Its meant to be driven by/is in the same series as the HMCS40, but the actual 3-chip speech synthesis system is a 38880 synthesizer, a 38881 "VSM" mask rom for speech data, and the 38882 Mask rom+eprom interface, of which I only know of one mask actually being made, supposedly with a bunch of japanese evaluation words on it; SNK's Fantasy and Vanguard use the 38880 paired with a 38882 chip to play speech data from eproms, and don't actually use that mask rom data on it at all. The 38882 is more meant for evaluation of data which would later be turned into a 38881 mask rom, but I think in practice most uses just used it in place of mask roms entirely. TI didn't have such a chip, which required some crazy hacks like the CVS and Bagman boards do to get speech data into the vsm-bus format for the tms51xx chips to use.

LN

Okay, had to recompile MAME to see what you were seeing... Jumping a lot made it kind of glitch-out and he suddenly appear two levels up, and I could do it fairly quickly.

I do still have this game (the CGL version), and I can't make anything weird happen after 15 minutes of pounding the jump button... So it does still seem to be doing something weird in MAME...

Found a few more games I can send also:
Tomy Bombman
https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Tomy/Bombman.htm

Gakken Super Corbra (the green one)
https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Gakken/SuperCobraGreen.htm (HD38820-A32 QFP)

Gakken Defender (the red one)
https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Gakken/Defender.htm
This has an HD38820 64-pin DIP processor. I can't see the top as it's under the VFD, but the circuit board claims it's an HD38820-L53

Actronics Wanted G-Man
https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Actronics/WantedGMan.htm
(The Ludotronic 'Operation Z' version...)

I have more in storage, but I think I'll hold off until we get the ones I currently have on hand done.

HD38820-L53? I'd have to see the MCU before I believe that
It's more likely "A53", or the L53 means something else and not the MCU maskrom serial.

Sean succeeded in dumping HD44801. He dumped a 1981 chess game and a sequel of it.
https://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/showthread.php?t=1448&page=386

Haha, yeah, I really wanted to see the chip myself, but was just way too much nit-picky desoldering to get the VFD off... I'll leave that to Kevin.

Maybe it helps differentiate between the packages? I think this is the first DIP format HD38820 I've seen.. Maybe they started at L for those instead of A...

Yup, it's possible they used "L" for the 33820 DIP package.

That unreleased RS PIC1655 game could very well be this: Electronic Dart Game, patent US4333657
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4333657

Hmm, good find!
That's actually a game called Flash by Ideal:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/373009738168

Looks sort of like a combination of darts with beanbags and Simon...
Here's an auction for the instructions, you can read them in the photos:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/124167115359

Since it's meant to be played with beanbags thrown at the target, I guess the overflow bug Hap discovered either wasn't noticed, or deemed not a big deal since that would be hard to do with bean bags...

Hi bataais

Yup! that's it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SgwRuaR2V0

I'll rename it to Flash in MAME.

Hi hap, nice to meet again

There's actually another PIC1655 game I haven't found released, maybe somebody knows it?
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4363484A/en?oq=US4363484

And besides, I managed to made real hardware versions of Maniac, LeBoom and Melody Madness with new PIC16F57, only rewriting small portions of the code, they are still opcode compatible..

Rik,

Any chance you have hi-res pics of all the stuff you are sending in? Preferably at an angle that would make the most sense for external artwork?