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Bell Fruit Cobra3 emulator ?


dec1962
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Slightly O/T, but is there anywhere JPM's old "Give Us A Break" SWP is/can be emulated? That was a fun game in the late 80s. I always remember the "Black Ball Challenge" which was a but nail-biting at the end. Got the £10JP once via this route (got lucky with the questions, I was/am usually shite).

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The Phrase That Pays is a strange one, it hardly uses the FMV side of things at all. The CHD file is only 55MB and all it uses that for is the transition sequences between the rounds and stuff. It could pretty much just be a traditional SWP like anyone else made, except with all the added complication and cost of the CD-ROM hardware and associated gubbins.

Very much a poor relation to the other games that are emulated.

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Fruit machine emulation content from the artist previously known as Degsy Degworth and the odd new thing here and there too - https://www.youtube.com/c/DegsyDegworth

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This is a great find and remember playing TOTP and Telly Addicts.  Waiting to download as I type this but seems it will take around 4 hours on a 500mbps connection.  Not sure why it's taking so long.  Anyway, thanks to you all for posting this and of course YT background video about the game.

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Ok update.  I downloaded the zip file which took forever for some reason.  However, I can't see an executable file.  I have the roms in file folders (ie. Telly Addicts, TOTP etc), and then a number of .chd files.  What am I missing / failed to do ?

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27 minutes ago, TonyC1971 said:

Ok update.  I downloaded the zip file which took forever for some reason.  However, I can't see an executable file.  I have the roms in file folders (ie. Telly Addicts, TOTP etc), and then a number of .chd files.  What am I missing / failed to do ?

It looks like the emulator has been removed from archive.org for some reason. Hopefully just temporary and the author is just working on tweaks and will upload another version soon. Don't know for sure though.

The emulator was a separate file to the 'cobra3roms' which is the big download with the game data. So if it does get released don't worry, it's a much smaller download of a few megabytes :)

Edited by slotsmagic

Attempting to quit gambling since January 1st 2025.

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16 minutes ago, slotsmagic said:

It looks like the emulator has been removed from archive.org for some reason. Hopefully just temporary and the author is just working on tweaks and will upload another version soon. Don't know for sure though.

The emulator was a separate file to the 'cobra3roms' which is the big download with the game data. So if it does get released don't worry, it's a much smaller download of a few megabytes :)

Yes you're quite right, the emulator has gone from the original location now. Would be interesting to know the reason why, did they remove it or did the author remove it?

Hopefully nothing sinister going on.

Fruit machine emulation content from the artist previously known as Degsy Degworth and the odd new thing here and there too - https://www.youtube.com/c/DegsyDegworth

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10 hours ago, Chopaholic said:

Yes you're quite right, the emulator has gone from the original location now. Would be interesting to know the reason why, did they remove it or did the author remove it?

Hopefully nothing sinister going on.

I did wonder if the author might have unintentionally pissed off MAME. I seem to recall that whilst you can use MAME components in standalone emulators, you have to follow their rules to the letter. I'm sure Chris fell foul of that at some point in the past too.

Purely speculation on my part though and entirely possible there is something simpler going on :)

Attempting to quit gambling since January 1st 2025.

**Lapse on Wednesday 12th November 2025**

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I've not heard any complaints, and in fact I was wanting to reach out, as basically that skeleton in MAME stayed as bad as it was simply because emulating MPEG without getting tag teamed by patent lawyers was a big problem. Not sure if it still is, but anything would help.

I should point out that blueonesarefaster has helped out with feeding back into MAME a bit, including doing some VFD work derived from stuff some lazy sod called James half finished back in the day.

 

Ooh, BTW, I think the Cobra that people have noticed in MAME is the earlier one, Brain Box and stuff like that. 

Edited by agemame
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5 hours ago, agemame said:

I meant the one that worked, I think the main problem with original Cobra is getting working sets. Bloody romdisks...

I didn't have experience of anything prior to Cobra 3, but I planned on copying my TOTP disc which had one decent scratch on it. I was pretty well versed in *ahem* backing up media, but never did have any joy making a working dump of it. I'm glad working dumps are out there, means even though I failed people can still enjoy these and possibly repair what few remain!

I'm not sure of what you mean by ROMdisk - most machines pre-2000 as you'll be aware used normal EPROMs. Are ROMdisks more like what modern machines use, whereby instead of socketed ICs, there is something embedded onto the board, like USB updatable flash memory?

Edited by slotsmagic

Attempting to quit gambling since January 1st 2025.

