Amidar

Amidar is a game where enemies moved based on the rules of the Amida lottery system. It's pretty cool. Not too many games where you can play as both a gorilla and a paint roller.

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Prerelease Info

Unused Graphics#

These unused tiles are only found in the first two oldest sets. They would have been used to place dots outside of the game grid; how the player would have reached them is a mystery.

Version Differences#

There are five official Amidar boards in MAME.

• amidar1 is the oldest board from Konami.
• amidars is a version of the game running on Scramble hardware.
• amidar is the newer Konami board that all of the international builds seem to be based on or upon.
• amidaru is Stern's licensed set.
• amidaro is Olympia's licensed set.

Title Screen#

Konami (Old)	Konami (Scramble)	Konami (New)
Stern	Olympia

• The oldest Konami set is the only one with a copyright year of 1981.
• Starting with the newest Konami set, the string "This is Amidar movement" is added below the game title, further hinting the player on how the enemies in this game move.
• The licensed sets needed to update the copyright information.

Cast Screen#

Old	Scramble	New

• The Scramble set changes the names of the characters on the cast screen.
• Newer sets divide the cast list into "Odd" and "Even" stages and change "Player 1" and "Player 2" to "Player". The names from the Scramble set were not carried over.

Demo Hints#

• The actual gameplay demos are identical between sets, but newer sets add text on-screen to let the player know more on how the game's mechanics work.

HUD Info#

Old
Scramble
New

• The oldest set doesn't have the level number at the top of the screen, and the life icons are further to the right. The Scramble set matches the newer layout, but it uses a different level icon.

Old
New

• The oldest Konami set has the level icon at the bottom of the screen. Newer sets move the icon to the top and replace it with a jump counter. Note that there's nothing on-screen to let the player know how many jumps they have in the oldest set.

Dip Switches#

• The Olympia version reduces the number of lives the player can start with.

• The Olympia set also changes the "Demo Sounds" dip switch to a new "Level Progression" option - see the Difficulty subsection for more details. Since that dip switch was removed, the Olympia version's demos are always silent.

Point Values#

• The dots in the odd-numbered stages are worth 20 points in the oldest set. In all other sets, they're only worth 10 points each.
• In sets made after the oldest Konami set, the point values in the even-numbered stages were reduced.

Difficulty#

• In the oldest Konami set, the player gets 4 jumps per stage / life. The player gets 3 jumps per stage / life in all other sets but the Olympia version, which only gives the player a single jump!
• Normally, the game goes through eight stages of increasing difficulty before cycling back to the first stage. In the Olympia set only, the first stage cycle is different.

:*If "Level Progression" is set to Slow, the first stage loop is 1, 4, 7, 2, 5, 8, 3, 6.

:*If "Level Progression" is set to Fast, the first stage loop is 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Graphics#

Old	New

• The gorilla in the odd-numbered stages isn't properly centered on the grid in the oldest Konami set.

Old	New

• The Olympia set touched up the "S" in the game's font.

References#