Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Arcade 1CC

Here's an average playthrough of 3rd Strike I did. I find 3rd Strike to probably be the most enjoyable fighter at the moment. It's a game that took a bit of getting used to with the parry system, but once you get used to it you come to enjoy it. Typically after I'd recorded this and was playing the game again I managed to do a complete run without losing any rounds, just not on camera. I did manage to get a photo of the score at the end however.

SNK Boss Syndrome

Ok, so it's pretty common knowledge that bosses in SNK fighting games tend to be bloody hard to beat, it's even been termed SNK Boss Syndrome. It's understandable that bosses should be difficult to keep the coins rolling into coin slots as people repeatedly try to beat the bosses. I've been playing a fair few King of Fighters games recently, and each and every one has got a boss that is completely bullshit. I know a lot of fighting games have tough bosses. They often have obscenely powerful special moves, moves that allow them to regenerate health (looking at you Gill, you son of a bitch), moves that take priority over your own etc. SNK bosses are different, they have all of these traits (health recovery between rounds), and a tendency to constantly use moves that stop you from getting on the inside and hitting them. Then if you do get on the inside they have other moves that drain your health so quick you don't know what's hit you. Take King of Fighters 2001 for example. First you have to beat Original Zero, which is doable but pretty hard, only to then be faced with Igniz, who is so tough to beat it will be a while before I try again. Next up is Rugal Bernstein who just heaped the pain on me in KoF '98 with cheap hits and huge combo's. Now Rugal with enough practice I think I could beat, but one boss I don't think I'll ever beat is Magaki from King of Fighters XI. He is without a doubt the toughest boss I've played against in any fighting game, possibly in any game ever. First you can't get near him, then at distance he fires bubbles at you that do pretty severe damage if they land, and are hard to dodge. If you're lucky enough to get near him (or perhaps unlucky) then he's got a move that sends you flying backwards that he always seems to be able to land when you got in for a hit. Finally his special moves are such a pain in the arse it's forced me to give up trying to beat him. King of Fighters XI is a great game, one that is a lot of fun to play through until the last boss. Unfortunately what seems to be lazy programming has ruined any fun for me in playing the game as I know I'm in for a whooping every time I try to play through it.

An honorable mention goes to Kryzalid from KoF 99, who while an asshole I was able to beat after a few attempts.

Buyee.jp part 2

After giving buyee.jp a serious try I've decided to cease using their service. I've had no issues with them other than cost. The prices spiral out of control at a ridiculous rate, and once you factor in they only ship EMS, so almost everything shipped gets VAT added to it you are looking one expensive way of buying cheap items from Japan. Previously you were allowed to set your own prices that would be marked on the parcel, however that was stopped at the start of October (probably for good reason), but it meant that anything £135+ (including shipping fee) was then subject to not only VAT but further Import duty as well as Parcel Force's own £13.50 fee. 

It's a shame it hasn't worked out as their site is easy to use, and everything seems to run smoothly. I've now signed up for Shopping Mall Japan, which is another proxy service. I'll see how I get on using that service, but if this one doesn't work out well it's likely I'll just do without tapping the Japanese market places unless there is something I simply cannot get elsewhere.

Espgaluda II Marquee

Here's a scan of the Espgaluda II marquee that came with the arcade kit. The game follows on from Espgaluda in a very similar fashion, only this time it's much harder than its predecessor. Straight from the first level there is no settling in period like there tends to be in a lot of shooters. The bullets come fast and furious and if you're not ready for it you will get destroyed... quickly.

Click on the image for a full resolution shot.

Elevator Action Returns 1CC

Here's another 1CC video I did. This is one of my personal favourite games, and one I play quite often. The game is quite slow and methodical in places, and towards the end just goes mad. There's a fair amount of strategy involved in the game, so if you're looking for tips you might pick up a thing or two.

Jockey Grand Prix MVS Manual

I scanned this for a JAMMA+ member who wanted the wiring pinout. There doesn't seem to be much information out there on it so I thought I'd upload the manual here as well.

The game is a gambling game and has a wire that connects from the cartridge to a coin hopper for payouts.

