Upon pulling out my Aero Fighters board and firing it up, I was greeted with two errors on the automatic memory check:
SPRITE PRI: NG
SPRITE ATA: NG
When the game started attract mode, I quickly noticed no sprites were displaying and only background tiles showed up.
I tried pressing on various chips to see if any were hot or would show a difference in gameplay and when I pressed on the VS9108 all the sprites came back.
This is a QFP chip located at U43 on the larger (original version) PCB of Aero Fighters I have. I went ahead and added some flux around the chip and gave it a quick reflow. Upon inspecting closer, I noticed a few bent pins on one side. Reflowing these has cleared up the issue and I no longer need to press down on the chip to see sprites. Self test is passing 100% now too.
I hope this is helpful for any others that may have experienced a similar issue on their game!
SPRITE PRI: NG
SPRITE ATA: NG
When the game started attract mode, I quickly noticed no sprites were displaying and only background tiles showed up.
I tried pressing on various chips to see if any were hot or would show a difference in gameplay and when I pressed on the VS9108 all the sprites came back.
This is a QFP chip located at U43 on the larger (original version) PCB of Aero Fighters I have. I went ahead and added some flux around the chip and gave it a quick reflow. Upon inspecting closer, I noticed a few bent pins on one side. Reflowing these has cleared up the issue and I no longer need to press down on the chip to see sprites. Self test is passing 100% now too.
I hope this is helpful for any others that may have experienced a similar issue on their game!