Tail Gunner

Cinematronics · 1979

by Daniel Ferrer

Details

Original hardware

Cinematronics CCPU

Romset

roms/tailg.zip

Controls

The stick moves the sight. Button 1 fires, button 2 raises the shield, button 3 inserts a coin, button 4 starts. On the web: Z, X, C, V and the arrow keys.

Analog controls

✓

Last update

2026-11-08

Changelog

1. v1.12026-11-08
   • The romset can live in any folder of the card. The game looks in .roms/, then roms/, then searches the whole card, and remembers where it found it (.conf/<romset>.loc), so the next start goes straight there; if it is moved, it is searched for again.
   • Settings go in .conf/ and romsets in .roms/: the UVMC2's menu hides folders whose name starts with a dot, so the card shows only the games. A card set up before keeps everything: the old config/ and roms/ are still read, and nothing is written to them any more.
   • Without the romset on the card the screen says ROM FILE NOT FOUND and the name of the zip it wants.
2. v1.02026-11-05
   • First release.
   • Sound through the jack, which the game never had: the laser, the explosion, the shield, the bounce, the hyperspace and the rumble, recorded from MAME's model of the board -- driven through the board's own addressable latch, held as long as the game holds them in MAME.
   • No more booting into the alignment pattern: the board enters it when START is held at power-on, and the button that closes OPTIONS is START. The buttons now count once they have been let go.
   • The sight follows the stick both ways (both of its pots read the stick's X, so it only moved along a diagonal) and reaches the screen's edges: the pots now travel MAME's full range.
   • The picture is the arcade's 1024 x 768 screen, fitted to the tube, at the game's 38 Hz.
   • An options screen at start, after the Vectrex Studio intro: screen vertical or horizontal, refresh, brightness, controls (the buttons can be remapped, and the choice is saved) and calibration.
   • Brighter: everything is at the board's dim level, which MAME puts at half the bright one -- dark on the Vectrex's tube. Raised to three quarters, checked on the console; the bright level is unchanged.