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Top Gunner on the Vectrex
Playablev1.1

Top Gunner

Exidy · 1986

by Daniel Ferrer

Exidy's vector flight game, with its own sound board emulated: the sound comes out of the UVMC2's audio jack only (the web version is silent).

Play in the browser Download
Runs on
  • UVMC2✓
  • Debug Cart✓
  • Simulator✓
  • Tested on hardware✓
Audio
  • Music (PSG)–
  • PCM–
  • Jack✓
  • Speech–

Details

Original hardware
Exidy 68000 + AM2901 vector processor, Exidy 440 sound board
Romset
roms/topgunnr.zip
Controls
The stick is the yoke (and the throttle); button 1 fires, button 2 raises the shield, button 3 inserts a coin and button 4 starts. Hold button 4 at launch for the options screen. On the web: the arrow keys, and Z, X, C, V for the buttons.
Analog controls
✓
Last update
2026-11-08

Changelog

  1. v1.12026-11-08
    • The high scores are kept in .conf/TOPGUNNR.NV; the ones in the old config/ are read.
    • 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. v1.02026-11-07
    • First release, on the console for the first time.
    • The sound: the arcade's Exidy 440 board emulated -- its own 6809 running its program, the DMA and the four CVSD channels decoded -- in stereo through the UVMC2's jack.
    • Speed: the vector processor's microcode is translated to native ARM code when the game starts, a screen that does not change is replayed instead of emulated again, and the game runs at the arcade's pace.
    • The shaded fills of the title and the explosions are drawn one row in two: less glare and much less to draw, with their shapes and shading kept. The repeated and zero-length lines of an explosion that starts out squashed are not drawn twice.
    • The yoke calibration and the settings are kept on the SD card, as the cabinet kept them in its battery-backed memory.
    • An options screen at start, after the Vectrex Studio intro, with the screen vertical or horizontal. The intro is silent in this release.