X Men vs. Street Fighter 1CC

I was sorting through some of my PCB's today when I came across this. I've not played it in quite some time, and decided to give it a quick bash to see if I could still get through it. I played a couple of credits to get used to it, then decided to get the camera out for a 1CC video. I think I played 5 credits before completing it. It's a short game (I only played for about 10 minutes from hitting start to winning the last fight), and it's also quite easy. Anyone with some fighting game experience should be able to get through it after a few credits. Here's the video:

Sega Blast City 2l8b Control Panel

The wonderful thing about most of Sega's Candy Cabinet control panels is that they will fit any other Sega Candy. It's not unusual to see imported cabinets such as an Astro City come in with a Sega Naomi control panel. I've taken some pictures of a 2l8b (2 lever 8 button) Blast City control panel to show what they look like from the side you don't usually see. This was one I imported from Japan, and it actually came fully populated.

Here's a look from the front:

And here's what they look like underneath:

This particular panel has 8 30mm buttons attached, I'm not sure of the brand, but they seem to be quite popular on panels that get sold in Japan. These buttons feel cheap, and using them isn't nearly as nice as Sanwa OBSF30 buttons. There's also 2 24mm buttons used for the start buttons, same brand as the 30mm buttons. Finally there is some good news about this panel, the sticks are Sanwa JLF's, which are in my opinion the best regular sticks on the market. These are the newer type of JLF sticks, which has an onboard PCB which means you only need to clip in a 5 pin JST connector. The other type, the JLF TM8 sticks have a lighter throw, and connectors for each microswitch on the stick. I find the TM8's are better for shooters, and those needing the JST connectors better for fighting games, as you do need a little resistance. The green wires sticking out of the middle are earth wires to stop you getting shocked by any stray electricity!

These panels, at least the official Sega panels are not made out of stainless steel, and have a habit of rusting, particularly around the bottom edge of the control panel. If you're ever looking to buy a panel, you should always make sure you see pictures of the back as it can be hard to tell how badly rusted a panel may be from just a shot of the front.

Deathsmiles II Cave B1 Poster

I managed to get my first official Cave B1 poster on the cheap just before I went away last week. Ironically it's a of a game I'll be very to lucky to own should I ever manage to get one. Deathsmiles II was put out on proprietary hardware by Cave, and was primarily a leased game, so very few of them are out there in the wild ready to be purchased. It's a game I'd love to own, but as stated it will be pure luck if I ever find one.

The poster I got has been on display before and the colour is slightly faded, although it looks worse on the picture as there is light shining on it. I only paid 2200 yen for it, which comes in at around £12.50.

The size of the poster is Japanese B1, which are hard to find frames for in the UK, but I'm not currently in a rush to get one, so I'll keep my eye out for one at a decent price.

Here's a quick look at the poster:

Neo Geo Mini Marquee's

Here's a quick look at some of the Neo Geo mini marquee's that come inside Neo Geo kits. The idea of the them is that they fit in to windows in the illumination panel of some Neo Geo cabinets. Over time they are prone to yellowing as you can see on the Stakes Winner marquee.

Deathsmiles 1CC

Deathsmiles is one of my favourite arcade games of all time. I first encountered Deathsmiles on the Xbox 360 while bargain hunting on Amazon. It was for sale for about £10 so I thought I'd give it a try. Once I got into Arcade gaming, and realised it was possible to get the original arcade PCB I knew I had to have it. I had it imported from Japan, and so began my quest for the 1 credit completion. I can't remember the length of time it took, but having played it quite a lot on the 360, it was probably only a couple of months before I managed to complete the arcade PCB.



Here's a run I did yesterday and decided to record. Sorry for the blurring at times, the camera doesn't seem to know how to handle the glow of the CRT.

Konami Classic to JAMMA adaptor

Thought I'd quickly share my thoughts about my new Konami Classic to JAMMA adaptor. I picked it when I was able to get a Shao-Lin's Road PCB recently. It seems extremely well made, and works a treat, although seeing a game like Shao-Lin's Road on a 29" screen doesn't feel ideal. I ordered it off Ebay from a company that also sell through JAMMAboards.com. They have a range of adaptors, and if you're looking for one I'd recommend their services.

Here's a quick look at mine:

Street Fighter IV 1CC

I decided to record some game play of Street Fighter IV since I can consistently complete it on single credit using default settings.

