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Tazz Mania

タズ・メニアー

Description

Control a character to clear rooms of "hoppers" using an 8-direction machine gun. Each room has a name, a unique type of monster attacking you, and the walls close in from all sides. A bonus room appears every third screen where you collect numbers for points. The Smart Bomb kills monsters and stops the walls from closing in.

Tazz Mania was produced by Stern Electronics in 1982.

Stern Electronics released 67 machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1977. Stern Electronics was based in United States.

Other machines made by Stern Electronics during the time period Tazz Mania was produced include: Freefall, Armored Car, Split Second, Iron Maiden, Lightning, Dark Planet, Cue, Dragonfist, Hypnox, and Frenzy

Specs

Name	Tazz Mania
Developer	Stern Electronics (United States)
Year	1982
Type	Videogame
KLOV/MOG #	10040
Class	Wide Release
Genre	Shooter
Monitor	Orientation: Vertical Type: Raster: Standard Resolution Color: Color
Conversion Class	Konami Classic
# Simultaneous Players	1
# Maximum Players	2
Game Play	Alternating
Control Panel Layout	Single Player
Controls	Joystick: 8-way Buttons: 2 - FireSmart Bomb
Sound	Amplified Mono (one channel)
Cabinet Styles	Upright/Standard

Video Clips

Tazz Mania shortplay by Ivan Paduano

Game Introduction

You control a Qbert-style character with a machine gun. The object of the game is to shoot all the "hoppers" (small non-moving characters) in room and then move onto the next. Each room has its own unique monster type that attacks you and the room is named accordingly. For instance, the first two are:

The Face Room - Square face monsters that chase you
The Evil Eyeball Room - Eyeball monsters that bounce around

The Smart Bomb kills all the monsters currently on-screen and stops the walls that are slowly closing in from the left and the right. Every third screen is a bonus room containing two Smart Bombs and numbers that can be collected in ascending order to gain points. The walls in the bonus rooms close in much faster.

Game Play

Use an eight-direction machine to kill the hoppers. Hold the fire button down for rapid fire, but you will be unable to move while doing so. Bullets have a limited range and also bounce off of the walls. Running into hoppers or monsters will kill you. When all the hoppers are killed the top and bottom walls disappear and you must run out to proceed onto the next room.

Tazz Mania KLOV/IAM 5 Point User Score: 3.55 (1 vote)

Fun Factor: 3.60

Overall Like	4.00
Fun (Social)	2.00
Fun (Solo)	4.00
Collector Desire	4.00

Technical Rating: 3.50

Gameplay	4.00
Graphics	3.00
Originality	4.00
Sound/Music	3.00

Personal Impressions and Technical Impressions each account for half of the total score. Within the Personal Impressions category, Like carries a little more weight than the other factors.

Cheats, Tricks, Bugs, and Easter Eggs

There was a bug in at least some versions of the game. Just before the walls finally meet and crush the player, all the mushrooms get removed from the screen. If your player is at the bottom of the screen stamping his feet i.e. trying to move downward it lets him escape the level. This was clearly an algorithmic bug in the game. It checked whether all the mushrooms were removed and they were so the player could exit.

Images

Conversion

The boardset can be converted from Uniwars, but the hack requires lots of piggy back chips, etc., to make it work.

VAPS Arcade/Coin-Op Tazz Mania Census

There are 15,364 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society / Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, 9,708 whom participate in our arcade census project of games owned, wanted, or for sale. Census data currently includes 167,365 machines (7,023 unique titles).

Uncommon - There are 16 known instances of this machine owned by Tazz Mania collectors who are active members. Of these, 5 of them are original dedicated machines. 11 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.

For Sale - There is one active VAPS member with a Tazz Mania machine for sale.

Wanted - There are 3 active VAPS members currently looking for Tazz Mania.

This game ranks a 6 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census ownership records.

This game ranks a 5 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census want list records.

Rarity and Popularity independently are not necessarily indications of value. [More Information]

Flyers

Manuals

Manual - Tazz Mania Manual — **Manual**
(11 pages, 601 kB File)

Foto-Finder® (Books)

The Encyclopedia of Arcade Video Games Kurtz (ISBN 0764319256) Page: 119; Color photo Price guide: No
Encyclopedia of Arcade Video Games Kurtz (ISBN 0764319256) Page: 119; Color photo

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