Cosmic Guerilla

The odd idea at the center of Cosmic Guerilla

The easiest way to misunderstand Cosmic Guerilla is to look at a screenshot, notice the 1979 date, and file it away as another game made in the wake of Space Invaders. That description is not entirely wrong. It is a fixed shooter. The player moves a laser gun left and right along the bottom of a vertical screen and fires upward. Rows of small attackers occupy the upper field. There is a UFO, a scoring ladder, extra-life settings, and the familiar late-1970s pressure of trying to survive with only a handful of chances.

But Cosmic Guerilla rearranges the relationship between player, enemies, shields, and lives in a way that is much stranger than the genre label suggests.

The enemies are organized on both sides of the screen. They do not simply descend as one formation. They rush inward toward a protected central position. In that center sit the player’s reserve laser guns. Those guns are the player’s future lives, not merely decorative icons. Around them are blocks and defensive bases. The guerillas attack those defenses, remove the blocks, expose the spare guns, and can ultimately carry those guns away.

That is the game’s central invention: your lives are physical objects on the battlefield.

Most arcade games of the period tell you how many chances remain with a small row of ships or a numerical counter. Cosmic Guerilla lets the enemy attack the reserve directly. A life can be endangered before it is actually lost. The player watches the middle of the screen deteriorate as attackers chip away at the protection around the spare guns. The reserve is therefore part of the game’s geography.

The distinction sounds small until the game is played or studied closely. It changes the emotional rhythm. A mistake does not always mean immediate death. Sometimes it means the position is now weaker. Sometimes it means a protective block has been taken. Sometimes a spare gun is in the process of being hauled toward one side, giving the player a brief opportunity to rescue it. The battlefield remembers damage. The condition of the central defenses becomes a second status display layered directly into play.

That makes Cosmic Guerilla a useful example of how quickly designers were already experimenting with the fixed-shooter formula by late 1979. The genre had recognizable conventions, but those conventions were not yet frozen. Universal could borrow the broad language of the invader game and still build something with its own logic.

A November 1979 release in Universal’s rapid-fire “Cosmic” period

Many modern references stop at “1979,” but the period record supports a more precise date.

A retrospective company chronology in Game Machine No. 201 lists Cosmic Guerilla at 11/79. That same chronology places several neighboring Universal releases in a remarkably tight sequence: Cosmic Monster II in February 1979, Galaxy Wars in August, Cosmic Alien in October, and Cosmic Guerilla in November. Modern databases that give November 1979 are therefore not merely repeating an arbitrary date; the month is supported by Japanese trade-industry evidence.

The timing matters because Cosmic Guerilla did not emerge in isolation. Universal was working intensely in the space-game market while the commercial shockwave from Space Invaders was still reshaping arcades. The company’s own catalog was evolving from relatively direct space-shooter ideas toward more distinctive games. Within another year Universal would be selling titles such as Space Panic, and in 1981 it would reach a wider audience with games including Cosmic Avenger and Lady Bug. Cosmic Guerilla sits in the middle of that transition.

A Game Machine directory dated April 15, 1980 still lists both Cosmic Alien and Cosmic Guerilla among Universal’s offerings, confirming that the title remained an active commercial product into the following year. Later 1980 industry listings also continue to show Cosmic Guerilla in the Universal line. What we do not have is a surviving production ledger or sales report that tells us how many machines were built, how quickly the game spread, or which market absorbed the largest share.

That absence is worth respecting. Arcade histories often turn database visibility into an implied sales story. A title appearing in several countries does not by itself reveal its manufacturing volume. What we can say is stronger and more useful: Universal prepared multiple regional marketing materials, documented both upright and table models, and had the game represented in the United States, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. That is evidence of deliberate international commercialization, not proof of a particular production total.

Universal did not market it as a generic invader game

The surviving flyers show that Universal wanted Cosmic Guerilla to have a personality.

The standard U.S. flyer is loud and theatrical. The title is stretched across a deep magenta field. Green horned monsters stride through a starry scene. A cloaked human figure appears in the lower corner. The upright cabinet itself carries ornate purple and yellow side art, and the flyer places the machine next to a cream-colored table cabinet rather than treating the cocktail version as an afterthought.

A second English-language flyer takes a different approach. Its headline announces that the game has “transferred the world of cartoons into TV game,” and the artwork looks more like a comic-book splash page: a helmeted hero, a mechanical creature, a crablike monster, and a beam striking a central enemy. This is the flyer that contains one of the most important surviving statements about the game’s creative history.

Universal says the attempt was accomplished in cooperation with Ishimori Co., Ltd., identifies the company’s president as Mr. Shotaro Ishimori, and describes him as a famous cartoonist. The Japanese flyer carries the same basic claim in Japanese, explicitly invoking 石森プロ and 石森章太郎.

This is not a later collector rumor. It is not a credit inferred from visual resemblance. It is original Universal marketing.

At the same time, the flyer does not tell us exactly what Ishimori personally did.

That distinction is crucial. No recovered production sheet assigns Shotaro Ishimori the role of game designer, character designer, sprite artist, cabinet illustrator, programmer, or hardware designer. The flyer describes a company-level cooperation and invokes Ishimori’s accumulated experience. It is reasonable to say that Universal publicly tied the game’s cartoon concept to Ishimori’s organization. It is not responsible to convert that into a specific individual art credit that the surviving documentation does not provide.