To get Gouken at the end you need to get to Seth without losing a round, get 2 perfects, 5 Super/Ultra combo finishes and 10 first hits. If you get to Seth without dropping a round but without the other criteria met you will get Akuma/Gouki (same character, just a different name in Japan).

Ibara Art Pop

I realise I've not put anything up for a while, but I've been scanning some art work I've picked up recently. Now this Ibara Art Pop isn't part of that, but it is something I realised I'd already scanned and not uploaded. This is the completely untouched scan from the original art.

Ibara is quite a polarizing game, it has plenty of fans out there, but there's plenty of people who really don't like it. In fact the person I bought my PCB from had just a week before he decided to get rid of it. I'm not really a fan, but I do intend to spend some more time on it at some point.

Capcom I/O Board

I thought I'd give a little write up of the Capcom Input/Output (I/O) board as there doesn't seem to a lot of info out there without trawling through pages of forums.

For those not in the know, these I/O boards are for linking JVS pieces of hardware up to a JAMMA cabinet. There's many I/O boards out there for different uses, but we'll ignore them for now. The two most common I/O boards available for JVS to JAMMA are the Sega and Capcom versions. The Sega one tends to be a little cheaper, but lacks an onboard sound amp, lacks JVS power out, and needs spare pins mapping for the extra buttons. The Capcom board can run a Sega NAOMI from the power which it can output, but will not run a NAOMI GD-ROM drive at the same time, it simply cannot supply enough power. The Capcom boards seem to run around £80 to £100 in the UK with all of their cables.

The Capcom board is often described as the Capcom NAOMI I/O board, and I've seen quite a few people ask the question if it can still be used for other JVS hardware. The answer to that is YES it can. I've been using mine on my Taito Type X2 to play Street Fighter IV and Blazblue Calamity Trigger.

Here's what the board looks like. I got quite a shock at the size of it when I first got mine. Top left is the JVS power out connector, top right is the volume potentiometer:

Here's an image of the input side. This is where the JAMMA edge connects, as well as the Capcom CPS2/3 kick harness (so you can use 6 buttons) and Speaker In:

Next is the output side. In order from left to right you have: Speaker out (it's this side you want to use for the sound cables to your NAOMI or Type X2 etc.), an output which I have no idea about, JVS connector out, VGA out, JVS power out.

Lastly we have a shot of the cables you will want to be getting with your Capcom I/O board should you want one. Top is the JVS connector, which is actually a PC USB cable. Next is a speaker out cable, which again you may have lay around the house, a VGA cable which you might have on your PC monitor, and a JVS power cable.

KoF 99 Instruction Cards

Just thought I'd do a quick scan of the KoF 99 instruction cards that came with a KoF 98 cart I purchased (go figure). They're pretty cool so I thought I'd share them.

Mario's Adventure Marquee

While I was at Unigame for the closing down party, I was able to pick up a pretty interesting marquee. The game name on the marquee is Mario's Adventure, and it bears the Nintendo logo. Now you may be wondering what the hell this game is.... Well before Nintendo decided to call their arcade version of Super Mario Bros. the no so interesting Vs. Mario Bros, the game was to be called Mario's Adventure. There are flyers out on the Internet advertising the game with this name, but no mention of any marquee's. Allegedly this marquee and a small handful of others were created by Electrocoin, who were a UK based arcade manufacturer who licensed all manner of games. The marquee's were used at trade shows, to advertise the game pre-release. These marquee's, along with many, many other were passed on to the owner of Unigame when Electrocoin cleared their old stock. Anyway, here's what you came to see, a picture of the marquee:

Buyee.jp

After seeing prices rise, and availability of some things wane I thought I'd have a look at Yahoo auctions Japan. I know of a few proxy services, but most of them seem awkward to use, until I stumbled on buyee.jp, which is owned by the Rakuten group (of play.com fame). Since I've never used a proxy like that I thought I'd give it a shot.

