Arcade Hacking

Welcome to my Bombjack tech page. - last modified : May 2019
You'll find here HOW Bombjack works, not the electronic point of view, but the programming point of view.
It's also called reverse-engineering : take a compiled software (binary form) and try to find the source (text/readable form).

Be free to use it for FREE projects, not commercial.
Bombjack is still a copyrighted software from Tehkan.

► Introduction

In 80's, I went on Holidays on Tunisia for the summer.
Beach was wonderful, sea was wonderful BUT my favorite moment was the hour after the lunch!
While my parents were resting, I was playing with my brother a game we first met while kids on our Amstrad CPC : BOMBJACK.
I forgot a lot of these holidays but not this Arcade Game.

21st century, I grew up but I'm still a "child" when talking about video games.
I discovered MAME (to play Bombjack, Metrocross, Great Rally 1000 miles, Sunset Riders, Blood Bros..) and then eBay.
Yes, you got it...I now own MY Bombjack...it's only the PCB, not a dedicated cabinet but it's better than nothing.

► Reverse Engineering

I used the roms I found on the Net (since I own the original game but i'm unable to dump them) and read a lot the Bombjack driver of MAME.
I first made the full program rom like this :
09_j01b.bin+10_l01b.bin+11_m01b.bin+12_n01b.bin+13.1r = z80_code.bin
I was trying to disassemble it when I found Andre Majorel who already did it, and even started to comment the code!
With a debug Bombjack-only version of MAME, I'm continuing the work.

The process isn't very hard...it just takes a lot of time!

► Files

Bombjack GFXer 1.0
Edit Bombjack graphics, like this RedBombjack