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kick: MAME ROM Information.

History:

Kick Man (c) 1981 Midway.

Move a man on a unicycle and catch falling balloons and Pac-Men on your head. Use the Kick button to make the character's legs kick out and knock balloons back up for another try. Balloons stack up eight high and then the man will pop them. Stack Pac-Men for bonus points.

- TECHNICAL -

[Upright model]

[Game No. 968]

The upright machine had yellow and orange painted side-art of a guy on a unicycle kicking balloons up onto his spiked helmet. The guy on the side-art looks more like an athlete than a clown, and doesn't resemble the game character at all. The marquee has an orange logo superimposed over a city skyline. Moving downward the game has an attractive monitor bezel that extends the background graphics that are already in the game. The control panel features a large black trackball, and a pair of huge 'Kick' buttons that light up when the machine is turned on.

Bally Midway MCR 1 hardware

Main CPU : Z80 (@ 2.496 Mhz)

Sound CPU : Z80 (@ 2 Mhz)

Sound Chips : (2x) AY8910 (@ 2 Mhz)

Screen orientation : Vertical

Video resolution : 480 x 512 pixels

Screen refresh : 30.00 Hz

Palette colors : 32

Players : 2

Control : Trackball

Buttons : 1 (KICK)

- TRIVIA -

Released in December 1981. Kick Man was planned as a sequel to "Pac-Man", but didn't catch on to anywhere near the same degree. The game was actually first developed back in 1978 as a black and white game entitled 'Catch 40'. Midway never actually got around to releasing 'Catch 40', so they reworked it in color and released it as 'Kick'. Then they turned around a few months later and and re-released the game as 'Kick Man'. 'Kick' and 'Kick Man' are essentially the exact same game. The only difference is in the title screen.

A Kick Man unit appears in the 1982 movie 'Jekyll & Hyde... Together Again' and in the 1982 movie 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High'.

- SCORING -

Balloons:

Blue: 15 points.

Red: 10 Points.

Yellow: 5 points.

Ghosts:

Inky (blue): 25 points.

Pinky (pink): 25 points.

Clyde (Orange): 25 points.

Blinky (red): 25 points.

- STAFF -

Designed & programmed by : John Pasierb

- PORTS -

* Computers :

Commodore C64

- SOURCES -

Game's rom.

Machine's picture.

MAME Info:

0.28 [Christopher Kirmse, Aaron Giles, Nicola Salmoria, Brad Oliver, John Butler]

Artwork available

WIP:

- 0.145u7: Moved Sound Board prom 82s123.12d to midssio device set.

- 2nd September 2007: Mr. Do - Cleaned up the inner bezel for Kick, thanks to the BYOAC/CAG artwork. Still looking for the outer bezel.

- 0.118u2: Aaron Giles added clone Kickman (upright). Renamed (kicka) to (kickc).

- 13th August 2007: Aaron Giles - Just got back from California Extreme and spent today poking at various things that have been on my mind. One of these things is the video timing for the Midway MCR games. The video timing is controlled by a set of PALs that to date have not (to my knowledge) been dumped. So I recently found somebody who had a non-working Kick board and bought it off of him with the thought of reading the PALs. Well, reading the PALs isn't going anywhere (don't know how to dump a 20X10 PAL or how to ID some of the others yet), but I did dump the ROMs. Turns out that not only is it a different set than is currently supported, but it is one that actually shows "Kickman" on the title screen! Frankly, I had believed that the "Kickman" variants were all gone, but it looks like that wasn't the case! Definitely worth the few clams I dropped on the board, even if I don't figure out how to read the video timing PALs.

- 0.56: Changed Z80 CPU1 clock speed to 2496000 Hz.

- 0.37b2: Changed description to 'Kick (upright)' and clone '(upright version)' to '(cocktail)'.

- 0.35b9: Added 3rd player input.

- 0.34b1: Nicola Salmoria added clone Kick (upright version). Changed parent description to 'Kick (mirror version)'. Known issues: One of the gfx ROMs for "kick" has some bad bits; two gfx ROMs for Kick (upright version) are completely missing.

- 0.33b4: Nicola Salmoria fixed -ror and -rol with ORIENTATION_SWAP_XY games (e.g. Kick).

- 0.29: Aaron Giles added music to Kick.

- 0.28: Added Kick (Midway 1981). Press F2 before initial screen to configure. Christopher Kirmse, Aaron Giles and Brad Oliver provided a MCR I/II/III driver, supporting: Kick, Solar Fox, Tron, Two Tigers, Domino Man, Satan's Hollow, Wacko, Kozmik Kroozr, Journey, Tapper, Discs of Tron, Demolition Derby, Timber, Spy Hunter and Rampage. Control: Press F2 before initial screen to configure. Arrows = Move around and CTRL = Kick. This game supports the trackball (-trak option).

- 23rd September 1994: Dumped Kick (upright).

PLAY INSTRUCTIONS:

- Catch or pop balloon on head or kick balloon.

- Try to catch falling objects on clown head.

- If you miss kick the object back up and try again. To kick press button on panel.

- Pacman must be caught or kicked. When Pacman is caught it eats balloons on the cyclist head awarding 5 times the balloon value. When Pacman is kicked it will return to the rack. A Pacman bonus is awarded for each Pacman caught. A 1600 Super Pacman Bonus is awarded when all the Pacman in a rack are on the cyclist head at the end of the rack.

- Never catch a bomb

- New cycle earned at 10000 points and at every 10000 points after that.

- Score multipliers are awarded in higher racks and extra bonus is given for kicking in first rack

Recommended Games (Circus):

Cannonball

Circus

Clowns

Dead Eye

Gypsy Juggler

Space Walk

Kick

Wall Street

Circus Charlie

Cycle Mahbou

Plump Pop

Jumping Pop (Nics)

Angel Kids

Crazzy Clownz

Romset: 80 kb / 16 files / 34.2 zip

MAME XML Output:

<description>Kick (upright)</description>

<manufacturer>Midway</manufacturer>

<device_ref name="midssio"/>

</input>

</dipswitch>

</dipswitch>

</game>

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