Lunar Lander to Asteroids Hack

Back in the early eighties, circuit boards and their components (particularly CPUs and RAM) were very expensive. If you were an arcade operator and had an opportunity to get a new game at an inexpensive price - you took it.

If you were an owner of one of the 4,830 Lunar Landers that Atari had sold in 1979, and weren't making good money with the game you now have an alternative! Convert your Lunar Lander board to play Asteroids (of which there were 47,840 uprights produced). For the low, low price of $650 (in 1980 dollars) you could have your Lunar Lander PCB converted into an Asteroids, get a new control panel. The ads say it just plugs right into your LL board. I'm not so sure about that.

Here is an ad from StarTech Journal's December 1980 issue. [ conversion advertisement 1 ]
Another ad from the April 1982 issue of StarTech Journal. [ conversion advertisement 2]

Receintly on a trip to visit Callan Hendricks, I was shown another Lunar Lander to Asteroids hack that was completed by a company in Dallas, Texas. Anyone know who did it? [note: I found out what company in Dallas did the hack - more info to come] Below are some pictures of the board. It is unclear if there is a daughterboard that should be inserted in some of the ROM sockets. I have been informed that there is another board just like this in collectors hands, so this was not a one-off.

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Additional Lunar Lander to Asteroids PCB images. Photos courtesy of Chris Loggans.

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Seems there is another Lunar Lander to Asteroids hack out there. Photos courtesy of Phil Morris.

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