**Lapse on Wednesday 12th November 2025**

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9 hours ago, slotsmagic said:

I didn't have experience of anything prior to Cobra 3, but I planned on copying my TOTP disc which had one decent scratch on it. I was pretty well versed in *ahem* backing up media, but never did have any joy making a working dump of it. I'm glad working dumps are out there, means even though I failed people can still enjoy these and possibly repair what few remain!

I'm not sure of what you mean by ROMdisk - most machines pre-2000 as you'll be aware used normal EPROMs. Are ROMdisks more like what modern machines use, whereby instead of socketed ICs, there is something embedded onto the board, like USB updatable flash memory?

In the original BFM SWP hardware that was based on the Flare One and Konix stuff, theoretically it supported data disks, just common or garden floppies. They ultimately changed to straight up ROM cards that they called ROMdisks, so it's a nightmare to figure out what was released and in what way.

 

On the Cobra 3 front, I notice there's a few disc images here that MAME don't have hashes for (TOTP for one). I'd add them, but under whose credit? I don't suppose anyone knows who actually dumped them, otherwise I'll just put 'blueonesarefaster' as source

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4 hours ago, agemame said:

In the original BFM SWP hardware that was based on the Flare One and Konix stuff, theoretically it supported data disks, just common or garden floppies. They ultimately changed to straight up ROM cards that they called ROMdisks, so it's a nightmare to figure out what was released and in what way.

 

On the Cobra 3 front, I notice there's a few disc images here that MAME don't have hashes for (TOTP for one). I'd add them, but under whose credit? I don't suppose anyone knows who actually dumped them, otherwise I'll just put 'blueonesarefaster' as source

Awesome, thanks for the insight!

I had something stuck in the back of my head that the Cobra 3 (and possibly other Cobra stuff) was somehow related to the Atari Jaguar hardware, possibly something to do with 'Flare'? I may well be imagining that but since you are clued up on this I'll ask and if I'm totally wrong I'll just be mildly embarrassed 😂 

Attempting to quit gambling since January 1st 2025.

**Lapse on Wednesday 12th November 2025**

Dusting myself off and carrying on.

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1 hour ago, TommyH said:

Not sure if it's been available before but there's a standalone Cluedo SWP game. Not a software engineer so no idea what they've done to get it working.

game4.zip 29.81 MB · 2 downloads

Nothing to do with this, but I believe JPM remade it for their PC platform to provide some content for the early Gameboxes/it boxes. It literally uses the same base project as games like the original WWTBAM, but without the dongle protection.

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1 minute ago, slotsmagic said:

Awesome, thanks for the insight!

I had something stuck in the back of my head that the Cobra 3 (and possibly other Cobra stuff) was somehow related to the Atari Jaguar hardware, possibly something to do with 'Flare'? I may well be imagining that but since you are clued up on this I'll ask and if I'm totally wrong I'll just be mildly embarrassed 😂 

Cobra 1 is Flare/Konix, so Inquisitor, QuizVaders l, that era. Then they just called all the video systems Cobra, much like every AWP platform was branded Scorpion.

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1 hour ago, TommyH said:

Not sure if it's been available before but there's a standalone Cluedo SWP game. Not a software engineer so no idea what they've done to get it working.

game4.zip 29.81 MB · 2 downloads

Have had that for years, there is a command line modifier that shows you the correct answer every time I believe, if you want to cheat :)

Good fun little game though :)

7 minutes ago, davep180 said:

The author must be lurking around then! Thanks, whoever you are! 

Absolutely. If they want to engage with us and whatnot that would be awesome, but if not I absolutely appreciate the fact they are still working on bits and bobs with this :)

Of course if Scorpion 6 was also released as a standalone emulator, and I could play Bar X Seven based machines on it, that would be the absolute pinnacle for me :D

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Attempting to quit gambling since January 1st 2025.

**Lapse on Wednesday 12th November 2025**

Dusting myself off and carrying on.

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1 hour ago, slotsmagic said:

Have had that for years, there is a command line modifier that shows you the correct answer every time I believe, if you want to cheat :)

Good fun little game though :)

Absolutely. If they want to engage with us and whatnot that would be awesome, but if not I absolutely appreciate the fact they are still working on bits and bobs with this :)

Of course if Scorpion 6 was also released as a standalone emulator, and I could play Bar X Seven based machines on it, that would be the absolute pinnacle for me :D

The only time I've hacked a video game's code was Player Manager on the ZX Spectrum to allow me to have 14 players on the pitch at once and add two zeros to my bank balance. BASIC FTW :D

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