Time Soldiers repair log and 'ALPHA-INPUT84/87' reproduction

Bought on eBay from the States a Time Soldiers PCB which arrived to me some days ago (by the way, thanks to 'coolmod' for his mediation and forwarding) :

Auction described the board as “TESTED NOT WORKING-GARBAGE ON SCREEN-MISSING CHIP”

The missing chip was actually one of four program ROMs:

I programmed a blank EPROM and finally powered the board up.All I got was a partially dimmed screen in which I could recognize the power-on TEST which probaby failed since the board kept resetting:

As usually I do, I started my troubleshooting with a visual inspection.Board was in very good shape but flipping it I noticed scratches on solder side, some quite deep :

A couple of traces looked really severed under the microscope and my multimeter in continuity test confirmed it :

 

Patching the broken traces fixed board completely :

 

The repair was pretty easy, just a quick fix hence it gave me time to look for something on the board to reproduce.The long custom SIL marked 'ALPHA-INPUT84' was a good candidate :

 

  

This custom IC handles inputs and Time Soldiers, being a rotary joystick game, uses four of them (two for 8-way joysticks of both players and the other two the 12-way rotary joysticks).Later Alpha-Denshi games like Gold Medalist use a part marked 'ALPHA-INPUT87' that externally is identical but with slight internal differences :

 

 

The two parts are not interchangeable but I was able to merge both designs in a single reproduction part: :

 

Testing on PCB was successful on Time Soldiers PCB, all directions of both players worked with 8-way joystick (could not test rotary because I don't have them)

 

Another PCB and custom IC preserved!