Buyee gives you availability of a big chunk of Yahoo auctions Japan, but their fees do soon mount up, so they seem to be more useful for things that aren't readily available. I've started by testing the waters on a few items to see how much it will end up costing me. The fees are a flat rate of 200 yen for each item you win, plus 10% of item fee (or 500 yen, whichever is higher). Then for more expense they request sellers to send the items to them with only tracked post, and each package separate (if you win 2 things from the same seller). Finally they ship everything via EMS. I'm still waiting for some of my things to arrive so I can bundle it to save on the postage fee (1000 yen fee for doing that), but if I were to take a single MVS cart from them, the fees would look like this:

Note, £1 is approx 167 yen on Paypal at time of writing.

MVS Cart: 1000 yen (about £6)
Flat fee: 200 yen
Auction fee: 500 yen
Domestic Post: 750 yen
EMS: 2100 yen
Total: 4550 yen (about £27)

So as you can see, the costs can quickly mount, especially on a item that worth practically nothing anyway.

Once I get all my items at their warehouse ready for postage I'll let you know the full breakdown.

Are new arcade games all that easy!?

After playing Street Fighter IV for a few days on the X2, and consistently finishing it on a single credit I decided I'd give Blazblue Calamity Trigger a go. Initially I was disappointed as it didn't have the frenetic pacing of the Guilty Gear games, although it did seem to speed up as the fights went on. My biggest disappointment was finishing it on a single credit on my first attempt. I figured it must have been set to easy or something, so I hit the test button and checked the config. All set to factory default...

Now I know these games are really meant to be played by 2 people in VS. mode, but I'm surprised they're happy to let a gamer with no experience of a game finish it on their first go. Unless there is of course a business reason behind this, perhaps people challenging someone who is already playing? I don't know, but I got a shock. I think I'll go back to Guilty Gear and get my ass handed to me by the bosses some more.

CPS 3 Arrival

My CPS3 setup came today, and I gave it a quick run out and was impressed with the results. It came with a desuicided cartridge which allows any game to be run. This is useful as the CPS3 security carts are well known for their suicide battery'. It also came with enough RAM to run all of the games.

The CPS3 is home to 3 different iterations of Street Fighter 3, which many in the fighting game community either love or hate. I've never really experienced them, other than a few goes on Third Strike on the Dreamcast, so my opinion on them is yet to be formed.

I've taken a few photos of the contents of my parcel. First up the mainboard with memory simms installed:

Next, a shot of the desuicided cartridge:

Finally, the full setup with the SCSI CD-ROM installed:

The CD-ROM loads the game into memory, and so can boot without having to copy the data across each time it boots. With this cartridge you can also pick the region you wish to use for the game. I'll give it some more time this week and see what I think of the games available on the system.

Street Fighter IV has arrived!

I got my Taito Type X2 setup today, and must say I'm very pleased with it. Street Fighter IV looks great on the Blast City, even if it is only at 640x480.

It took a bit of messing to get it set up, but fortunately the Capcom I/O board makes it a bit simpler by using a CPS2/3 kick harness, rather than spare pins like the Sega I/O. My Blast City only came with a 4 button panel, and was only wired for the 4 buttons, so the Capcom I/O was the natural choice, rather than soldering extra wires to my harness (I've since replaced the panel with 1L6B panel). I picked up the Capcom I/O board when I got my Naomi, but it seems to work just as well with any JVS setup. There is something to watch out for on them though; there is an option for 4 players on the Capcom board via a switch. If it is set to 4 players you'll be hitting the kick buttons, but doing no kicking.

I've also got a couple of other games on the X2, but haven't got around to trying them out yet. They are King of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation A (try saying that 3 times fast), and Blazblue Calamity Trigger. I'm also due to get my CPS3 setup in the next few days, so I'll be nicely kept for games to play for the next few weeks.

Double Dragon and Double Dragon II art bits

I was looking through my arcade artwork this afternoon and came across a couple of nice bits from the Double Dragon Series. While most of the artwork I have are reproduction prints of varying quality, these are original pieces, complete with license stickers stuck over them. I decided to scan them at 300dpi, and they seem to have come out OK.

First up is what appears to be an advertising card for the first Double Dragon.

Next up is an instruction card for Double Dragon II: The Revenge. This one unfortunately has some scuffs at the bottom of the card.

Last up is my favourite of the 3 which is another piece of art which was probably stuck on top of the cabinet to attract attention to it.