The language also needs historical sensitivity. Today the artist is widely known as Shotaro Ishinomori, a name he formally adopted later. The 1979 Universal material uses the contemporary “Shotaro Ishimori” form, so that is the form most appropriate when discussing the period evidence.

Universal’s promotional copy goes even further, calling the project “probably the first such attempt in Japan.” That is an advertising claim, not a conclusion Arcade Side B needs to endorse. The useful part is the concrete evidence underneath the boast: Universal was consciously selling the game as a meeting point between manga/cartoon culture and coin-operated video games.

That ambition is visible not only in the alternate flyer but in the cabinet package. The monsters, swirls, horned figures, star fields, and exaggerated title lettering give the machine a visual identity far beyond what the simple in-game sprites could provide. In 1979, cabinet art still had to do much of the imaginative work that later games could put directly on screen.

The same game, presented differently around the world

The regional flyers are valuable because they show how Cosmic Guerilla was adapted commercially without requiring us to assume that every advertisement represented a different program revision.

United States

The main U.S. flyer emphasizes the premise and the cabinet choices. It shows both upright and table machines and gives model numbers and physical specifications. The table is identified as model 95-1632, while the upright is 95-1653.

The upright dimensions on the English flyer are roughly 800 mm deep, 640 mm wide, and 1700 mm high. The power information distinguishes black-and-white and color configurations, another clue to the game’s unusual display history. The table version is shown as a lower, broad cabinet with two player stations.

The reverse of the flyer is even more important historically because it is effectively an operator-facing strategy sheet. It labels the screen elements, explains the score system, illustrates the enemy transformations, and offers “Technique I,” “Technique II,” and “Technique III.” This is far more informative than a typical one-page advertisement.

Japan

The Japanese two-sided flyer closely parallels the alternate English Ishimori piece. Its headline says that the world of manga has been brought into the game, and the copy again refers to the cooperation of Ishimori’s organization. The rear page provides the same gameplay and scoring information in Japanese.

The visual continuity between the English and Japanese versions strongly suggests that Universal regarded the Ishimori connection as a central selling point rather than an export-only embellishment.

Germany: ADP Automaten

Germany produced some of the most useful surviving material because the ADP flyers add technical and distribution context.

One German front page is dominated by a huge horned green creature and a photograph of the upright. The back identifies the manufacturer as Universal, Japan and gives approximate cabinet dimensions of 170 cm high, 64 cm wide, and 80 cm deep, with a weight of about 120 kg. Electrical requirements are given as 220 V, 50 Hz, about 115 W. The page carries the name and address of ADP Automaten GmbH / Paul Gauselmann.

Those measurements align closely with the upright dimensions in Universal’s international flyer. The German material therefore does more than prove that a brochure existed; it ties a specific local commercial identity to a machine whose dimensions and technical outline remain recognizably Universal.

An alternate ADP flyer is even more visually useful. Instead of a large illustration, it uses a substantial photograph of the upright cabinet. The image shows the distinctive white-edged silhouette, curved side cutout, purple-and-yellow scrollwork, colorful marquee, decorative bezel area, and the deep control shelf.

The wording on the German pages does not, by itself, settle the exact legal structure between Universal and ADP. It does establish that ADP was publicly marketing the machine in Germany and openly identifying Universal as the manufacturer. For historical purposes, “German ADP marketing/distribution” is safer than inventing contractual language that has not been recovered.

United Kingdom: Electrocoin

Two British advertisements survive through The Arcade Flyer Archive, both associated with Electrocoin Automatics Limited.

One is essentially an English promotional sheet carrying the Ishimori cooperation language and the claim that Cosmic Guerilla was “the best game on the market.” Another is more aggressively commercial. It uses a large STOP PRESS headline and describes Cosmic Guerilla as a “new Faster Game” that means more money in the operator’s cash box.

The phrase “Faster Game” is interesting but should not be stretched into a technical conclusion. It may describe pacing, a local revision, a marketing comparison, or simply sales language. No British ROM set or engineering notice recovered in this project proves a distinct Electrocoin software revision. The advertisement is evidence for how the game was sold in Britain, not sufficient evidence for a new code branch.

Taken together, the American, Japanese, German, and British material shows a game that was actively localized in presentation while retaining a consistent core identity. That regional paper trail is one reason Cosmic Guerilla deserves more than a one-line database entry.

How the battlefield works

The player’s movable laser gun sits at the bottom of the screen. It travels horizontally and fires upward. The main enemy groups are positioned in vertical lines toward the left and right sides. Between them are the central laser guns and their protective structures.

Universal’s own “How to Play” material breaks the field into nine labeled elements:

1. the score display;
2. the UFO;
3. the guerillas;
4. the protective blocks;
5. the base;
6. the player’s movable laser gun;
7. the central laser guns;
8. the Mutant Mole;
9. the credit display.

The score display is six digits and is explicitly described as ranging from 0 to 999,990. The UFO can award 50 to 300 points. The guerillas rush toward the protected blocks from both sides while bombing. When a block disappears, the attacker attempts to carry it to the outside. A block that has not yet been fully taken can be restored if the player kills the attacking guerilla in time.

