Cinematronics Multigame

Hi all,

As some of you know, we here at CineLabs :-) have been working on a
multigame system for the Cinematronics platform (CMG for short).
I've been making a major push lately and have redone/improved the system.

What will it do:
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The CMG will support ALL of the known, existing Cinematronics vector
games (Star Castle, RO, SQ, BUGs, etc. (except Cosmic Chasm)).

There will be plenty of space for additions, revisions, new games, etc in
EPROM (2meg or 4meg).

There's a menu system to select games (of course).

A control panel based escape sequence, similar to IBM's three finger salute.

There's also some extra diagnostics (RAM for example).

My plan is offer a kit which will include:
------------------------------------------

An assembled daughter card which will piggy back onto the Cinematronics
CPU board. The board will plug into an existing EP/ROM socket, connect
in series with the control panel and have some miscellaneous connections
to the CCPU for control signals.

The final cost should be around $75. (That covers the CMG cost and
hopefully the development tools as well).

Control Panel:
--------------

There are currently two versions of the CMG, one for Armor Attack and one
for Rip Off.

The reason is both of these games use basically the same configuration.
I've patched a bunch of games to work with these CPs. I plan to patch the
rest of them in the future, based on input from the group on what the best
solutions are for the particular game.

Color Support:
--------------

As it stands right now, everything is monochrome. All games, including
Boxing Bugs work fine on a bi-level monochrome display (as used in
RO and AA). Hopefully color will become available at a later date, by
my efforts or someone else's.

Sound:
------

As you know, every game has its own sound board. I'm concentrating on the
actual game portion at this time. The CMG will have support for Cinematronics
Multisound in software, but I'd love to hear from anyone interested in this
end of the project.

In the mean time, you can always physically swap the sound boards.

---
Anyone interested in one? I'll do a run of boards as long as I get a few
people interested (10-15). As usual, the more people interested, the
lower the cost can drop.
I will also order a couple extras and sell them to the general RGVAC
population to help cover costs and get the volume up, but the price
will be somewhat higher. So if you want one cheaper, speak now.
-Mark