Capcom CPS3 and Suicide Battery's

The Capcom CPS3 system is something I have been interested in for quite some time, but have avoided due to the suicide battery issues, as well as them not being the most reliable pieces of hardware. When I recently got the opportunity to buy one with a desuicided cart I couldn't say no. I'm now awaiting delivery of my CPS3 system and will put up an update once it arrives.

On the subject of the suicide battery's, for those who don't know this was a copy protection method used by Capcom among other arcade manufacturers which meant when the circuit lost the charge of the battery, it would lose data stored in RAM. That data happened to be decryption keys for the data on the board. Without these decryption keys, the board would boot to a solid colour screen and be in a 'Suicided state'.

There has been some great work going on from the arcade community to create decrypted versions of the game code. The CPS2 binaries were created a few years back, and have seen plenty of CPS2 boards brought back to life. The CPS3 work was only completed recently, but this is more great news for the community, and will no doubt bring back a resurgence of the CPS3 system, particularly from those wary of it such as myself.

Taito Type X2 and 31khz musings

Since getting my Blast City I've started to explore the realms of 'high resolution' games (31khz 640x480, not exactly the high resolution you expect when you hear the term). I picked up a Naomi mainboard with JAMMA to JVS adapter, and realised how good games look on the monitor at 31khz, and also the quality of them. Being a fan of Street Fighter I decided I would delve a little further into the JVS world and pick up Street Fighter 4 and a Taito Type X2 motherboard. I've placed the order today, and I'm hoping it will be with me some time next week.

A year or so ago I thought I'd be sticking strictly with 15khz low resolution games, but it's amazing how things change. Game boards seem to be getting increasingly dearer, and I have quite a lot of the games I'm actually interested in aside from a few Cave titles, which I'll make do with on the Xbox 360 for the time being. With me never getting into the high resolution games earlier, there is now a wealth of them out there that I eager to explore. I've already grabbed a few Guilty Gear games for the Naomi, and am considering buying a Naomi cabinet once I'm in a position to buy more cabs. That will of course be dependent of the number of cabs I can fit into my new place.

On the X2 I'm also interested to try out the Blazblue series. The games are developed by Arc System works and are apparently like a successor to the Guilty Gear series, which is currently one of my favourites. Looking at the library for the X2 it seems that even arcade games are headed for digital distribution rather than the near 40 year old method of putting each game onto a printed circuit board which physically sits inside the cabinet. The next couple of years could see the last ever physically released joystick games into the arcades. It seems such a shame, but then there have only been a handful of games of interest to me released in the last 6 years into arcades. Most of those games were either shoot 'em ups' by Cave, or are 1 on 1 fighters.

LS-32 Refresh Kits

When I got my Astro City cab, it was fitted with 2 Seimitsu LS-32 joysticks. The sticks were well past their best, and the player 1 stick was almost unusable due to rust on the spring, and a lack of any sort of lubricant to stop the plastic grinding on other parts. I initially just bought a couple of new sticks and fitted them, but kept the old ones as I had seen these refresh kits being sold on arcade forums. I decided to try them out as they were only £6 each delivered, as opposed to £20~ for a new stick. A few days later they arrive, here's one in it's bag:

I disassembled one of the joysticks by removing the mounting plate, then removing the circlip which caused an explosion of joysticks parts to fly everywhere. These are the parts I took out, have a look at the rust on the spring for an idea as to why it was so bad to use.

After putting the stick back together with the new parts and adding a dab of lubricant it really does feel like a new stick. I was quite surprised at how well it actually worked, and would definitely recommend these kits if you have any rusty old LS-32's lay around.

A quick look at a Hyper Neo Geo 64 Kit

Here's a quick look at a full kit of Samurai Shodown Warriors Rage on the ill fated Hyper Neo Geo 64 (HNG64). Released as replacement for the ageing Neo Geo MVS system, the HNG64 never really took off, and rumour has it that a lot of unsold stock was bought by someone in Europe and imported. The kits now can be picked up for as little as £20, and can often be found on Ebay for reasonable (and unreasonable) prices. There are 4 motherboard variations, 2 for the 4 released fighting games, 1 for the 2 driving games, and 1 for Beast Busters 2nd nightmare, which is a sequel to previous SNK light gun shooter Beast Busters.