The base has its own role. Universal calls it a fortress prepared to protect the player’s laser guns. Enemy attacks can damage it, but the documentation states that the base is restored when a new group appears.

That gives the center of the screen several layers of defense rather than one generic shield. The player is protecting blocks, bases, and finally the spare guns themselves.

The movable laser gun is the active player piece. Universal’s literature describes three to five guns depending on DIP-switch adjustment. When the active gun is destroyed or when a reserve is taken, the stock changes. The central laser guns represent the reserve supply.

The result is a defense-in-depth structure that is unusually explicit for an early shooter. The enemy objective is not merely “reach the bottom.” It is to dismantle the central reserve.

Thirty-four ordinary guerillas, split across both sides

Program analysis performed during this project identified 17 ordinary guerillas on the left and 17 on the right, giving 34 ordinary formation enemies at the initial state.

That finding matters because screenshots can make the formation seem less structured than it is. The enemies are not simply scattered decorations waiting for an attack trigger. Their placement is organized around the two-sided assault concept.

The program also preserves progression separately for alternating players. In a two-player game, each player’s advancement is not merely a shared global stage counter. The separate state fits the hot-seat structure and helps explain how the game can restore the appropriate formation conditions when control changes.

This is one of the places where ROM analysis adds something the flyer does not need to explain. The operator literature is concerned with teaching the game. The program has to keep the underlying state organized.

The preserved code also supports a progressive inward movement of the formations across successive screens. As the game continues, later groups begin closer to the protected central guns. By roughly the tenth screen the formation has reached the deepest regular placement in the sequence.

That inward pressure is a subtle escalation mechanism. The player is not just facing enemies worth more points; there is progressively less defensive distance between the attacking columns and the objects they are trying to steal.

The scoring ladder is also a progression ladder

The reverse flyer documents one of the clearest stage-based scoring systems among Universal’s early games.

The ordinary guerilla changes appearance as play continues:

• Screens 1–3: 20 points
• Screens 4–6: 40 points
• Screens 7–9: 50 points
• Screens 10–12: 60 points, labeled “Gold Guerilla” in the English flyer
• After 13 screens: 100 points

This is not simply a palette swap with a fixed score. The game’s visual enemy identity and reward level move together.

The flyer’s wording “after 13 screens” is a useful reminder that early arcade documentation did not always use modern stage vocabulary. The machine is not presenting a cinematic “Level 13” screen with a title card. It is tracking repeated formation cycles and modifying the attackers over time.

The score ladder also makes the late game materially more valuable. A player who survives deep into a run is not earning the same points at the same rate as a beginner. The game’s economy accelerates with difficulty.

That helps explain why the six-digit score display mattered. The display range up to 999,990 is not just theoretical decoration; the scoring system is designed to expand as the run advances.

The UFO: familiar idea, variable reward

The UFO is the most conventional part of the scoring system. It moves through the upper area and awards a variable 50 to 300 points when hit.

That places Cosmic Guerilla squarely in the score-chasing vocabulary of late-1970s shooters, where a periodic high-value target interrupts the ordinary formation work.

The variable score also serves as a small pacing break. The player has to decide whether the bonus target is worth attention while the central defenses remain under pressure. Because the core game is about preventing theft, every diversion has a cost.

Universal’s own flyer gives the 50–300 range, and the preserved program agrees with that general scoring structure. The point range is therefore one of the better-supported gameplay facts: it appears in contemporary instructions and survives in code behavior.

The Mutant Mole: a 500-point rhythm inside the score system

The Mutant Mole is stranger.

Universal’s instructions say it appears every time the player reaches another 500 points and attacks the laser guns. The flyer’s scoring table gives it two possible values: 50 or 200 points.

Program analysis confirms those two outcomes and indicates that the value depends on the creature’s state or position when it is hit.

That means the 500-point threshold is not just a bonus animation. The score itself creates an event cadence. As the player approaches each multiple of 500, another threat enters the system.

The German ADP flyer translates the creature as “Mondkalb”, literally a “moon calf,” while retaining the same behavior and 50/200-point result. The translation is a small but delightful piece of regional arcade history: the mechanical role remains unchanged even as the monster’s identity is localized.

The Mutant Mole also reinforces the game’s central theme. It does not exist merely to add a random target. Its function is tied to the reserve-gun defense. Even special creatures are organized around the idea that the center must be protected.

“Whirlwind” was Universal’s word, not a modern nickname

The earlier A01 draft of this project made one important mistake: it treated “Whirlwind” as a research nickname for a special timed guerilla state.

The surviving primary flyer proves otherwise.

At the bottom of the U.S. strategy sheet, Universal’s Technique III explicitly warns the player to “Be careful of the ‘whirlwind’ guerilla!” The Japanese rear flyer contains the corresponding warning in Japanese.

That correction is important enough to preserve in the project record because it demonstrates exactly why source images belong inside the final handoff. A transcription, a memory, or a modern database summary can miss one small phrase. The actual 1979 page settles the matter.

ROM analysis had already shown that the program contains a distinct timed single-guerilla behavior outside the normal formation attack gating. The flyer now supplies the contemporary vocabulary for that event.

