Galaxian-based hardware

From Sega Retro

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Galaxian-based hardware
Manufacturer: Namco (variants by Sega)
Release Date RRP Code
Arcade
World
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Arcade
World
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Galaxian-based hardware was used for several Sega licensed arcade games in the early 1980s, based on Namco's Galaxian arcade hardware, which debuted in 1979.[1]

Sega's hardware variants were based on the arcade hardware used by the companies it licensed from, such as Konami, Nihon Bussan, and Alpha Denshi, which all used Galaxian-based hardware at the time. Several modifications were made to the hardware, with Super Cobra (and its predecessor Scramble) adding side-scrolling capabilities, and Jump Bug adding multi-directional scrolling and parallax scrolling capabilities.

Technical specifications

The technical specifications for this hardware include:[1][2][3][4]

  • Background planes:
  • Tilemap plane: 8×8 tile sizes, scrolling
  • Bitmap plane: Star generator, scrolling
  • Sprite plane: Line buffer, sprite flipping, sprite animation[6]
  • Sprite size: 16×16
  • Colors per sprite: 4 colors (3 opaque, 1 transparent)
  • Sprites per scanline: 7 sprites, 112 texels

Modifications

Super Cobra (and its predecessor Scramble) added the following upgrade to the hardware in early 1981:

  • Background planes: Side-scrolling

Jump Bug made the following modifications to the hardware later in 1981:

  • Sound chip: AY-3-8910 @ 1.78975 MHz
  • Background planes: Multi-directional scrolling, parallax scrolling[7]

List of games

Sega licensed arcade games that ran on this hardware include:[1]

References


Sega arcade boards
Originating in arcades









Console-based hardware








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PC-based hardware








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