[laid-back jazz music]
Greetings and welcome to an LGR ‘Cade thing!
And this time we’re gonna take a look at
one of my technological obsessions:
playing classic arcade games
straight from the original hardware.
That’s right, no emulation here!
I’m talkin' legit arcade printed circuit
boards, or PCBs, adapted for use with the
display and control method of your choosing.
Turns out it’s a relatively straightforward
endeavor
with the right combination of conversion hardware.
And that’s what we’re exploring today!
Setting up and playing arcade PCBs using things
like JAMMA SuperGuns, interface converters,
RGB video transcoders, input adapters and
more.
This won’t be an exhaustive overview of
every possibility, and there’s always the
odd snag to solve with certain games, but
I hope this proves informative regardless.
And if nothing else, just sit back, relax,
and enjoy some retro arcade gaming goodness.
[upbeat golfing excellence]
-Augh!
Right, so!
There are five components key to makin’
things happen: an arcade PCB, a SuperGun device,
a power supply, a controller, and a display.
And possibly a video converter or two, depending
on your display.
So naturally, the first step is acquiring
an arcade PCB in the first place.
And for me that first board was Raiden II
from 1993,
one of my all-time favorites from back in the day.
By and large, finding standalone PCBs is a
lot easier than finding the complete cabinet,
since so many cabs were scrapped and repurposed
over the years.
And plenty of boards were sold on their own
as conversion kits as well, like Capcom’s
1942 here, intended to be placed into a generic cabinet
or swapped in to upgrade an older one.
As for pricing, market values are all over
the place.
I’ve got some for as little as 75 dollars
shipped, while others cost several hundred
bucks when all was said and done.
Either way, it goes without saying that PCBs are often far more affordable
compared to a full machine.
Paying $150 for Primal Rage may seem a bit silly at first, but compared to a thousand
dollars plus 600 shipping for the full cabinet?
It becomes a bit more palatable.
Primal Rage was the second PCB I purchased
by the way, this gigantic Atari GT System
board, complete with its two daughterboards screwed in on top
and a solid metal plate underneath.
Not only is it one of my all-time favorites
from 1994, but as of this recording it’s
still not fully emulated with 100% accuracy
due to the on-board security chip, so having
the original PCB is currently the best way
to play it.
It’s also a good example of a board that
needs a little extra attention to get working.
I’ve done a whole video about this over
on my Blerbs channel, but the gist of it is
that the sound won’t play unless you connect
these boards together using the appropriate cables.
And the controls won’t fully work either
without an adapter like this one, the JNX Rage.
Yeah, one of the buttons doesn’t work unless
you either have the original wiring harness
or use an adapter, even though it’s a JAMMA
PCB.
JAMMA, by the way, stands for Japan Amusement
Machine and Marketing Association.
And it’s a standard used by most arcade
games from 1987 to the early 2000s, made after
a buncha companies came together in the 80s
and agreed on a universal wiring standard.
And it’s this JAMMA standard that SuperGun
devices are meant to connect to and convert.
For older games that don’t use JAMMA though,
there are a couple different options.
One is just wiring up your own JAMMA adapter,
stringing together the connections and making
sure it all lines up between the two.
Another option is getting one of these conversion
boards, which a multitude of hobbyists have
put together and offered for sale for popular
arcade PCBs, making it easy to adapt them
to work with a JAMMA SuperGun.
Speaking of which, the SuperGun is really
the heart of this whole setup and ultimately
determines everything else you need.
To put it simply, SuperGuns are devices that
plug into the JAMMA connector of an arcade
PCB and convert it to a set of standard A/V
inputs and outputs.
This way you can skip needing an arcade wiring
harness, and can easily plug in your own stuff.
Just attach your PCB right here, plug in a
15-pin Neo Geo-style joystick over here, insert
your video cable and any speakers or headphones here, and in this case,
connect a standard ATX PC power supply.
And for a good number of games, that’s it!
You’re good to go assuming you’ve got
a compatible display.
There are buttons on the SuperGun for inserting
coins and accessing service menus, but everything
else happens on the joystick itself, with
the game happily playing along just like it’s
sitting in a real arcade machine.
What a sight to behold,
8 year old me would have no idea what to think of this.
[Battletoads gameplay kicks off]
As for which SuperGun to use, that depends
on your needs and desires.
There’s a whole slew of SuperGuns out there
with wildly varying features and connections,
often hand-built in small quantities by enthusiasts.
One of the most popular being the Home Arcade
System, or HAS SuperGun.
Unfortunately though, actually getting your
hands on one can be tricky,
with limited production runs and waiting lists.
So I went with something cheap and readily
available, at least at first:
this Retroelectronik Essentials Basic.
It’s nothing to write home about but it
did the job when I was just getting started.
Before long I upgraded to Retroelectronik’s
Pro Gamer 1.3.
