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Tazz Mania Tazz Mania - Japanese Logo - Katakana / Kanji

Tazz Mania - Cabinet - Video Game Marquee

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

Tazz Mania - Cabinet - Machine
Cabinet

Specs

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

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.

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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.

More pictures

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 14,717 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society / Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, 9,455 whom participate in our arcade census project of games owned, wanted, or for sale. Census data currently includes 164,291 machines (6,886 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

Foto-Finder® (Books)

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

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