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*MonStorm Gameplay Video*	Gameplay footage of all 52 levels of MonStorm! 😍 [Forward by John Smythe] This MonStorm cart is so rare that only the most steeped in Vectrex culture know about it, even searching the web it is hard to find. If you go to https://vectrex.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Vectrex_games, you can see way down in the third set of games, they have employee hacked games, and they reference it there. Folks weren't sure who made it, they thought it was a modified cart by either Fred Taft or F. R. Wilk that gives you infinite lives, but we have solved the mystery and gotten the binary and can decisively say it came from F. Wilk as he put his name into the code... As a modded cart by one of the original devs of the day this is likely a one of a kind (or very very few) pieces. Also a neat story, it seems to have been built on the same hardware as Mr. Boston, which was a unique board design. So this hardware too is very very rare. LICENSE: The binary will be posted below after the sale of the original, and is only allowed to be downloaded for personal use and study of the code. No physical reproductions or inclusion on Multicarts is allowed. Re-distribution on other websites, digital download, or of any kind is not permitted. This game was generously backed up by John Smythe, and will remain free for all to play and study. Please do not attempt to profit off it.
*MonStorm PCB Top*	The following are details from Brett Walach about MonStorm, as discussed with John Smythe: Something else interesting about that cart... I don't think that PCB is a normal GCE PCB. To me it looks like a special one for development boards. Obviously it's using a UV eraseable EPROM, but the thing is... most released games use a PROM (not erasable) and that PROM has the /CE and /OE lines swapped from a typical EPROM. So if you wanted to let's say take an old Scramble game, and replace the PROM with an EPROM... you'd have to cut the traces to pin 12 and 16 on the edge connector and swap them and reconnect them (i.e., crisscross). This PCB doesn't seem to have that mod, i.e., it was made for EPROMs... likely for developement purposes. I was even skeptical that someone might have made that kind of a mod back in the day with an original GCE PCB from a production game... but it looks to be a custom GCE PCB. Most GCE PCBs don't have 28 pin PROMs either... they have 24 pin PROMs. But I guess there must be some with 28 pin... so still possible to find something that looks like that from a production game. Might want to research the claim a bit more. I'll take a look at some other PCBs online of GCE games. Yeah, looks like the REV A design which was also used for two PCBs in this list from Malban. The Mr. Boston cart, and some kind of Test Cart 1.5 (which I think someone said was just the Rev. 4 one) http://vide.malban.de/collection-2/the-beauty-in-pcbs Also in that list near the top is another weird REV A design with some wires on it and ZIF socket... looks original development board. And just above that one you can see the REV B production board, where pin 12 and 16 don't go to the same pins of the PROM/EPROM chip. Someone put a socket on it and added some extra address lines for larger games. I opened Hyperchase and it has the same REV B board and a 24 pin PROM by SHARP (284040-I) At first glance you might not know or doubt what you are looking at when you look at your MONSTORM cart... but since it's a REV A GCE PCB, it's likely a development/prototype board for sure made by someone within GCE. Very unlikely someone took a Mr. Boston cart, desoldered the chip and soldered a new one in calling it MONSTORM with a few tweaks 😀 That would be the only way to fake something like this. So yeah... early development board for sure.
*MonStorm PCB Bottom*	Download (coming soon!) monstorm.bin This binary is a direct 8KB backup of the original. Download (coming soon!) monstorm-padded.bin This binary is a direct 8KB backup of the original, plus the remaining bytes up to 32KB have been padded with 0x01 to fix a known bug that appeared in Mine Storm II where the game tends to read outside of its program space when shooting a fireball mine. On multicarts that leave this address range as 0x00, the bug will appear and the game will draw some lines and crash. This binary fixes that problem, which likely was introduced with MonStorm changes.

MonStorm Gameplay Video

Gameplay footage of all 52 levels of MonStorm! 😍

[Forward by John Smythe] This MonStorm cart is so rare that only the most steeped in Vectrex culture know about it, even searching the web it is hard to find. If you go to https://vectrex.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Vectrex_games, you can see way down in the third set of games, they have employee hacked games, and they reference it there. Folks weren't sure who made it, they thought it was a modified cart by either Fred Taft or F. R. Wilk that gives you infinite lives, but we have solved the mystery and gotten the binary and can decisively say it came from F. Wilk as he put his name into the code...

As a modded cart by one of the original devs of the day this is likely a one of a kind (or very very few) pieces.

Also a neat story, it seems to have been built on the same hardware as Mr. Boston, which was a unique board design. So this hardware too is very very rare.

LICENSE: The binary will be posted below after the sale of the original, and is only allowed to be downloaded for personal use and study of the code. No physical reproductions or inclusion on Multicarts is allowed. Re-distribution on other websites, digital download, or of any kind is not permitted. This game was generously backed up by John Smythe, and will remain free for all to play and study. Please do not attempt to profit off it.

MonStorm PCB Top

The following are details from Brett Walach about MonStorm, as discussed with John Smythe:

Something else interesting about that cart... I don't think that PCB is a normal GCE PCB. To me it looks like a special one for development boards. Obviously it's using a UV eraseable EPROM, but the thing is... most released games use a PROM (not erasable) and that PROM has the /CE and /OE lines swapped from a typical EPROM. So if you wanted to let's say take an old Scramble game, and replace the PROM with an EPROM... you'd have to cut the traces to pin 12 and 16 on the edge connector and swap them and reconnect them (i.e., crisscross). This PCB doesn't seem to have that mod, i.e., it was made for EPROMs... likely for developement purposes.

I was even skeptical that someone might have made that kind of a mod back in the day with an original GCE PCB from a production game... but it looks to be a custom GCE PCB. Most GCE PCBs don't have 28 pin PROMs either... they have 24 pin PROMs. But I guess there must be some with 28 pin... so still possible to find something that looks like that from a production game. Might want to research the claim a bit more. I'll take a look at some other PCBs online of GCE games.

Yeah, looks like the REV A design which was also used for two PCBs in this list from Malban. The Mr. Boston cart, and some kind of Test Cart 1.5 (which I think someone said was just the Rev. 4 one) http://vide.malban.de/collection-2/the-beauty-in-pcbs

Also in that list near the top is another weird REV A design with some wires on it and ZIF socket... looks original development board. And just above that one you can see the REV B production board, where pin 12 and 16 don't go to the same pins of the PROM/EPROM chip. Someone put a socket on it and added some extra address lines for larger games. I opened Hyperchase and it has the same REV B board and a 24 pin PROM by SHARP (284040-I)

At first glance you might not know or doubt what you are looking at when you look at your MONSTORM cart... but since it's a REV A GCE PCB, it's likely a development/prototype board for sure made by someone within GCE. Very unlikely someone took a Mr. Boston cart, desoldered the chip and soldered a new one in calling it MONSTORM with a few tweaks 😀 That would be the only way to fake something like this. So yeah... early development board for sure.

MonStorm PCB Bottom

Download (coming soon!) monstorm.bin

This binary is a direct 8KB backup of the original.

Download (coming soon!) monstorm-padded.bin

This binary is a direct 8KB backup of the original, plus the remaining bytes up to 32KB have been padded with 0x01 to fix a known bug that appeared in Mine Storm II where the game tends to read outside of its program space when shooting a fireball mine. On multicarts that leave this address range as 0x00, the bug will appear and the game will draw some lines and crash. This binary fixes that problem, which likely was introduced with MonStorm changes.