This does the same thing as the Basic model,
but it also has a built-in power regulator
to generate a negative five volt rail right
on the board.
If you’re using a newer ATX power supply,
that’s important to have, since certain
games will require negative five volts to
run properly.
This was commonplace on older power supplies,
but on modern ones it’s pretty much disappeared
entirely, so a SuperGun with a regulator is
convenient for games like NBA Jam Tournament
Edition that require negative five volts to
power the sound board.
On games like this, the main board handles
everything but sound, so you need this sound
PCB to go along with it, populated with the
proper allotment of ROMs for Tournament Edition.
But back to the power supply and the regulator though,
because this ATX solution isn’t always optimal.
Depending on your PSU, you may get more or less voltage than you need,
causing some games to grow unstable.
In that case, you’ll want a proper arcade
power supply instead of ATX, with a voltage
adjustment knob to dial things in precisely.
However, even with power sorted I wasn’t
done trying different SuperGuns yet.
My final selection, for the time being, is
the PARSEC Supergun version 2.1.
It’s only available in small batches each
month,
but it’s worth the wait if you’re into what it’s offering.
For one thing it’s a lot smaller, not bothering
with any extraneous terminals, while also
providing additional things like composite
and S-Video outputs.
And instead of a full-sized SCART connector,
it uses an 8-pin mini-DIN connector for RGB,
same exact type used on devices like the Framemeister.
As an aside, I’ve got one of those too,
but I don’t really like the results I get
with many arcade games, and find the Open
Source Scan Converter, or OSSC,
has a cleaner and less laggy output.
Another reason I wanted a PARSEC was its daughterboard
support, like this one that adds both 15-pin
VGA and component video output with composite and TTL level syncing,
for RGB output without a SCART adapter.
Oh and another thing I like on the PARSEC
is the more standard kick harness interface,
this little 6-pin JST header.
The Retroelectronik boards use this 9-pin
d-sub instead, whereas the Home Arcade System,
the PARSEC, and others have been going with this 6-pin JST connection,
so it seemed like the better choice.
As for what the kick harness does, well, it’s
for games
with lots of action buttons or more than two players.
The JAMMA standard supports three buttons
plus start for up to two players, so if a
game needed more than that, you use a kick
harness on top of JAMMA.
And in the case of a SuperGun,
that means you need to connect the harness to the device itself.
There are tons of standards too, with Capcom,
Midway, Atari, Namco and others all using
different kick harness connectors, so you
need to either solder together a harness yourself
or just grab a pre-built one online.
And finally, I also wanna mention arcade systems
that require separate plug-in cartridges,
like the Neo Geo MVS and the Sega ST-V, among
others.
Systems like these require not only the system
PCB but a separate game cartridge,
designed so that arcade owners could easily swap out
old games for new ones without buying a new machine.
And yep, they use JAMMA too, so you can hook them up to a SuperGun
just like any of the others.
Of course, this cartridge approach also opens
up a new set of arcade collection options,
since the game carts themselves are often
less expensive and easier to find than an
entire dedicated arcade game PCB.
And personally, I really enjoy collecting
MVS games anyway, with their giant cartridges
that tuck nicely into these Southtown shockboxes.
As for the Neo Geo system itself, this one
here is an MV-1FZ, which is one of the many
different single slot MVS boards.
There are two, four, and six slot boards as
well, but I’m happy with just the one.
It’s also got this nice Lions3 acrylic case
to make it a bit easier to mount cartridges
and protect the board itself.
The prevalence of Neo Geo hardware in the
arcade scene is one reason so many SuperGuns
choose that as its controller port as well.
Not only are they pretty excellent sticks
and pads in their own right, but the 15-pin
interface supports all kinds of stuff beyond
just the four face buttons,
start, and select of the MVS.
In fact, what I use the most these days are
a couple of these Namco arcade sticks
for the PlayStation.
I actually like the build and buttons better
than the stock MVS, and the fact that you
get more buttons laid out in a row like this
makes it ideal for fighting games with more
than four buttons.
Obviously it needs to be converted though,
so I use these PlayStation to Neo Geo v3 adapters
from Retroelectronik.
These are a step up from other adapters I
have, in that they allow for autofire speed
adjustment and complete input remapping, so
you can customize each button to match the
layout of different arcade games.
Oh and one more thing regarding controllers
and games designed for 3 or more players.
In titles like The Simpsons, X-Men, or TMNT
here, the way you usually choose your character
is by physically selecting their assigned
joystick on the cabinet.
But what if you’ve only got two joysticks?
You can only select the first two characters,
right?
Normally, yes, most of these are 4 player
boards.
Thankfully, there are also ROM swaps available,
often known as 2-player conversion kits.
Swapping out these chips on your PCB will
allow every character in these games to be
selected using any joystick, regardless of
where they’re physically plugged in.
