Tempest CAX 2026
Info: https://github.com/shupac800/tempest-cax-2026
Rom (ver 1.2): https://github.com/shupac800/tempest-cax-2026/releases/download/v1.2/tempest3.zip
Purple levels beyond green — level families extend past L96 into a new purple range. Purple levels are even harder than green. (Note: Tempest's color hardware (AVG colorram decode) drives each of R/G/B as an on/off bit, not a variable level — the 8 producible hues are black/blue/red/magenta/green/cyan/yellow/white. Orange isn't reachable this way, since it needs a partial-intensity green the hardware can't generate; that's a discrete design constraint, not something a future ROM patch could add.)
7-digit scoring (stock Tempest is limited to 6 digits).
Start on any level L1-L112, with the corresponding start-of-level bonus scaled up to 1,410,000 (1410K).
Last-level-reached is displayed for each entry in the high score table.
Attract-mode no-death, selectable by DIP switch (see below).
All DIP difficulty settings are safe on all levels (see below).
Catapult (patched-working)
A member on KLOV fed Claude the bad ROM and all the ROMS from the rest of EPOS to figure out what was bad and patch/work around the corrupted code. It's not perfect but very playable, especially for such a rare game that has been sought for years. I would recommend reading the entire thread on all the details. The bonus is, the ROMS are attached in the thread. I don't know the official MAME stance on fixing bad dumps with AI corrected dumps but it may be useful for HBMAME. I'll reach out to Robert and get his opinion.
All credit goes to brokentoken on the KLOV forums for making this happen.
More info (with ROMs): https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/catapult-by-epos-photar-its-alive.566723/
Thanks for everything,
-Mc
