Boxing Bugs

Cinematronics, 1981

The largest game by ROM size ever produced for the by then venerable CCPU hardware – and in color and with music no less, too. The game still uses dedicated sounds and no sound chip, though, so the tone capability was limited and rudimentary. Still, takes full advantage of what it has got.

The game uses a spinner and three buttons – you sit in the middle of the screen, rotate around to punch bugs with your glove or shoot out of your.. hmm. behind at bugs and bombs both to move them around and to light their fuse. The game even has cartoonish intermission animations and a bonus stage, really elaborate game for Cinematronics.

Works reasonably well with an analog joystick to emulate a spinner or using a digital spinner to play a few rounds. Just googled again (May 2021) and there are still no sound files for this game for the MAME emulator – if it weren’t for a video of ArcadeJason showing his cabinet I would not have had a clue what these sounds (except for the music) should sound and I based the AY sounds on this video so: thank you for your video, Jason !

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Inputs

Analog Joystick mode – controller port 1

• Joystick-X rotates the player
• Button 4: punch with glove
• Button 3: shoot backwards
• Button 2: use the limited ‘panic’ help

Digital Spinner – controller port 2

• Spinner rotates the player
• if present (e.g. using a BinaryStar spinner) button 1+2 are used for punching/shooting
• buttons on port 1 are used as in ‘Analog Joystick mode’

Options

• Refresh Rate: 50Hz / 38Hz (38Hz is the original Cinematronics refresh)
• Reset Highscores
• Input: Digital Spinner / Analog Joystick
• Game Info: ”                           Welcome to Boxing Bugs, the colour vector arcade game by Cinematronics.                     I am very grateful to ArcadeJason for his video showing his Boxing Bugs cabinet in action: Since MAME currently does not emulate the sounds nor uses samples I was able to grab and clean up the sound effects from that video to develop the sounds. This game even has music, cutscenes and a bonus round, the largest Cinematronics vector game by far.                                         “

Localization

//NAME="BOXINGB"
//

GERMAN[] = {
    { 0, 0, 0}
};

FRENCH[] = {
    { 0, 0, "                           Bienvenue dans Boxing Bugs, le jeu d'arcade vectoriel en couleur de Cinematronics. Je suis très reconnaissant vis-à-vis d’Arcade Jason pour sa vidéo montrant sa borne Boxing Bugs en action: Comme MAME n'émule pas les sons et n'utilise pas d’échantillonnage sonore, j'ai pu récupérer et nettoyer les effets sonores de cette vidéo pour développer les sons. Ce jeu comporte même de la musique, des cinématiques et un round en guise de bonus: on peut le considérer comme le plus grand jeu vectoriel de Cinematronics, et de loin.                                         "}
};

ENGLISH[] = {
    { 0, 0, "                           Welcome to Boxing Bugs, the colour vector arcade game by Cinematronics.                     I am very grateful to ArcadeJason for his video showing his Boxing Bugs cabinet in action: Since MAME currently does not emulate the sounds nor uses samples I was able to grab and clean up the sound effects from that video to develop the sounds. This game even has music, cutscenes and a bonus round, the largest Cinematronics vector game by far.                                         "}
};