So the controlled conclusion is stronger than before:

The game contains a distinct special guerilla attack state, and Universal’s own contemporary instructions call the attacker the “whirlwind” guerilla.

This is a good example of paper evidence and code evidence meeting in the middle. The program tells us there is a special state. The flyer tells us what Universal called it.

Rescuing a stolen gun

Technique I on the flyer describes one of the game’s most distinctive tactical moments.

If a guerilla takes a laser gun, the player is told to shoot the thief before it returns to its position. The gun will stop where the attacker is destroyed. Then the player should wait for the opposite-side guerilla to approach the exposed gun and shoot that attacker while it is taking the gun back toward its own side. The goal is to return the reserve gun toward the center.

That is unusually elaborate for a one-button fixed shooter.

It turns the stolen life into a movable object with a temporary location. The player may have to manipulate enemy behavior rather than simply shoot the first available target. The rescue requires timing and an understanding of which side’s attacker will move the gun in the desired direction.

In other words, the enemies are not only threats. Under the right circumstances, their theft behavior can be used to reposition the player’s reserve.

This is one of the features that disappears almost completely if Cosmic Guerilla is summarized as “a Space Invaders clone.” It is built from a familiar shooting interface, but the tactical problem is different.

The extra gun: a configurable threshold, not an endless free-life loop

Universal’s documentation says the operator can set an extra central laser gun at 1,000, 1,500, or 2,000 points, with a no-bonus option also available.

Current MAME’s input definition matches those values.

Program analysis performed for this project indicates that the award behaves as a configured score threshold rather than a simple “every N points forever” rule. That distinction matters for preservation because many later game summaries flatten bonus-life settings into a generic repeating interval.

Here, the bonus has special meaning because the awarded life is represented physically in the defended central position. The player can earn another gun and then potentially watch the enemy steal it.

That feedback loop is the heart of the design: scoring affects the physical defensive reserve, and the defensive reserve affects survival.

One-player simplicity, two-player state

The control scheme is minimal: left, right, fire.

The machine supports one player or two players alternating. Current MAME defines the second set of controls for cocktail mode and includes a cabinet switch for upright versus cocktail orientation. Universal’s flyers show both formats, confirming that table operation was part of the original commercial plan rather than a later emulator convenience.

The program keeps relevant progression state per player, which helps preserve each player’s stage conditions during alternating play.

The cabinet mode switch itself is interesting because current MAME comments that it is not read directly by the game program; it is hard-wired into the flip-screen output. That is the sort of hardware detail that disappears if we only look at software logic.

Similarly, switch 6 is marked unused. MAME’s source notes that the schematic tells the operator to leave it off and that it is wired into the watchdog circuit rather than read by the program.

The machine therefore reminds us that an arcade game is not just ROM code. Some operator settings act through hardware paths outside the main program’s normal logic.

The dedicated upright: ornate, curving, and unmistakably Universal

A surviving Cosmic Guerilla upright is hard to confuse with a generic conversion cabinet.

The sides are white with large purple panels and yellow swirling ornament. A horned creature appears in the side art. The cabinet profile curves inward around the monitor/control area, creating a narrow waist before swelling outward again. The marquee uses a colorful hand-drawn title rather than a plain block logo. The interior bezel area continues the monster artwork around the monitor.

Period and collector descriptions also note an unusually finished control panel. The panel has brushed-metal character and illuminated one-player/two-player information areas. Later preservation descriptions say inserting credits lights the corresponding player indicators.

The “SUPER VIOLENCE!” slogan associated with the cabinet is another piece of its late-1970s personality. It reads strangely now, but it fits a period when arcade manufacturers were trying to make relatively abstract moving dots and sprites sound dangerous, futuristic, and exciting.

The alternate German ADP flyer gives us an especially valuable period photograph because it shows the full dedicated cabinet rather than only an illustration.

The cabinet matters historically because the in-game graphics are sparse. In 1979 the machine’s exterior supplied much of the fiction. The monitor showed simple attackers. The cabinet told you those attackers belonged to a wild comic-book universe.

The table cabinet was not just a cropped upright

The flyers also devote real space to the table version.

The table cabinet is broad and cream-colored, with a central vertical monitor opening and separate control areas. Its industrial design is much quieter than the upright’s fantasy side art, but it preserves the Universal identity on the lower body.

The U.S. flyer’s specifications identify the table as model 95-1632 and list approximately 550 mm depth, 800 mm width, and an adjustable or range-style height of roughly 600–700 mm. The upright, model 95-1653, is much taller at about 1700 mm.

That distinction is worth keeping because “cocktail” is sometimes treated in modern databases as a checkbox. In Universal’s own marketing, it was a separate physical product with its own model number and dimensions.

The table form also explains why the driver contains cocktail control and screen-flip behavior. The software/hardware support and the sales material point to the same original design requirement.

Board 7907-A: unusually solid identification

The main-board identity is one of the strongest hardware conclusions in the project.

Universal’s service material identifies the main board as 7907-A, and current MAME’s source header independently describes Cosmic Guerilla as “board number 7907A.”

That agreement between contemporary documentation and preservation code gives us high confidence.

The MAME driver also provides a compact picture of the architecture. It maps 8 KB of program ROM from 0x0000 to 0x1fff and video RAM from 0x2000 to 0x3fff. A Motorola MC6845-compatible CRT controller is accessed through a small address window in the video RAM area. A 1 KB color-map ROM supplies the color mapping when present.

