The Project
There is no ROM to dump and no CPU to emulate. To bring TRAPSHOOT back, every lamp, timing and rule had to be rebuilt from evidence.
Where it came from
Project Trapshoot is by Shane R. Monroe. The research archive behind it - the backglass scans, the videos of a working machine, the coin box photos - dates back to 2003. The original simulation's code was lost in a backup failure, so in 2026 the game was rebuilt from scratch, working from that same archive plus the machine's owner's manual.
Simulation, not emulation
Emulators run a game's original program. TRAPSHOOT never had one: its "program" is the wiring between a few dozen TTL chips. So instead of emulating hardware, this project simulates what the hardware does, and checks every detail against the real thing.
The board
The backglass was scanned at high resolution (2192 by 1094 pixels), once fully lit and once dim. Every lamp element - over 60 of them, plus 31 bird positions on the arc - was mapped by hand in a purpose-built layout editor. Each lamp lights only its own piece of art: the bird dots are masked to the dot itself, bursts skip the bird dots underneath them, and the faint landscape flood has every lamp element cut out so nothing glows that the real machine wouldn't light.
The footage
The videos in the gallery did a lot of the work:
- Bird speeds. The bird dot was tracked frame by frame through every flight in three full games. The flights fall into clear groups - about 111, 141, 150 and 236 milliseconds per lamp - matching the manual's four speed resistors. The slow bird takes about seven seconds to cross; the fast one a little over three.
- Lamp levels. The landscape is only faintly lit during play, idle shooters sit at about the same level, and only the active shooter and his STATION sign go full bright.
- Timing. The recordings show the gunshot, then the crack of the hit about a quarter of a second later, then the HIT SCORE count about a second after that, one tick every 0.58 seconds - with the crowd on the fourth.
- Idle. The power-up video shows the real machine has no attract show at all - it just sits, quietly lit, waiting for a quarter.
The manual
The owner's manual's circuit description supplied the rules no video could show: how the traphouse, delay and bird speed are chosen at random, which station fires at which traphouse, how the hit gate turns pulse overlap into a score of 1 to 4, when DOUBLES comes up, and how the game ends only after Team 2's turn. See The Machine for the details.
The sounds
The gunshot, the hit, the score ticks and the crowd were cut from recordings of the real machine. The coin drop is "vending_machine_coin_insert" by Krokulator on Freesound (CC0 / public domain).
What we added
A few things in the simulation are not on the original machine. They are clearly ours, and each one can be switched off in the operator settings (F1):
| Attract mode OURS | A lamp show and a short demo game played by the simulation's own engine. The real machine just sits idle - turn attract mode off for the authentic experience. |
|---|---|
| On-screen transmitter OURS | A photo of the real control box rests on the waiting team's scoreboard, and its red lens lights when you press the button. |
| Coin box OURS | Inserting a coin shows the real coin box with a quarter rattling through the mechanism. |
| Operator settings OURS | The machine's jumpers and trimmers as a menu: target score, free-game count, bird speed trim, lighting levels and more. |
Credits
TRAPSHOOT (1975) was designed and built by Gremlin Industries, Inc., San Diego. All original artwork and design belong to their respective owners. Project Trapshoot is a fan tribute and is not affiliated with Gremlin Industries or Sega.
Simulation, research and this site: Shane R. Monroe.