Vindicators (NES)

Vindicators

Platform: NES Year: 1989 Developer: Westwood Associates Buy: Amazon

Vindicators is a one or two player arcade game released by Atari Games in 1988. Home ports were by Tengen. Vindicators was not licensed by Nintendo and used an alternate chip to defeat the 10NES lockout system. Ports were planned for the Atari Lynx and Apple IIGS, with the latter even completed, but both were cancelled. The arcade original was released for Windows PCs on Midway Arcade Treasures (2004).

The NES port was developed by Westwood Associates, although it was uncredited. The game was done by only four developers, which were game programmer Marco Herrera, graphic artist Joseph B. Hewitt IV, and music/sounds by Paul Mudra and Dwight Okahara.

Screenshots

The title screen.

This page needs more screenshots.

Music

As expected, the music is taken from the arcade version composed by Atari's Hal Canon and Brad Fuller. It was ported to the NES by Westwood's Paul S. Mudra and Dwight Okahara. Paul said the following about the music:

“

I do remember working on Vindicators.

We had a coin-op version of the arcade machine supplied by Atari in our office that we used as reference.

I also remember that we received hand-written sheet music for the themes from Atari (which arrived in a manila envelope from Japan) that I transcribed and re-edited in a music editor to fit the specifications for our game.

I don't think Frank had to write any additional music for the game but Dwight and I worked on the sound design and implementation.

„

According to Paul, he used Deluxe Music Construction Set on the Amiga to write his music for the NES. It is most likely Dwight used the same method. Their MIDI files were converted to Westwood's NES sound driver.

Recording

There are issues with the timing of this recording.

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Programmer	Length	Listen	Download
01	Title Screen	Hal Canon, Brad Fuller	Paul Mudra, Dwight Okahara	Paul Mudra	0:31		Download
02	Target Select	Hal Canon, Brad Fuller	Paul Mudra, Dwight Okahara	Paul Mudra	0:22		Download
03	Level 1	Hal Canon, Brad Fuller	Paul Mudra, Dwight Okahara	Paul Mudra	3:00		Download
04	Level 2	Hal Canon, Brad Fuller	Paul Mudra, Dwight Okahara	Paul Mudra	3:00		Download
05	Level 3	Hal Canon, Brad Fuller	Paul Mudra, Dwight Okahara	Paul Mudra	3:00		Download
06	Level 4	Hal Canon, Brad Fuller	Paul Mudra, Dwight Okahara	Paul Mudra	3:00		Download
07	Ending / High Scores	Hal Canon, Brad Fuller	Paul Mudra, Dwight Okahara	Paul Mudra	0:52		Download

Credits

• Ripper: Unknown (Title screen), Zophar's Domain (The rest)
• Recorder: Doommaster1994 (Title screen), Duc4Wikmedia (The rest)
• Game Credits:
  • Not Credited Composer: Hal Canon
  • Not Credited Composer: Brad Fuller
  • Not Credited Arranger: Paul Mudra
  • Not Credited Arranger: Dwight Okahara

(Sources: Arcade, verification from composers, game lacks credits.)

We have verified that Paul Mudra and Dwight Okahara composed the music. It is unknown why the game does not have credits, but it is presumably because the game was unlicensed and Westwood didn't want to burn bridges with Nintendo. However, Pac-Mania, released around the same time and was also published by Tengen, contains a credits scroll.

Game Rip

This rip is missing songs.

Format	Download

Ripping NES music is an arduous process that is beyond the scope of this site.

Audio Devices

The game outputs to the RP2A03 of the NES. The DPCM channel was never used. This game used Paul Mudra's NES sound driver.

Releases

USA Title: Vindicators Platform: NES Released: 1989-11-?? Publisher: Tengen     Australia Title: Vindicators Platform: NES Released: 1990-??-?? Publisher: HES Interactive