The processor is configured in current MAME as a Texas Instruments TMS9980A with a 9.828 MHz crystal. The CRT timing and character clock are derived from that same source.

Older databases sometimes state an operating figure near 1.2285 MHz. That does not require us to choose one source and accuse the other of being wrong. The physical source crystal and the processor’s effective/internal timing can be described differently. The safest historical wording is:

TMS9980-family CPU; current MAME specifically emulates a TMS9980A driven from a 9.828 MHz source crystal.

That phrasing says what we know without pretending every surviving production board has been inspected chip by chip.

What about 7907-S?

Collector hardware lists have also associated Cosmic Guerilla with a 7907-S designation.

Unlike 7907-A, that designation has not been recovered in equally strong primary documentation during this project. We do not have an original Universal page clearly identifying 7907-S as a Cosmic Guerilla assembly, nor a sufficiently documented surviving-board photograph that resolves exactly what the “S” board represents.

It may be a production variation, a subassembly, a regional arrangement, or a collector-list convention grounded in a surviving machine. The secondary evidence is credible enough to preserve as a research lead. It is not strong enough to put 7907-S beside 7907-A without qualification.

So the final publication position remains:

7907-A is primary-confirmed. 7907-S is a credible secondary lead awaiting primary or artifact-level confirmation.

That is exactly the kind of small distinction Arcade Side B exists to preserve. A database can list two board numbers in one field. Historical work needs to record why one is secure and the other is provisional.

A surprisingly interesting video system: color and overlay can both be correct

Cosmic Guerilla has been described both as a color game and as a black-and-white game using a color overlay.

The evidence supports both descriptions.

Current MAME’s driver opens with a direct note: the background should be blue, and the board can operate in black-and-white mode if the color PROM is absent, in which case a color overlay should be used.

That statement is unusually specific.

The program set includes a 1 KB cosmicg9.bin color-map ROM for the parent configuration. MAME’s Spanish cosmicgi definition adds an especially useful comment: population of the color-map region is optional, the board can run in black and white without it, and the particular Spanish board used for the dump did not have the color PROM populated.

Universal’s sales literature also distinguishes black-and-white and color power figures for the upright. The U.S. flyer lists 115 W for black-and-white and 145 W for color. The German ADP technical sheet gives about 115 W, consistent with the lower-power configuration.

This does not prove that every German machine was black-and-white or that every U.S. machine was color. It does show that Universal’s hardware and marketing contemplated more than one display arrangement.

That explains why modern collectors can encounter apparently conflicting evidence without either side necessarily being mistaken.

The proper historical statement is not “Cosmic Guerilla was a black-and-white game” or “Cosmic Guerilla was a color game.” It is:

The platform supports true color through a color-map PROM and can also operate in black and white with a physical color overlay; surviving documentation and preservation evidence support both configurations.

That is a much more interesting answer.

Resolution, orientation, and the difference between 192×256 and 256×192

Technical sites sometimes list Cosmic Guerilla as 192×256, while current MAME reports a raw screen geometry of 256×192 and rotates the game 270 degrees.

Those descriptions refer to the same vertical presentation from different points of view.

The raster is generated as 256 by 192 in the emulated device coordinate system and then displayed vertically. Once orientation is taken into account, the visible game is commonly described as 192 pixels wide by 256 high.

Current ArcadeItalia data reports approximately 59.886 Hz. MAME’s raw timing uses the 9.828 MHz source divided into the video system’s horizontal and vertical totals.

For the website, the important facts are simple: vertical standard-resolution raster, roughly 60 Hz, with a 192-by-256-style visible orientation. The deeper timing belongs in the technical appendix rather than cluttering the opening snapshot.

The color palette is tiny, but the cabinet makes it feel bigger

Current MAME defines a 16-entry palette. The driver’s color routine treats one bit as a high-red path and uses a color-map PROM to choose the visible color for groups of pixels.

That does not make Cosmic Guerilla a graphically lavish game. Its sprites and playfield remain simple.

But the combination of color mapping, possible physical overlays, cabinet art, illuminated panel elements, and highly colored advertising changes the total visual experience. The “game” the customer encountered in an arcade was not just a 192×256 bitmap. It was the whole apparatus.

This is especially important when viewing screenshots on a modern LCD. A raw emulation image can make the title look stark and primitive. The dedicated cabinet wrapped that screen in a much richer visual frame.

The preservation artwork included with this backup is useful for demonstrating that relationship, although it is modern reconstruction material rather than primary historical evidence.

Sound: part samples, part DAC, and still not perfectly emulated

The audio system is another place where Cosmic Guerilla becomes more complicated the closer we look.

Universal’s service documentation identifies discrete/analog components including NE556 timer devices and LM324-family operational amplifiers. Current MAME combines sample playback with a one-bit DAC and comments on additional DAC/discrete behavior.

The driver assigns separate sample functions for eight march pitches, the killer attack, bonus chance, got bonus, got ship/gun destroyed, gunshot, got monster, and coin/extend behavior. It also models a one-bit DAC path labeled in the source as associated with an NE556.

