War of the Worlds

Cinematronics · 1981

by Daniel Ferrer

Details

Original hardware

Cinematronics CCPU

Romset

roms/wotw.zip

Controls

The stick turns the ship left and right. Button 1 fires, button 2 thrusts, 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 here: the background at both its pitches, the shield, the fireball, the star, the thrust and the fire, recorded from MAME's model of the board (Star Castle's, wired otherwise). The game sends it 8-bit words through a shift register and a latch, decoded here as those two chips do; each sound plays while the game holds it on, as measured in MAME.
   • The cabinet's switches as MAME ships them, the service switch off.
   • The buttons count once they have been let go after power-on.
   • 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.