2018.02.10
"Hammering in My Head"
Thanks to “alt/deepfb, Dan Dare, mad3001, Habi, Adonías, cpcmaniaco,
Robcfg, Pablo Ruiz, Recreativas.org, and The Dumping Union” a rare PCB of
the game ‘Hammer Boy’ was dumped.
Hammer Boy is one of a small number of games by Spanish developed Dinamic
that was ported over to the arcades by Inder. The only other dumped title on
this hardware is Megaphoenix, which I emulated a few years ago.
Hammer Boy is less of a change from the home ports than Megaphoenix was,
utilizing only the 16 colour mode, rather than the 256 colour mode, meaning
visually it’s pretty much a straight port of the Amiga / ST versions of the
games (and personally I always liked the art better on the Amstrad CPC
version even if it was ultra-low resolution)
The best way to think of the game is like a giant ‘Game & Watch’ title,
with full colour graphics and some animation but the same basic gameplay.
Unfortunately that does also extend to the controls which at best could be
described as ‘sticky’ and are something of a source of frustration with all
versions of the game (you can’t interrupt animations already playing to move
position)
It’s maybe an odd choice to release as a full arcade machine in 1990, which
might be why it never really gained much popularity, there are just 4 stages
(Fort, Pirate, Castle, Space) at which point it loops with a higher
difficulty. I guess it does fit the traditional arcade mold of being all
about the high score, but is maybe a bit too simple.
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_1.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_2.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_3.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_4.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_5.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_6.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_7.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_8.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_9.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_10.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_11.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_12.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_13.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_14.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_15.png
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/pics2018/hammerboy_16.png
Thanks should also go to Dirk Best for identifying what was wrong with the
68k -> PIC communication which was causing the dipswitches to not work, and
AJR for improving the sound handling which was previously only good for
Megaphoenix. My only real contribution here was identifying that it used a
4bpp mode instead of an 8bpp mode.
I recorded a video of the game running in MAME, sorry for the bad aspect /
border at the bottom, I forgot that because this uses a TMS to drive the
video that the screen mode and refresh rate are dynamic; I should have forced
a recording size with -snapsize but forgot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTNjjUqfx_4
There was another arcade game called Hammer Boy; a 2001 release by Afega but
that one isn’t dumped (it should be the same game as Mang-Chi tho, just with
a different title)
https://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/