Something to keep in mind if you don’t have
3 or 4 joysticks hooked up using a kick harness.
Moving into the display, since there are things
to consider with both analog and digital video.
Most SuperGuns are made to output 75 ohm signals
suitable to consumer televisions, making it
pretty simple to just plug and play on most
TVs and monitors.
Being that SCART isn’t a thing here in the
US though, you may need to use a transcoder
if your SuperGun only has SCART.
I use this Retrotink RGB to Component box,
which passes a clean SCART signal through
to the YPbPr inputs on TVs like this Sony
Trinitron.
However, this doesn’t work with every game.
A few boards I have, like Mortal Kombat 2,
output a signal that results in a vertically
rolling screen on all my consumer TV sets.
And in my case, the only CRT I have with both
v-hold and RGB is this 12” Sony PVM, which
is just too small for long term use.
Another option is to use a VGA computer monitor, like this 17” Viewsonic.
And while it looks superb, there’s a little
bit of trickery going on here.
See, most VGA monitors like this only accept
31kHz horizontal refresh rates.
While arcade games, for the most part, tend
to output 15kHz instead.
So unless you’re lucky enough to have a
multisync VGA monitor, you’re going to need
to convert the conversion with another converter.
For most situations like this, I really like
using the OSSC, which takes RGB signals and
converts them over to a crispy, well-behaved
HDMI video signal.
Of course, that means I need to use yet another
adapter with my VGA monitors since they don’t
take HDMI, which muddies up the signal a bit.
As stated before, this is one reason I wanted
a PARSEC SuperGun with the video daughterboard.
But that still only outputs a 15kHz signal,
not 31.
For this reason, a lotta folks end up using
something like the GBS-8220, which does the
job in terms of providing 31kHz over VGA.
But the interface is a pain to use and the
output is somewhat soft.
A far better option is the Irken Labs Retro
Scaler A1, which uses line doubling to up
the 15kHz signal to 31kHz, as clean and lag-free
as possible, ideal for CRT monitors.
Sometimes though, I still end up using a modern
LCD monitor instead.
As much as I love CRTs,
they can be a hassle to set up and I don’t always have a ton of room.
Plus, this one has built-in speakers and I’ve
got it installed on this rotating stand, making
it a nice choice for vertically scrolling
shooters like Raiden Fighters 2 here.
Or any other tate vertical mode games really,
of which there were plenty.
Turning a tube on its side is awesome too
of course, but I’d really like a larger
PVM or BVM before going down that route.
Besides, a decent LCD combined with the OSSC,
and maybe some subtle scanline emulation here and there?
I think it looks great, all things considered,
and the convenience factor alone goes a long way.
The last thing I wanna touch on real quick
is actually storing these things,
because, ah.
Yeah, they’re a tad awkward in the size
and shape department,
measuring anywhere from 10x16x1/2 inch
on up to 16x19x4 inches and beyond.
And it’s best to store them vertically,
like you would vinyl records or computer games,
due to gravity existing and warping stuff
that shouldn’t be warped.
I’ve tried several storage solutions, but
I’ve settled on these Kraft Tab Locking
Literature Mailers packed with antistatic
convoluted foam inside.
It’s nicer than just reusing old post office
shipping boxes, which is what I was doing
before, due to the sturdy box design meant
for easy opening and closing.
In the future I plan to print out some nice
color labels for each box, styled after the
arcade marquees for the games themselves.
But yeah, simple Dymo labels work well enough for now.
And that’s about it for the arcade PCB experience,
at least for this video!
It’s been quite the process putting together
a setup that makes sense for what I want,
and it hasn’t exactly been cheap, if I’m
being honest.
But it’s also hugely rewarding, and it’s
not nearly as hard on the wallet or on storage
space as buying complete machines either.
Which I mean, I’ve got one of those too,
this Missile Command cabaret cabinet from 1980.
I’ve had a blast fixing it up and I love
the way it looks.
But it’s only one game, after all, so being
able to have a bunch more ready to play
at any time is a treat.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against building
a multicade cabinet or using MAME emulation,
both are also fantastic options.
There are even FPGA solutions now that provide
highly accurate recreations of original arcade hardware.
But to me, there’s an almost magical quality
to actual arcade boards, and running them
on their own outside of a cabinet feels wrong
in the best kind of way.
Like, just seeing an arcade classic like Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles running flawlessly through
a modern TV is a downright chuckle-worthy
thing to experience, and I’m psyched that
the hobbyist community has come together
to make it so easy for arcade newcomers to pull off.
[TMNT gameplay does its thing]
And if you enjoyed this video then great!
I’ve covered more arcade stuff in the past,
and release videos on all kinds of retro tech
each week right here on LGR.
And as always, thank you very much for watching!
