Game 67: Size Does Matter!
ColorDMD is excited to announce that SlugFest, the 1991 pitch and bat game, is the 79th game to be supported by the ColorDMD multicolor display platform! SlugFest is significant in that it was released at the dawn of the DMD age for pinball. It was actually the first 128x32 DMD game, pre-dating Gilligan's Island and Terminator2, and released just one month after Checkpoint!
Jeff Collins owns a lot of pinball games but his love for baseball and nostalgia inspired him to acquire and colorize a SlugFest. Jeff entered this project with quite a bit of experience, having formerly colored both Rocky and Bullwinkle and Pirates of the Caribbean. With it's simpler art package, SlugFest would appear to be an easy game to cover. However, peculiarities in the early graphics engine produced quite a few challenges that caused this game to run into extra innings!
One of the more interesting things Jeff discovered was that, unlike later pinball games which used three or four brightness levels, all of the artwork in SlugFest was done with just two levels... on and off! Through color, Jeff was able to enhance the animations and add detail that did not exist in the original artwork.
But the absence of shading to key from also made context-based coloring much more difficult! Jeff worked doggedly with the hardware engine to come up with techniques to colorize dynamic scoreboards whose size and shape would change based on content, and handle a number of challenging animated screen transitions and wipes. His effort has resulted in a beautiful and fitting update to this classic arcade game!
The ColorDMD LED for SlugFest pinball machines shares the same LED hardware platform as previous pinball game releases. The LED display is similar in size to the original factory display and fits inside the SlugFest cabinet. All displays ship with the factory installed SIGMA ROM that supports WPC, WPC95, SAM, Whitestar, and SPIKE platforms. Multicolor operation is enabled through download and installation of a game-specific color ROM file, available from our site. ROMs can be changed at any time, allowing use with any of our supported titles.
Displays are shipping now from our store site and through our distributors. The color ROM for SlugFest pitch and bat machines is targeted for release by Friday, August 3! For more information, please visit us at www.colordmd.com.
ColorDMD is excited to announce that SlugFest, the 1991 pitch and bat game, is the 79th game to be supported by the ColorDMD multicolor display platform! SlugFest is significant in that it was released at the dawn of the DMD age for pinball. It was actually the first 128x32 DMD game, pre-dating Gilligan's Island and Terminator2, and released just one month after Checkpoint!
Jeff Collins owns a lot of pinball games but his love for baseball and nostalgia inspired him to acquire and colorize a SlugFest. Jeff entered this project with quite a bit of experience, having formerly colored both Rocky and Bullwinkle and Pirates of the Caribbean. With it's simpler art package, SlugFest would appear to be an easy game to cover. However, peculiarities in the early graphics engine produced quite a few challenges that caused this game to run into extra innings!
One of the more interesting things Jeff discovered was that, unlike later pinball games which used three or four brightness levels, all of the artwork in SlugFest was done with just two levels... on and off! Through color, Jeff was able to enhance the animations and add detail that did not exist in the original artwork.
But the absence of shading to key from also made context-based coloring much more difficult! Jeff worked doggedly with the hardware engine to come up with techniques to colorize dynamic scoreboards whose size and shape would change based on content, and handle a number of challenging animated screen transitions and wipes. His effort has resulted in a beautiful and fitting update to this classic arcade game!
The ColorDMD LED for SlugFest pinball machines shares the same LED hardware platform as previous pinball game releases. The LED display is similar in size to the original factory display and fits inside the SlugFest cabinet. All displays ship with the factory installed SIGMA ROM that supports WPC, WPC95, SAM, Whitestar, and SPIKE platforms. Multicolor operation is enabled through download and installation of a game-specific color ROM file, available from our site. ROMs can be changed at any time, allowing use with any of our supported titles.
Displays are shipping now from our store site and through our distributors. The color ROM for SlugFest pitch and bat machines is targeted for release by Friday, August 3! For more information, please visit us at www.colordmd.com.