets F Zero, as you say. Some of the textures look familiar too

Very cool, new one on me, never seen that before. I see the similarities to F-Zero, but my first thought was it looks and plays similar to Alleykat on the C64. I wonder if Andrew Braybrook saw this in 1985? Alleykat was 1986 so the timeframe is spot on.

Couldn't ask for a better Friday evening. :D

Absolutely fascinating EPROM dump process, and grest game showcase. I'm definitely going to give this one a play !

There again we see Windows XP still in service. That OS DEFIANTLY refuses to die!

Great video mate, hopefully the original board can be repaired... I will have to give this game a try it is a new one to me.

A game ive never heard of nice find , hope you get the pcb running

Great video

Hearing "Gegitsu" every time you meant to say Gekisou hurts my inner Japanese student. XP

We got a bunch of undumped games in our storage, but I neither know if, nor how I should upload these. The programmer I use there runs on Win98. The programmer I use at home is an ISA card in a 386 PC with a software that looks like it would run just fine on an 8088. The only game that might be worth trying to dump is Dribbling which might be a different version, none of the ROMs match, but we have several boards and the ROMs match each other. And then it's bootlegs bootlegs bootlegs. There's even a Bagman running on a Crazy Kong board. We have what feels like 50 different games on Galaxian hardware (while in fact it's more like 5) I don't know if they're all dumped. We have a Knock Out running on a real genuine NAMCO Galaxians board... most of these look hacked up beyond restoration (but hey, the game runs, so...)

I had a custom jammer back in the 90 with a load of games boards

Please, at 0:14 what is that top-view racing "Bump & Jump"style of gameplay game called?

I always feel good after a serious ROM dump. 😏😄 Sorry about the time stamp spam posts. My RU-vid app was freaking out on me.

MC68000 is actually a 32-bit processor (build with 16-bit "parts" inside) - while it looks like a 16-bit CPU because of 16-bit bus, it have 32-bit registers and 32-bit instruction set. Most of the times you can run same software on 68000 and 68020+ (Amiga). It's confused as 16-bit CPU bacause of 16-bit bus and was often used in a devices graphically belonged to 16-bit era. The bitness of something though, it is something that often depends of perspective.

Very cool indeed.

Is there a reason to use a brush instead of using a air blaster? I always assumed that the brush and sand would increase the risk of turning brush motions into abrasions and damage the boards

i love arcade stuff and fixing stuff.

The holy grail arcade machine to dump is Death Race 2000.

I totally saw F-Zer0. Ahead of its time by 5/6 years? trippy save!

Feels like the birth of a baby :D first i see a dump of an arcade rom.

With old ROMs it is possible to get Bit Rot where a few bits have changed state. This in turn will cause the checksums to change and appear to be a different version but in many cases the game will continue to run, at least partially. How many differences did you find?

ARCADE ARCHIVE, Ask Richards when you Dump the ROM's into the software Buffer, when looking at the ROM's game code how can you tell if there is any Bad Errors or Corrupted Code by just looking at the ROMs game code in the software buffer program? Any Hints or troubleshooting to see bad code and corrupted code?

When your XP computer stops working, you can use a virtual machine to do it. I would recommend you migrate your XP system to a virtual machine before the hard disk fails or the board fails. I would recommend VirtualBox, but VMWare is a bit easier to do the initial dump, but maintaining VMWare is more of a headache. You can image the entire hard disk with linux's dd. It will make a bit by bit copy of the hard disk, and make an *.img file.

Looks like the English title of “GEKISOU” is called “Violent Run”, confirmed perhaps?

Theres a Splendor Blast 2 on MAME

I got the winners circle 3 or part 3 undumped (dont know what is, pcb diferent from version 1)! Problem is getting people with eprom readers for mb8516

Wow wow wow!

Is that Phelios on the larger screen in the background?

very interesting game

I normaly get my compuleaner out I hate dust lol, Nice to see the golden oldies getting a new life.

hello did you dump the english version of violent run?

alpha denshi reminds me of river raid but with cars lol

0:09 - What game is that? I vaguely remember that ninja from back in the arcade days and I've wanted to play it again for ages

Brave soul, still rocking the Windows XP! I know it's probably necessary to be able to use the old serial programmer equipment, but still, really hope that thing isn't connected to the internet. >_

This is the arcade historian version of panning for gold. Pick out a new board, dump then read the ROM to find out what you've got!

I just got a bargain of ten arcade boards, in "untested" condition. I am pretty sure that they are non functional, as some have stickers with "video" "power" "CPU" notes so I believe those are issues with them. I am not very knowledgeable about the arcade boards, however, I know enough about the 80s 8-bit computers and digital circuits. I would attempt to repair them but I have no idea what they are, what games nor I have the schematics. Is there a way too identify them? Maybe a website with images of the arcade boards or characteristics like CPU, main ICS, or the markings on the boards? Some have missing ROMs, one have a NEC V30 CPU (is the smallest and the newest one) and the others have 68000 or variants CPUs and Z80. Also some have some AY sound chip, while others do not, some have a lot of TTL ICs while others have custom ICs or GAL arrays. Also, few of them are dual board , and they seem to be the oldest ones. All are JAMMA standard (all have the same gold finger connector) I believe.

that keyboard needs a cleaning more than that pcb did

you are my hero

Is that a Music Man I see hanging up on the back wall at roughly the 1 minute mark?

Let's goooooooo!

I just love PCB archeology, especially if it is arcade-related .

Q do you create roms for public use and archiving? or do you use these strictly in your museum?