Arcade Cores

There are now many FPGA cores in existence which replicate retro arcade machine hardware. I have ported some of these to the Turbo Chameleon 64 hardware – both V1 and V2, and download links for the cores can be found below.

A note on ROMs

Since the ROMs that are required to run arcade machines are still copyrighted, I don’t distribute them here, so for cores that require a ROM file on the SD card you’ll need either to track down an existing ROM file for the MiST version of each core, or create your own from a MAME romset and the .mra file supplied with the core. You can do this using the excellent mra-tools utility, which can be found here. (The repository contains a ready-to-run Windows build – and it’s easy to build on Linux.)

The core files

Each core has two versions – one intended for Chameleon V1 hardware and one intended for Chameleon V2 hardware – make sure you use the correct version of the core for your device!

PACE Cores

Three cores from the PACE project – Pacman, Pengo and Moon Patrol:

(Downloads temporarily withdrawn – I need to replace these with versions which load their ROMs from SD card.)

All three cores can be played using a PS/2 keyboard or a CDTV pad.

Coins can be added using the leftmost button on the Chameleon itself, the Run/Stop key on the C64, the 5 key on a PS/2 keyboard, or the Power button on a CDTV pad.

The Start button is mapped to the middle button on the Chameleon, the cursor up/down key on the C64, the 1 key on a PS/2 keyboard, or the Play button on a CDTV pad.

All three games can be played with a joystick, too – however Moon Patrol requires a second button.

Rampage

Insert coins by pressing ‘5’ on the PS/2 keyboard, the C64 keyboard or the “play” button on a CDTV controller.

F12 on the PS/2 keyboard, ‘<-‘ on the C64 keyboard or “power” on the CDTV controller will bring up a minimal OSD from which you can set the difficulty/free play DIP switch settings, and also enable the “Cheat” DIP (though I haven’t yet figured out how to activate the cheat!)

The CDTV pad can control George or Lizzie, depending on the port switch, or from the C64’s own joystick ports if you have a two-button controller.

All three characters can be controlled from a PS/2 keyboard, or with the
Docking Station, again if you have a two-button controller.

  • George’s keys: WSAD, left ctrl, alt, shift, caps lock
  • Lizzie’s keys: IKJL, B, N
  • Ralph’s keys: Cursor keys, right ctrl, alt, shift, enter