In the very first years of the arcade, between 1971 and 1975, cabinets contained no processor, no program and no game memory. The game was the circuit: a few dozen TTL logic chips wired on a board to produce the picture, the movements and the sounds directly. Changing game meant changing board, and changing a rule meant re-soldering components. This is what is called discrete logic — as opposed to the microprocessor machines that, from 1975 onwards, would run a program stored in ROM.
DICE (Discrete Integrated Circuit Emulator) brings that generation back to life. Its principle is very different from a regular emulator: there is no code to interpret, so DICE simulates the electronic circuit itself, logic gate by logic gate, down to the analogue video signal it produces. That is the only way to replay these cabinets faithfully, with their slight picture imperfections and their sound effects generated by plain oscillators.
The catalogue covers the earliest arcade years and is overwhelmingly dominated by Atari: Pong (1972) and its variants (Pong Doubles, Quadrapong, Rebound, Pin Pong), Space Race, Gotcha, Breakout, Shark JAWS, Stunt Cycle, Steeplechase, plus a few titles from Ramtek, Midway and Exidy. These are short games, usually for two players, whose main value lies in what they tell about the birth of the commercial video game.
| Manufacturer | DICE |
| Year | 1972 |
| Type | Arcade system (discrete logic) |
| Controller | Mandatory |
| Mouse | Optional |
| Recognised games | 21 |
📷 Screenshot coming soon:
system-dice.png
A single emulator is offered, with compatibility and speed both declared high. Netplay and softpatching are not available on this system, and RetroAchievements are not supported. This core has no dedicated CRT output.
To enjoy these cabinets in their original conditions, Recalbox plugs straight into a JAMMA-standard cabinet with the Recalbox RGB JAMMA 2 complete kit.
No BIOS is required for this system.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/dice/
Supported extensions: .zip plus the individual chip dumps .1da .4c .4d .6c .a1 .a4 .c4 .c6 .d2 .d4 .d7 .da1 .dmy .f4 .k1 .s1
As with MAME, a game comes as a romset: a .zip archive named exactly after the game's short name, holding the contents of the board's few memory chips. Do not rename it, do not extract it. Some of these cabinets carried no memory chip at all — hence the .dmy (dummy file) extension in the list of supported extensions.
Recalbox ships the list of games recognised by the core (the dice.lst file), 21 titles in total:
| Romset name | Game | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
antiaircraft |
Anti-Aircraft | Atari |
attack |
Attack | Exidy |
breakout |
Breakout | Atari |
cleansweep |
Clean Sweep | Ramtek |
crashnscore |
Crash 'n Score / Stock Car | Atari |
crossfire |
Crossfire | Atari |
gotcha |
Gotcha | Atari |
hiway |
Hi-Way | Atari |
indy4 |
Indy 4 | Atari/Kee |
jetfighter |
Jet Fighter | Atari |
pinpong |
Pin Pong | Atari |
pong |
Pong | Atari |
pongdoubles |
Pong Doubles | Atari |
quadrapong |
Quadrapong | Atari |
rebound |
Rebound | Atari |
sharkjaws |
Shark JAWS | Atari/Horror Games |
spacerace |
Space Race | Atari |
steeplechase |
Steeplechase | Atari |
stuntcycle |
Stunt Cycle | Atari |
tvbasketball |
TV Basketball | Midway |
wipeout |
Wipeout | Ramtek |
Recalbox uses that list to display the full game names in the interface. An archive whose short name is not in it will be shown as is, and will not match any cabinet known to the core.