RE: Williams vector game 68k cpu (1982)

 
 
Rav produced a website after lots of detective work on PREDATOR here :-
 
http://www.retrokade.com/cabs/predators.htm
 
 
As mentioned in above article I still have in my possession a massive haul of 1980-1983 original/unique Williams development material including some PREDATOR CPO's, and a load of other stuff to do with JOUST, STAR-RIDER, TURKEY SHOOT, including original design docs, silkscreen films, cabinet blue prints, story boards, photos, 35mm negatives, side art, large posters (esp Joust !) and so on. The Joust collection even has some program listings and the original hand drawn Joust logos and artists sketches that were used to make the final Joust Marquee and the PR artwork.
 
 
But there's also a whole load of original game design documents, letters, contracts, NDA's and so on, for numerous OTHER Williams game concepts that never saw the light of day, summarised below.
 
"GARDEN GAUNTLET" / Gauntlet, 1982, was to be a trackball based 2 player game which puts the player in charge of an insect sized spaceship in a gigantic garden environment. The document might have been written when the designer was on smoking something since it goes on about harvesting designated vegetables to be returned to the Gauntlet for veggie credits whilst being skilled in the art of using weapons to battle garden dangers…
 
"DISEASED" which sees the player shrink down to a micro-space ship that flys into the human body and attempts to save the patient from a variety of strange disorders in different parts of the body, accessed via a body-map with successfully unlocked areas. Your 3 turns are represented by 3 space ships, and game over happens if the patient dies.. Weapons and adversaries included a Laser, an Anti-biotic gunk gun, fighting off various germs, brain fade, enemy zitosis, acne and warts.
 
"NIGHTMARE", 1982, in which the player controls a mythological winger character in battle with a variety of nightmarish enemies in a isometric pseudo 3D world that makes use of novel Escher-like landscapes intermixed with detailed 2D animated characters as the run about the isometric world making use of the tricky 3D visuals. (sounds like elements of this ended up in Joust 2 and Inferno) .
 
One of the weirdest folders contains 1983 correspondence between Williams Electronics Inc and the BBC in the UK, over the rights to "DR WHO". Seriously ! There's even a lengthy game design document with the working title Key of Time, which describes how the players mission is to blast through space visiting 6 planets in order to recover Pieces of a Key to unlock a Time travel machine. The proposed cabinet design was to be a Blue Tardis with a light on the top. I kid you not ..
 
They get even weirder with "HIGH NOON at the 4 MOON SALOON" which is a target shooting game set in a futuristic western saloon environment.
 
A few collectors who been to my arcade have seen this stuff - and I'm not smokin anything, honest :-)
 
 
A r c h e r

 
> Subject: Re: VECTOR: Williams vector game 68k cpu (1982)
> From: andi_kraemer@t-online.de
> To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
> Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2011 07:00:00 +0000
>
> FWIW, the schematics have been discussed in early 2010 here :
> http://www.rotheblog.com/2010/01/arcade-history/williams-vector-prototype-schematics-found-illinois-pinball/
>
>
>
>
> "Alan McCormick" <weirdal1968@yahoo.com> schrieb:
> > A few pics...
> >
> > http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/3353/schem4.jpg
> > http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/2695/schem3.jpg
> > http://img852.imageshack.us/img852/6738/schem2.jpg
> > http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/6696/schem1.jpg
> >
> > Just realized the sheet that was labeled "vector custom a" was probably the analog section of the vector system. More than likely it was a relative of Atari's AVG but that's just a guess. As for the sound system, given that it was 1982 vintage I'd bet it just used a pair of Williams sound boards.
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > ** Unsubscribe, subscribe, or view the archives at http://www.vectorlist.org
> > ** Please direct other questions, comments, or problems to chris@westnet.com
> >
> >
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ** Unsubscribe, subscribe, or view the archives at http://www.vectorlist.org
> ** Please direct other questions, comments, or problems to chris@westnet.com
                                               
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Unsubscribe, subscribe, or view the archives at http://www.vectorlist.org
** Please direct other questions, comments, or problems to chris@westnet.com
Received on Sun Mar 27 07:27:23 2011