Attack from Mars
Mini-Saucer Expansion KitTM





About the AFM Expansion Kit

The AFM Expansion Kit is designed to add new functionality to the existing Attack from Mars Mini-Saucer LED Kit. Since the kits are intended to work together, it is assumed that your AFM also has an AFM-LED kit.

The original plan for the AFM Expansion kit was to add a highly requested feature to the original AFM-LED kit: The mini-saucer LEDs will now go dark during Strobe Multiball and Video Mode.

As long as I was building an add-on board, I decided to see what other things I wanted to add to Attack from Mars. Several additional features have been included in the AFM Expansion Kit, many of which are shown in the YouTube video below:


New Features: Demo Video

  • Enhanced "Super Jets"
  • Animated Backglass General Illumination
  • Mothership Attack Hallway LEDs




  • New Feature Details

  • Enhanced Super Jets
    • "Super Jets" is one of the goals you must achieve in order to reach the AFM Wizard Mode: "Rule the Universe!" When you reach "Super Jets", the Jet Bumpers are worth more, and the orange insert in the middle of the jet bumpers starts to flash.

      The AFM Expansion Kit takes this a step further. I re-wired the orange insert flasher, as well as the General Illumination (GI) bulbs in each jet bumper.

      Now, when you reach "Super Jets", the GI lights in the three Jet Bumpers start an animated chase light show.

      In addition, each Jet Bumper hit activates the orange insert flasher, providing even more visual feedback.
  • Animated Backglass General Illumination
    • Attack from Mars was the first Williams/Bally game to be fully manufactured using the WPC-95 boardset. This new boardset reduced the number of controlled GI strings from 5, down to 3. The result is that the backglass GI now tended to be left on all the time.

      With the AFM Expansion Kit, I have restored the control hardware so that backglass GI animations can once again be performed. The kit detects saucer hits and flickers the backglass illumination, providing more visual effects and also making the flash lamp "explosions" stand out more.
  • Mothership Attack Hallway LEDs
    • Underneath the Mother Ship is an area protected by a motorized target bank. Behind the target bank is the Attack Hallway, composed of metal sidewalls that lead to the saucer target area.

      To add a little more lighted animation, the AFM Expansion Kit includes two new custom designed metal sidewalls that replace the original sidewalls in the AFM machine. The new sidewalls (produced by Mantis Amusements) feature a row of LEDs that line the bottom edge of the Attack Hallway. The LEDs display different animated patterns, while not interfering with the path of the ball.

      The Attack Hallway LEDs are available in a variety of colors: click here for more info.





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