Different Asteroids Difficulty Levels?

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My friend and I both have Asteroids. His is upright and mine is
cocktail. We both have rev.02. These pcb's seem to have different
difficulties. The upright seems easier by a wide margin. I can get
25,000 on the upright. My cocktail I am very lucky to get a free guy
(@ 10,000).
I am by no means a good Asteroids player. The rocks and saucers seem
to move a lot faster on the cocktail. Does it seem faster because the
screen is smaller?
Am I imagining this? There are no dips to control difficulty. The
upright is on freeplay and mine is 1 credit/quarter.
Has anyone else ever experienced this?
Thanks.
jim

 

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Does your board have a difficulty expansion board on it? I picked up a
non-working Asteroids at a warehouse auction this past fall and
installed on the main board was a "factory looking" expansion board.

It has jumper settings for saucer speed, ship speed, ect and is roughly
the same size as a Pac VRAM address board. I haven't documented it
yet, it's "one of those projects to get around to".

Mike Doyle

 

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Mike- No I don't have any extras on this board. That board sounds
like a cool thing to have (if it has an "easy" setting).
jim

kilkeeslps@aol.com wrote:
> Does your board have a difficulty expansion board on it? I picked up
a
> non-working Asteroids at a warehouse auction this past fall and
> installed on the main board was a "factory looking" expansion board.
>
> It has jumper settings for saucer speed, ship speed, ect and is
roughly
> the same size as a Pac VRAM address board. I haven't documented it
> yet, it's "one of those projects to get around to".
>
> Mike Doyle

 

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jimmyjet wrote:
> My friend and I both have Asteroids. His is upright and mine is
> cocktail. We both have rev.02. These pcb's seem to have different
> difficulties. The upright seems easier by a wide margin. I can get
> 25,000 on the upright. My cocktail I am very lucky to get a free guy
> (@ 10,000).
> I am by no means a good Asteroids player. The rocks and saucers seem
> to move a lot faster on the cocktail. Does it seem faster because the
> screen is smaller?
> Am I imagining this? There are no dips to control difficulty. The
> upright is on freeplay and mine is 1 credit/quarter.
> Has anyone else ever experienced this?
> Thanks.
> jim
>

I can flip my asteroids cocktail (>99,995), and I haven't played on
anything else for a long time, but I've seen asteroids do weird things
if the power getting to the board fluctuates. Sometimes the saucer
sound will be higher pitched in accordance with the power either going
up or down, don't know - haven't looked into it - but I swear things
move faster in accordance. Now that the connectors have been cleaned,
the speed and difficulty remain consistent, though. As far as the
dipswitches go, I've been too lazy to look at what they are, and
therefore I've only been able to get the dipswitches to display text in
german and french and stuff....heh


Matt

 

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Keep moving so when they fire at you you are gone by the time the bullet
gets there. You just have to learn to shoot while flying. I fly straight up
and just turn and shoot and then keep on flying. You should try Asteroids
Deluxe, even the big saucers fire in perfect accuracy.

Brent

 

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I have the schematics in front of me. From memory of boards that I have
repaired, a modification can be made to the NMI interrupt frequency. This is
determined by counter C4. I think that on some boards, pin 3 or 4 was cut.
Compare your 2 boards and let us know. This mod words on Deluxe too.

Regards

Mike Mnemonic (UK)

"jimmyjet" <jimvisser@kentisd.org> wrote in message
news:1110302641.939903.104300@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> My friend and I both have Asteroids. His is upright and mine is
> cocktail. We both have rev.02. These pcb's seem to have different
> difficulties. The upright seems easier by a wide margin. I can get
> 25,000 on the upright. My cocktail I am very lucky to get a free guy
> (@ 10,000).
> I am by no means a good Asteroids player. The rocks and saucers seem
> to move a lot faster on the cocktail. Does it seem faster because the
> screen is smaller?
> Am I imagining this? There are no dips to control difficulty. The
> upright is on freeplay and mine is 1 credit/quarter.
> Has anyone else ever experienced this?
> Thanks.
> jim
>

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting (More info?)

I don't have access to the other board until later this month. My
board (the difficult one) has not had anything cut as far as I can
tell.
Thanks.
jim

Onetel news wrote:
> I have the schematics in front of me. From memory of boards that I
have
> repaired, a modification can be made to the NMI interrupt frequency.
This is
> determined by counter C4. I think that on some boards, pin 3 or 4 was
cut.
> Compare your 2 boards and let us know. This mod words on Deluxe too.
>
> Regards
>
> Mike Mnemonic (UK)

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting (More info?)

> don't have access to the other board until later this month. My
>board (the difficult one) has not had anything cut as far as I can
>tell. Thanks. jim

This was a standard Asteroids speed mod. One of my boards had a switch
attached to it so you could select the speed. Sometimes hard to see a
leg cut off one of the TTL chips which doubles(?) the speed of
everything. Makes it harder.

No other mod besides the new ship score setting. First time I've heard
of the add on board.

Kirb

 

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>I don't have access to the other board until later this month. My
>board (the difficult one) has not had anything cut as far as I can
>tell. Thanks. jim

One other longshot- check the clock freq of your board. Someone may
have added a faster crystal or some other clock problem is there.

Kirb

 

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I'm fixing several Asteroids boards right now so I'll snap some
close-ups of that add on board and post links here, it's pretty neat-o.

Mike Doyle