MAME’s developers are explicit about the remaining limitation. The sample list comments that the “Got Bonus” effect is not the correct sound, and the game is flagged MACHINE_IMPERFECT_SOUND.

This is historically important.

When preservation software plays a sample, it can give the impression that the machine’s audio is a solved problem. In reality, the original board mixed logic, timers, analog shaping, and amplifier behavior. A sample can approximate what the player heard without recreating how the board produced it.

The MiSTer FPGA recreation reaches a similar practical compromise. Its documentation says the sound effects are implemented using samples and openly notes differences between the recreated core and original hardware.

So the appropriate publication claim is modest: the sound is substantially emulated and playable, but current preservation implementations do not establish that every effect exactly matches an untouched original board.

For a game this old, a clean recording from a verified original machine would still be valuable preservation evidence.

A manual that appears to be wrong about coinage

Original documentation deserves respect. It does not deserve blind obedience.

Universal’s switch table appears to describe the alternate SW3 coinage setting as “1 coin 2 plays.”

Current MAME defines that alternate setting as 2 coins / 1 credit, with the normal setting at 1 coin / 1 credit. Program analysis carried out during this project agrees with the MAME interpretation.

That makes the manual wording almost certainly an error.

The correction is small but historically useful because it shows why multiple evidence types matter. A service manual is a primary source, but primary sources can contain typographical mistakes, translation mistakes, revision mismatches, or documentation errors. Preserved program behavior can sometimes resolve them.

The final controlled DIP summary is:

• Bonus gun: 1,000 / 1,500 / 2,000 / none
• Coinage: 1 coin / 1 credit or 2 coins / 1 credit
• Lives: 3 or 5
• Cabinet: upright or cocktail
• SW6: unused / leave off

The erroneous “1 coin 2 plays” wording should be discussed as a documentation anomaly, not copied forward as the game’s actual alternate pricing mode.

The program ROMs are electrically scrambled

MAME’s current initialization code contains another preservation detail that deserves mention.

The program ROM data pins are connected in a nonstandard order. MAME reads each stored byte and rearranges the bit positions to recover the normal value before execution.

That kind of hardware-specific data scrambling was not “encryption” in the modern security sense. It was a wiring arrangement that means a raw ROM dump cannot necessarily be read as ordinary instruction bytes without understanding how the board connected the data lines.

The driver also applies two bit changes at program offsets 0x1e9b and 0x1e9f, with a comment describing the change as converting a dummy instruction to a meaningful one.

This is an emulator implementation detail rather than evidence for a secret game revision, and it should be treated that way. But it illustrates how much invisible preservation work stands between a bag of ROM chips and a game that actually executes in software.

When we say Cosmic Guerilla is “preserved in MAME,” that preservation includes decades of technical interpretation, not merely copying nine files into a directory.

The Spanish Inder board: where “bootleg” is both useful and insufficient

The Spanish story is one of the messiest parts of the game’s surviving record.

Current MAME preserves a clone set named cosmicgi. It labels the game “Cosmic Guerilla (Spanish bootleg)” and identifies the manufacturer as “bootleg (Inder).” Spanish arcade-preservation listings similarly catalog an Inder set derived from the Universal parent.

The ROM definition is not identical to the Universal parent. Several program ROMs have different checksums, while other ROMs match. MAME also notes that the color-map PROM was not populated on the Spanish board used for the dump, which means that physical board ran in black-and-white mode.

Retrolaser’s Spanish discussion of black-and-white arcade technology describes playing an Inder Spanish version of Cosmic Guerilla based on Universal’s original and praises the Inder cabinet as closely reproducing the original design. That is useful artifact-level cultural context.

What we do not have is the title-specific contract.

This matters because Universal games were unquestionably handled by Spanish companies, and secondary material for other Universal titles records formal licensing relationships with Inder. It would therefore be careless to leap from one MAME manufacturer field to a sweeping claim that every Universal-derived Inder machine was unauthorized.

But the reverse leap is also unjustified. The existence of legitimate Universal–Inder dealings elsewhere does not automatically prove that the particular cosmicgi PCB or program revision preserved today was an authorized licensed set.

The right answer is to preserve both pieces of evidence:

MAME classifies the preserved Spanish set as a bootleg by Inder. The broader historical record shows that Inder participated in legitimate Universal-related commercial activity in Spain. The exact contractual provenance of this specific Cosmic Guerilla set remains unresolved.

That conclusion may feel less satisfying than a clean yes/no label, but it is more faithful to the evidence.

The Spanish set also strengthens the black-and-white story

The cosmicgi comments are especially valuable for the display-history question.

MAME notes that the color-map ROM is optional and that the Spanish board used for the dump did not have it populated. The board still runs in black and white.

That is much stronger than a generic database field saying “B&W.” It connects the observation to a particular preserved board configuration.

Combined with Universal’s own dual power specifications and MAME’s explicit overlay note, it makes the mixed display history one of the project’s best-resolved technical questions.

A future photograph of an untouched Inder monitor/bezel arrangement could strengthen the physical side even further, but the electrical point is already well supported.

The arcade artwork and the Ishimori question should remain separate

Because the Ishimori collaboration is real, there is a temptation to look at every monster on the cabinet and say, “Ishimori drew that.”

The evidence does not allow us to do that yet.

