To eliminate an enemy, the simple way is to catch him with the vacuum cleaner, and then throw him away before he gets out by himself and kills you. You can also throw an enemy against other one, and especially catch more enemies at a time, in order to create a real "avalanche" that will run over the others. The basic strategy for every scheme is to catch as many enemies as possible, and then throw them against the other enemies, so you can clean up the whole screen and accumulate many points.

Every enemy killed will still release an item that gives you bonus points (coins, gems, diamonds, etc.).

For catch an enemy, press the FIRE button and hold it while the enemy will be sucked inside the vacuum cleaner. However, there is a simple trick to catch them faster, press the fire button ONCE against the enemy, or press the fire button and then turn back to him fast; the enemy will get dizzy for a few seconds. Now, just press again the fire button to immediately suck him inside the vacuum cleaner. Now keep the fire button pressed as long as you don't want to drop him. REMEMBER: You can't hold enemies in your vacuum cleaner for more than 4-5 seconds.

The enemies generally walk around on the screen and jump to different platforms. Especially, there are some kinds of enemies that can turn themselves into a type of tornado before going up or down to the next platform; in this moment these enemies are invincible, you can't catch them and also the 'tornado form' will block eventually enemies that you've thrown against them.

When you fight a boss, you must defeat him by catching the weapons or enemies that he will drop and then throw these against him. If you catch more than three enemies, you'll give more damage to the boss.


In some levels, there are some types of jars, that will release constantly new enemies. The form of these jars changes with the stage's background, but despite this these are all identical to each other. You need to hit these jars throwing enemies against them for two or three times to destroy them. After being destroyed, the jars will release some gems. Sometimes there are two jars in the same level.

You can catch enemies even through walls. This is a great advantage to you, especially against those enemies that can shoot from far distances or when you're near too busy platforms.

There are several bonus items and power ups hidden all over the screen. At the beginning those are not visible; you must first catch some enemies and then throw them in the open space of the level, and especially near the corner where the power-ups are often frequent.
Dropping a single enemy is not effective to discover all the bonuses of a level: the best way is to catch three or more enemies and then throw them in an empty space, which makes them roll over the whole screen and then revealing the bonuses.

The power ups are generally placed in the various corners at the left or right of the screen, and occasionally in the central platforms of the screen. Keep this in mind if you are actually looking for a power up.

There are several power ups :
"Skate" : make the player's character movements faster.
"Star" : Give to the player a barrier that makes him invincible for some time and kill enemies by simple contact.
"Laser Pistol" : Turn your vacuum cleaner in a laser pistol, that kills all the enemies and jars instantly.
"Package ?" : This will recall a large vacuum cleaner above the screen that will clean up the whole screen of every enemy and bonus item: however, the points for the bonus and enemies are still added to the player's score, but you'll not take the benefit of the power ups.
"Tumblepop's Guy" : this is the classical 1UP item, which gives you an extra life. Only available in the bonus stage.

Special letters : these are special items that will appear on screen like the other bonus items. At the bottom of the screen there is the word TUMBLE POP written with the letters placed inside blue balls. You must collect the letters that make the word TUMBLE POP. Once you've completed it, you'll be teleported into a bonus stage where you can collect any type of money and gems and an extra life, before time runs out. If you made it to collect all the items, the time left will become bonus points. After the bonus stage is completed, you'll be teleported into the next level. There are some letters that don't belong to the word TUMBLE POP, which only count as extra points.

In the final stage, before you fight against the final boss (Mad Doctor), you'll fight against the previous bosses. This is the only time that you can find power ups in a boss fight.

0.36b8 [Bryan McPhail, Chris Hardy]
0.35b8 [Bryan McPhail]

WIP:
- 0.136u4: Fabio Priuli converted Tumble Pop to use the device-fied video chips and added driver data struct and save states.
- 15th August 2009: Guru - From Korea thanks to gp-lee we got Tumble Pop (Data East 1991 bootleg).
- 0.124u5: Andrew Gardner merged memory maps for Tumble Pop.
- 0.105u1: David Haywood added simulated PIC16C57/OKI6295 sound for clone Tumble Pop (bootleg set 2). Fixed OKI6295 clock speed to 6060 Hz in clones (bootleg set 1/2).
- 0.104u5: Changed visible area to 319x240.
- 0.100: Fixed gfx2 rom address to $1. Renamed (tumblepb) to (tumbleb) and (tumblep2) to (tumbleb2).
- 0.61: Added '2 Coins to Start, 1 to Continue' dipswitch. Removed 3rd coin slot.
- 0.54: Fixed clone Tumble Pop (bootleg set 1) crashes only in MAMEW.
- 0.53: Removed gfx1 roms (thumbpop.18/.19) and swapped gfx2 roms ($0, 80000).
- 15th July 2001: Nicola Salmoria decrypted the graphics in the original version of Tumble Pop.
- 14th March 2001: Nicola changed Tumblepop to use better graphics ROMs, however one of the new ROMs is encrypted.
- 12th April 2000: Bryan McPhail fixed some bugs in the Tumblepop driver.
- 0.37b14: Rebuild gfx1 and gfx2 roms.
- 0.36RC1: Added clone Tumble Pop (Japan). Changed 68000 CPU1 clock speed from 14MHz.
- 0.36b13: Changed VSync to 58Hz and YM2151 clock speed to 3580000 Hz and OKI6295 to 7757 Hz.
- 0.36b9: Fixed sound1 rom length from 524288 to 131072.
- 6th November 1999: Bryan McPhail added the sample rom to Tumble Pop.
- 0.36b8: Bryan McPhail added Tumble Pop (World). Renamed (tumblep) to (tumblepb). Added H6280 (4027500 Hz) CPU2 + rom, YM-2151 (3.7MHz) sound and changed OKI6295 clock speed to 8055 Hz.
- 24th October 1999: Bryan McPhail added an original Tumblepop romset (with correct YM2151 sounds) to the driver.
- 0.35b8: Bryan McPhail added Tumble Pop (bootleg set 1) (1991) and clone (bootleg set 2). Known issues: Original romset would be nice. There is music in the top half of the sample rom. Don't know how it's accessed. Sound is not quite correct yet (Nothing on bootleg 2). Dipswitches are totally wrong. They seem different to usual Deco dips.
- 15th March 1999: Bryan McPhail has submitted a driver for Tumble Pop, a rare game from Data East.

Other Emulators:
* FB Alpha

Romset: 2240 kb / 7 files / 1.00 zip