TomCat (Star Wars hardware, prototype) - MAME machine

Arcade Video game published 41 years ago:

TomCat © 1983 Atari.

A color vector flight simulator where the player chooses between a fixed-wing jet or a helicopter. The player can choose between flying a fixed-wing jet and a helicopter. The universe shows a horizon line, a heads-up display, some simple objects on the ground to provide a reference, and a Battle Zone tank (also on the ground). There is also an enemy helicopter that came from the US Army version of "Battlezone".

TECHNICAL
Main CPU: (2x) M6809 (@ 1.512 Mhz)
Sound Chips: (4x) POKEY (@ 1.5 Mhz), Texas Instruments TMS5220 (@ 640 Khz)

Players: 1
Buttons: 4

TRIVIA
This game was the very last XY Game created at Atari. It was around this time that Atari went 'supernova' but was never finished. By late 1985 Atari had decreed that XY was dead, and despite Jed's demo (which featured two linked TomCats) Jed was unable to get any of the Game Designers interested in working on it. Shortly before the demo, when Jed was costing the hardware, Jed has called American Microsystems Inc. (AMI) to verify the cost of the VG Gate Array. They said that they had contacted someone at Atari and asked him if it was ok if they threw out the tooling for the VG Gate Array and he had said, YES. And no, they didn't remember his name. They were willing to create new tooling for $20K. Jed was planning to investigate using a TMS32010 DSP to replace the AVG State Machine (and the Gate Array along with it), but the handwriting was on the wall so Jed canceled TomCat and accepted Rick's invitation to join the "Hard Drivin'" team.

STAFF
Lead Programmer: Jed Margolin
Graphics Designer: Hans Hansen, Doug Snyder

CONTRIBUTE
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