The dedicated upright’s side art, bezel art, and marquee form a coherent fantasy-monster package. The alternate flyer has a different, more overtly comic-book composition. The Japanese and English Ishimori flyers share art. All of this is compatible with some kind of creative contribution from Ishimori’s organization.

Compatibility is not authorship proof.

A useful future discovery would be an original art board, printer proof, design memo, staff credit, advertising-agency record, or Ishimori Pro archive reference that assigns specific work. Until that appears, the publication should keep two statements distinct:

1. Universal explicitly documented cooperation with Ishimori Co., Ltd. and named Shotaro Ishimori.
2. The exact authorship of individual cabinet, flyer, sprite, and character assets has not been recovered.

That separation protects the strength of the real evidence instead of weakening it with an unnecessary guess.

The cabinet art survived better than the credits

The irony of Cosmic Guerilla is that we can often see what the artists made more clearly than we can identify who made it.

Period flyer scans preserve the artwork in strong color. Dedicated uprights survive in collector hands. Modern preservation projects have reconstructed the bezel. Yet the names of the actual illustrators, graphic artists, cabinet designers, programmers, sound engineers, and hardware engineers remain largely absent from the public record.

That is not unusual for the period. Coin-op manufacturers frequently marketed the product and the company rather than the individuals.

For Arcade Side B, that absence is itself part of the history. The game should not be retroactively given a modern-style credit roll assembled from assumptions. Unknown creators deserve to remain “unknown” until evidence gives them names.

Why the game feels harsher than its simple controls suggest

On paper, Cosmic Guerilla is almost minimal: two directions and one button.

Its difficulty comes from overlapping obligations.

The player must shoot ordinary guerillas, watch both sides, respond to UFO opportunities, anticipate the Mutant Mole every 500 points, protect the active gun, defend the bases and blocks, and sometimes manipulate a stolen reserve gun back toward safety. Later formations begin closer to the center. Enemy values rise, but so does the cost of losing control.

The game also restricts the player’s spatial freedom. There is no vertical escape and no complex weapon system. Every problem has to be solved with horizontal positioning and timing.

That creates a kind of pressure that is different from later shooters with dozens of bullets. The screen can be visually sparse while still asking the player to monitor several relationships at once.

The two-sided enemy arrangement is essential. In a conventional top-down invasion, threat direction is mostly vertical. Here the reserve is being squeezed from left and right while the player operates below it.

The screen composition is therefore not merely decorative. It encodes the game’s tactical idea.

A small piece of design history hidden inside a crowded genre

Cosmic Guerilla probably did not change the course of the arcade industry. There is no evidence that it became a mass-market phenomenon on the scale of the games that define 1979 in popular memory.

That is precisely why it belongs on Arcade Side B.

The history of arcade design is not only a line connecting the biggest hits. It is also a web of experiments: ideas tried once, mechanics that appeared in odd places, hardware solutions that were later abandoned, regional variants that complicate the standard story, and creative collaborations that survive only because someone kept the flyer.

Cosmic Guerilla gives us several of those at once.

Its reserve lives are physically attackable. Its enemy formations close in from two sides. Its score system changes enemy forms and values over successive screens. It creates a special 500-point creature and a named “whirlwind” attacker. It supports both upright and table cabinets. Its video hardware can run with a color PROM or in black and white with an overlay. Its sound remains imperfectly emulated. Its Spanish derivative survives under a bootleg classification that does not neatly explain the broader company relationship. And its advertising links Universal to one of Japan’s best-known manga creators without giving us the detailed credit sheet we would most like to have.

That is a remarkable amount of unresolved texture for a game that can be dismissed in ten seconds as “another old space shooter.”

Preservation history: the game was not always easy to emulate correctly

The MAME history itself tells a story.

Older MAME records show that Cosmic Guerilla entered the project in the late 1990s/early 2000 era of rapid classic-arcade preservation work. Sound samples were added and revised. CPU emulation changes sometimes broke the game. Later driver work separated and overhauled the implementation.

Current MAME source is much cleaner than those early snapshots, but it still carries evidence of unresolved edges: imperfect sound, comments about the background, optional color PROM behavior, and uncertainty around the exact bonus sound.

MiSTer’s FPGA core provides another preservation path. Its author, Mike Coates, notes that the recreation uses a TMS9900 in the core while the original uses the 8-bit-bus TMS9980 family, and says timing is designed to remain close to original. The core also relies on samples for sound and does not implement the unusual watchdog exactly.

Those admissions are a strength, not a weakness. Good preservation documentation records what is modeled, what is approximated, and what remains uncertain.

The game is playable today because multiple generations of preservation work have accumulated around a relatively obscure 1979 board. That is worth recognizing.

What the surviving flyers teach us that emulation cannot

Emulation can tell us how the program behaves. It cannot, by itself, tell us how Universal wanted operators and players to understand the machine.

The flyers reveal language and priorities that are absent from the code:

• Universal explicitly framed the game as cartoon-world entertainment.
• Ishimori cooperation was part of the commercial story.
• The company taught players a specific rescue technique for stolen guns.
• Universal used the name “whirlwind” for a special guerilla.
• Regional distributors changed the sales pitch.
• ADP published weight and 220-volt specifications.
• Electrocoin emphasized cash-box performance.
• The upright and table machines were marketed as distinct products.
• Cabinet art was central enough to dominate entire pages.

