New Versions Of The Pinball Emulators PinMame, PinMAME32 And Visual PinMAME

August 2, 2008 by Hawq

Do you like Pinball? can’t find any machines in the wild anymore? (that second ones relevant over here at least) then try this, of course you’ll need Visual Pinball as well to emulate your favourtie tables. Personally I love this one as Pinball machines vanished around where I live many years ago so it let’s me relive my youth a bit without needing to drive miles to find a table, let’s see what’s new this time:

Visual PinMAME:
Version 2.0.1 (August 2nd, 2008)

Added support for Stern’s “Nascar” and “Grand Prix”

Version 2.0 (August 1st, 2008)

Visual PinMAME went open source!

PinMAME: Version 2.0 (August 1, 2008) - “Free Play Only!”
This major version number change has nothing to do with new functionality for
once - it was done to mark a different milestone in the PinMAME development:
from this day on, anybody will be free to compile Visual PinMAME for himself,
so the four formerly crypted files are available in their unencrypted version
from our source code repository now!

At the same time the expiration date was removed, so this version is both
totally OPEN SOURCE and NEVER-EXPIRING at the same time. Well worth a 2.0,
what do you think?

On a sad note, this means we won’t emulate the new S.A.M. system by Stern for
quite some time to come - because of the same reason Visual PinMAME was closed
source before: once you’re able to emulate one of the games using that
platform, all of the other games will work instantaneously as well!

However, development on all other manufacturer’s platforms is continuing.
Playmatic games are working a little by now, and we will see more improvement
in the future for sure; sound is next on our issue list.

The TMS5200 is about the most complicated piece of hardware to emulate it
seems; Lord Nightmare spends almost all of his free time to get it right,
and we’ll keep track of the latest outcomings as used in MAME, and will port
the updates to PinMAME as soon as they are available.
With this release, the speech sounds no longer as “hollow” as it did before,
and a few chirps and clicks are gone by using the TMS5200 specific emulation.

Some more (Nuova) Bell games were added, and a dart-based pinball conversion
kit for Bally machines was found by JRR (thanks!)
Brian also came up with Alvin G.’s “USA Football”.

Changes:
*** CORE/CPU ***

Added new debugger command CODELIST

Fixed some disassembler glitches in the 6809 debugger

Better TMS5200 emulation for Bally / Zaccaria games that use it

*** ROM SUPPORT ***

Added Bell’s Tiger Rag (thanks to Inkochnito & Hans Balk)

Added Nuova Bell’s World Defender (-”-)

Added Nuova Bell’s Dark Shadow (-”-)

Added Nuova Bell’s Skill Flight (-”-)

Added Nuova Bell’s Cobra (-”-)

Added Nuova Bell’s Top Pin (-”-)

Added Nuova Bell’s U-Boat 65 (-”-)

Added Grand Products’ 301/Bullseye (thanks to Inkochnito & J.R.Robertson)

Added Alvin G.’s USA Football