Splatter House (NAMCO SYSTEM 1) GFX Troubleshooting Question

lowlight

Kuroko's Training Dummy
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Posts
78
Hey all,

I haven't deep-dived into troubleshooting this as of late, but I thought I'd ask here in case anyone else has ever come across it before. I have a Namco(t) Splatterhouse board which "usually" works A-OK. However lately I noticed that the sprite layer that the player character (Rick) occupies is not getting masked correctly in certain areas of the game.

Specifically, the water corridor section is where this issue is most prominent. I've added a picture here only for reference of the stage I'm referring to and how it's supposed to look when everything is working correctly (sourced from Youtube):

vde143.jpg


Instead of moving through the water with the lower half of the character masked out and replaced with a water surface layer effect as you can see in the image above, when the issue i'm talking about occurs on my board, you can instead see the player character's whole body the entire time superimposed on top of the water area.

Conversely, there are times where the player character is "invisible" altogether. I say invisible, because the player hitbox and game camera are still in effect during play.

It's also important to note that this is only happening with the player character sprites, as all other npcs and misc objects seem to be working normally. Additionally, the colors, audio and other bits seem to be working normally as well.

I've tried reseating the boards and light cleaning to the edge connector and other reachable surface component areas. A combination of both things seems to make the problem go away for a few hours/days, but continuous running has the problem slowly creep back into view.

If this is a surface component issue (soldered or otherwise), does anyone know off-hand which chips/logic areas to check for corruption? Any advice going forward would be greatly appreciated!
 
Last edited:

Xian Xi

JammaNationX,
15 Year Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2005
Posts
27,748
First thing is to reseat the socketed chips meaning remove them then reinsert them into the sockets. If you have time. You can boot the board with a chip missing. If the missing chip is the one with Rick's sprite data then verify it vs a mame dump to make sure the rom is good. But if the problem comes and goes, it sounds more like a bad connection either board interconnects or like you said a floating pin on a surface mount chip. If reflow then anyway if you know how to.
 

lowlight

Kuroko's Training Dummy
Joined
Apr 5, 2006
Posts
78
...But if the problem comes and goes, it sounds more like a bad connection either board interconnects or like you said a floating pin on a surface mount chip. If reflow then anyway if you know how to.

Hey, thanks for that info! I'm going to try that out (socketed chip roulette) and see how that goes. That being said, I was afraid that bad connections might be the most likely issue (reflow fixaction), but given the board's rarity (for me), I'm quite reluctant to do a reflow without A LOT of practice with other boards I may not care about, as I've never done one before. Also, doesn't one need a reball/flow station to do a proper reflow of pcbs like this?
 
Last edited:

Xian Xi

JammaNationX,
15 Year Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2005
Posts
27,748
Hey, thanks for that info! I'm going to try that out (socketed chip roulette) and see how that goes. That being said, I was afraid that bad connections might be the most likely issue (reflow fixaction), but given the board's rarity (for me), I'm quite reluctant to do a reflow without A LOT of practice with other boards I may not care about, as I've never done one before. Also, doesn't one need a reball/flow station to do a proper reflow of pcbs like this?

No rework station needed. Just a wave soldering tip, flux and experience.

https://www.instagram.com/p/dalvZcpYgu/?taken-by=jamma_nation_x
 
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