This is why a final research archive should contain the scans, not merely links to them. The visual layout, typography, photographs, and exact wording are evidence.

The A01 package failed that standard by leaving the images external. A02 corrects it by preserving the usable scans directly inside the handoff.

What the ROM teaches us that the flyers cannot

The reverse is also true.

The program can answer questions the advertisements never needed to address:

• the initial 17-per-side ordinary formation;
• the per-player progression state;
• the inward placement sequence;
• the practical score rollover;
• the implementation of the configurable bonus threshold;
• the distinct Mutant Mole score outcomes;
• the special attack logic associated with the “whirlwind” behavior;
• the actual coinage behavior that contradicts the manual wording;
• the data-pin scrambling handled during emulation.

That evidence should not be romanticized. Code cannot tell us who sat in the meeting room, who drew a monster, how many units shipped, or whether a Spanish contract was signed.

The strongest history comes from letting each source answer the kind of question it is capable of answering.

Ports and echoes

The arcade game later inspired home-computer versions and similarly named games, but the relationship is messy enough that the arcade article should not casually treat every later title as an official port.

A 1983 Cosmic Guerilla for Sinclair machines is associated with Crystal Computing, and modern sources differ in how they characterize the relationship. Some databases describe it as a port; others treat particular versions as unofficial conversions. A BBC title, Cosmic Kidnap, also reflects the core idea.

Those later games are useful evidence of the arcade concept’s afterlife, but they are not necessary to establish the arcade machine’s history. Unless a future expansion of this profile specifically audits the home versions, the safest approach is to mention them as adaptations/derivatives and keep the publication centered on Universal’s coin-op original.

What is still unknown

Finishing the article does not mean pretending every question has been solved.

Shotaro Ishimori’s exact contribution

The cooperation is primary-source fact. The personal task assignment is not. We still need a production credit, archival record, interview, or original artwork provenance to say precisely what Ishimori or his staff created.

The rest of the development team

No complete contemporary staff list has been recovered for programming, hardware, audio, industrial design, cabinet illustration, or graphic production.

7907-S

The designation remains a useful collector lead but lacks the same primary confirmation as 7907-A.

Production and sales totals

No trustworthy manufacturing ledger, shipment figure, or audited sales total has been recovered. Surviving-machine census figures must not be converted into production estimates.

The exact Universal–Inder agreement for Cosmic Guerilla

The Spanish board exists and MAME classifies it as a bootleg. Broader evidence shows Universal titles were commercially handled by Inder in Spain. The contract status of this specific program set remains open.

Exact distribution contracts in Germany and Britain

ADP and Electrocoin are clearly present in period marketing. Their precise legal agreements with Universal have not been recovered in this project.

Original sound fidelity

Current emulation is imperfect, and a verified untouched cabinet recording would improve the preservation record.

These questions are continuation points for future evidence, not reasons to hold the article indefinitely.

Why Cosmic Guerilla belongs on Arcade Side B

Cosmic Guerilla is exactly the sort of game that disappears when arcade history is told only through the winners.

It came from a recognizable genre at a crowded moment. It did not need a revolutionary control panel or a celebrity license to be mechanically interesting. Instead it took the fixed shooter apart and rebuilt the center of the screen around an unusual question:

What if the enemy could steal your remaining lives before you got a chance to use them?

Universal turned that question into a whole system. The attackers remove blocks. The bases protect the reserve. The spare guns sit visibly in danger. A stolen gun can sometimes be rescued. The formations creep inward over time. The enemies change value and shape. The score summons a Mutant Mole. A “whirlwind” attacker introduces another special threat. The game remains understandable in seconds but reveals more rules the longer it is examined.

Around that play system Universal built a machine with unusually strong visual identity: ornate cabinet art, a separate table model, regional distributor campaigns, and a documented cooperation with Ishimori’s company. Underneath it sat equally distinctive hardware: a TMS9980-family system, 7907-A board, optional color mapping, unusual sound circuitry, and a program whose data lines have to be unscrambled correctly in emulation.

Forty-seven years later, the surviving record is still uneven. We have beautiful flyers but incomplete credits. We have ROMs but imperfect sound. We have a Spanish board but no title-specific contract. We have a secure 7907-A identification and a shadowy 7907-S lead. We know Universal wanted the world to connect the game with Ishimori, but we still cannot point to one piece of art and confidently sign his name beneath it.

That unevenness is not a defect in the history. It is the history.

Cosmic Guerilla does not become more important by pretending it was a forgotten masterpiece or a secret industry-changing hit. It becomes more interesting when the evidence is allowed to show what it actually was: a small, imaginative, internationally marketed 1979 arcade game whose design, artwork, hardware, and preservation record contain far more than the thumbnail suggests.

The overlooked side of arcade history is full of machines like this.

The work is not to turn them into legends.

The work is to look closely enough that they no longer need to be.

Archival image gallery

The A02 research handoff includes fifteen usable image files. Twelve are historical flyer/advertising scans preserved from The Arcade Flyer Archive; three are modern preservation-art assets from the GPL-3.0 MAME Realistic Bezel Artwork project. The latter are clearly labeled as reconstructions and must never be presented as period originals.