How to Design & Build Your Own Custom TV Games
By David L. Heiserman

"The complete book on designing, building, programming, and modifying all kinds of TV games!"

Description from the back of the book:

"This is the complete book about TV games, the fascinating fun devices that have swept the country and grown ever more sophisticated, diverse, and challenging to hobbyists. It shows you how they work and, more importantly, how you can design and build your own custom versions from scratch, or modify those you may already have.

"This book shows you how to release your creative instincts, transforming them into custom games that are a delight to you as well as to others who have an opportunity to enjoy them. You'll learn how to build motion-control circuits, add "inertia" to player controls, program variable initial positions, speed, and direction, generate numeric characters, build score-and-timekeeping circuits, animate complex figures, add sound effects, etc.

"The game-design scheme presented is wholly open-ended. There is no real limit to the number and types of games that can come from it. The author shows you that it's all just a matter of learning how to design the games, and exercising some degree of creativity and imagination.

"Included are a number of complete TV game circuits like golf, missile attack, tag, dog fight, torpedo attack, ambush, stormtrooper attack, pinball, etc...plus a review of basic digital electronics for the digital novice, and a great deal of tremendously helpful material on game design. Here is a book that will be of immense satisfaction to any digital hobbyist who is beyond the beginner's stage. What can be more rewarding than seeing newly learned facts transformed into moving images on your TV screen?

"David L. Heiserman makes his home in Columbus, Ohio where he is an Electronics Instructor at Ohio State University."

Preface to the Book

"America is a nation accustomed to fads. Novel ideas and products catch on rather quickly, sweeping the country with new products and services. More often than not, these fads gradually change form or fade away with time.

"TV games had all the earmarks of being one of these fads at first. Once the idea caught on, video game products captured the fancy of all sorts of people-- people willing to put out $50, $60 or, in some cases, more than a $100 to play the fascinating little games in their own homes.

"But it appears that TV games are here to stay. The games are becoming more sophisticated and diverse, and product sales skyrocket every Christmas. What's more, commercial, coin-operated versions have already transformed the game arcade industry into something totally new and different. It now seems that video games are replacing the pinball machine as America's number-one arcade game.

"This is a book about TV games. It shows how they work and, more importantly, how to design and build custom versions. This book is not merely a collection of complete TV game circuits. To be sure, there are a number of complete game circuits presented as design examples; the real emphasis is on designing and building custom TV games. In fact the reader will lose much of the fun of the whole thing by simply copying the circuits shown here.

"The whole idea of the book is to release the reader's creative instincts, transforming them into custom games that are a delight to the designer as well as others who have an opportunity to enjoy them.

"The game systems as they are presented here might seem rather cumbersome compared to the slick, cassette-programmed game systems on the market today. But how creative can one be with someone else's prescribed programs? Sure it is possible to get a dozen games on one program tape, but it really doesn't take long to want more. The game-design scheme presented in this book is wholly open-ended-- there is no real limit to the number and types of games that can come from it. It's all a matter of learning how to design the games and exercising some degree of creativity and imagination.

"It is not necessary to have a great deal of know-how concerning digital electronics to begin the work in this book. The first few chapters have been planned with the digital novice in mind. As the work progresses, however, the need for learning more about basic digital electronics becomes more apparent. Unfortunately, a book of this size cannot stand up as both a design manual for video games and a text book on basic digital electronics.

"While the information regarding game design is thus adequate for building custom games of any sort, a reader not fully acquainted with basic digital electronics will eventually become lost without the aid of a good digital reference text. This, however, should not discourage a beginner in the digital business. Rather, it should provide some motivation and direction for learning more about digital electronics in general.

"What better way to learn digital electronics than by seeing each newly learned fact transformed into moving image on the TV screen?

David L. Heisermam

Table of Contents

Special Notes to the Reader

1 - Television and Television Games

The TV Raster - The Basic Video Game System - How to Use This Book - Locating Parts - Assembling the Systems

2 - The Sourcebox Unit

Sourcebox Organization - Power Supply - Horizontal Source Board - Vertical Source and Composite Video Board - The RF Modulator - Some Mechanical Considerations

3 - Building Static Figures

Lines and Bars Directly From the Count Sources - The Line/Bar Tinkerbox - Building Widely Separated Parallel Lines and Bars - Building Rectangles - Combining Any Numbers of Static Figures on the Screen - Some Interesting Patterns From Static-Figure Components

4 - A Building More-Complex Static Figures

Complex-Figure Tinkerbox - The Address Matrix Concept -

Matrix Operations from 64-Cell Generators - Multiplying the Number of Identical Images on the Screen

5 - Building Motion-Control Circuits

Motion-Control Tinkerbox - Simple Player-Controlled Motion - A Game of Tag - Adding "Inertia" to the Player Controls - Manual Control of Complex Figures - Automatic Figure Motion

6 - Some Useful Game Control Schemes

Game Start/Reset Controls - Figure-Contact-Sensing Circuits - Initializing Figure Motion Controls - A Basic Missile Attack Game - Programming Variable Initial Positions - Speed and Direction - The Tagalong Feature

7 - A Collection of War Games

Missile Attack II - Torpedo Attack - Dogfight

8 - Programmable Position and Motion Controls

A Programmable Figure Position Control - Universal Position Programmers - Nine Holes of Golf - Ambush - Stormtrooper Attack

9 - Scoring and Timekeeping

Generating Numeric Characters - Digit-Generator Circuits - Scorekeeping Circuits - Timekeeping Circuits - Retrofitting Scoring and Timekeeping to Existing Games

10 - Figure Rebound Effects

A Flexible Rebound Control System - A Pinball Game

11 - Animation and Rotation of Complex Figures

Figure Animation - Figure Rotation - Combining Rotation and Figure Motion Across the Screen

12 - Sound Effects

Tones from the V-Count Signals - Sounds from Sources Other than V-Count Sources

Appendices

1 - Binary Outputs
2 - Digital Integrated Circuits

Index