Here's the box label:

Here's a quick shot of the contents of the kit, which are: 3 different move strips, a poster, an instruction manual, and of course the cart, which came wrapped in anti static bubble wrap.

I enjoy the games I've played on the system, but the early 3D models haven't aged as well as the 2D sprites from the MVS games. Ironically, SNK continued to release 2D sprite games on the MVS long after the HNG64 had been discontinued.

Game recording straight from your cab: Home made, amateur solution.

If you've ever tried using a camcorder to record your game play while playing your favourite arcade game you'll know it doesn't always come out that well. As well as unusual refresh rates on your CRT monitor which make lines appear across the screen when recorded, you also have the problem of your button presses being louder than the sounds coming from the machine. You might also suffer from minor outbursts such as shouting expletives when things don't go your way.... just watch my Deathsmiles 1CC if you want to hear me swear.

For those above reasons I decided I would see if I could tap the lines on my cabs to make arcade games appear on a TV next to my cab as well as the cabinet monitor. Before you panic and think I would be going and making a mess of any of the harnesses on my cabs, fear not, no cabs were harmed in the making of this.

The parts used for this experiment are as follows:

1 JAMMA harness extender (so you're not soldering wires into your cab harness)
1 decent scart lead that has all the pins populated, not like the £1 piece of crap I bought off Amazon.
1 solderable breadboard
4x 330 ohm resistors
1x 100ohm resistor
1x 1k resistor
1x 10k resistor
3x 220uf 16v capacitors
~20m 18 awg multi core wire

Tools needed:

Solder
Soldering Iron
Wire Cutters/Strippers
Heat Gun
Heat shrinks
Screwdriver


First thing I did was to snip off one end of the scart lead with a couple of inches of cables still attached, then open it up, exposing the wires going into the pins. Chances are your scart lead pins will share wires from end to end for more than one pin. The one I used had 12 wires for 21 exit points, this is done by running the ground wires outside of the inner insulation of the active wires. For what we want to do, this wire is now useless. I decided to leave a small amount of wire running from each pin that would be soldered together with cable of my desired length. Attach wires to the following pins, those without anything written next to them can be ignored. To make sure the exposed wire doesn't make contact with another exposed wire and screw this all up, I used heat shrinks which form around the exposed wire under a few seconds of heating from my heat gun. Note: Pin 21 does not actually run inside the scart head, but into the metal surround to ground out.

My crap MSPaint image. Remember you are looking at this image from the solder side, not the front of the cable!:















Once the wires were cut, I went to the breadboard. The one I used is 30 holes across, by 12 high. The holes are set up in tracks of a row of 5 separated by 2 that each run the width of the board, then another track of 5. To make it simple I designated one column of holes on the board to each pin on the scart head. This rule will not be stuck to however later on in the build.

You now need to start applying your wires to the breadboard. Below is a diagram of how mine came out, I actually tested the video before I tried to get the sound wired in so you'll notice my "JAMMA side" ends up my "scart side" for the speaker wiring... doh! If you follow mine exactly if you're not entirely sure what you are doing it will work. If you do know what you're doing, then space them out more adequately and make it neater! Notice the +'s under the capacitors on the diagram. The longer leg (before you snip it!) is the positive. Make sure you do the soldering onto the copper side, the below image if only for illustration of the tracks.

Crap MSPaint image 2:

The end result of mine certainly isn't pretty....

But it is functional.....

In fear I tested this out on my home made bartop and a spare TV, just in case I'd rigged the power supply to blow by accident. I've got some DVD+RW discs on the way, so I'll have a go at recording some game play with my old DVD recorder I've got.

Updates to come.

Current Arcade Cabinets

My current arcade cabinets are as follows:

Electrocoin Neo Geo MVS (20" Hantarex Polo Monitor) (6 Slot Motherboard)

Weche OK Baby (28" Hantarex Polo 2 15/24khz Monitor)

Sega Astro City (29" Nanao MS9 15/24khz Monitor)

Sega Blast City (29" Nanao MS2931 Tri Sync Monitor)

I'm currently out of room, and so cannot expand my cabinet collection any further, although I fully intend to when circumstances change in the future.

First Post

Welcome to my blog where I'll be posting various thoughts and bits of info regarding arcade collecting and my personal collection.