So I’ve decided to change this area up a bit, and instead of it being a collection of pictures of full machine acquisitions, I’m going to make it a little more active and include everything arcade related in a more blogging stile. Projects, Ideas, parts troubleshooting and thoughts will be discussed here.
Although there’s no coin slot, it’s hard to not appreciate My roots and Atari's part that played into them. I still have a 2600, but I couldn’t pass up a recent opportunity to pick up the new VCS system. What it lacks in games, it makes up in nostalgia, and although I am hoping for a better game library in the future, I am not disappointed with my purchase.
So this is quite a day for me, because I seldom get a new pinball in the arcade. But here we have a Johnny Mnemonic, a pinball machine I've been after for some years. We've already replaced the Translate with CPR's glass reproduction and hopefully will be adding a color DMD at some point. Also, not off the table is replacing the side decals as this title is notorious for fading as seen in the picture
In a bazaar twist, My boss mentioned how cool it would be to have some games in our break room. And here we are.
I've mentioned previously that I am putting together a Playchoice 10 board and populating it with nothing but light gun. shooting games To add to the awesomeness of this board, I recently picked up this homebrew cartridge Super Russian Roulette. A quirky and rare light game that I intend to run on the Playchoice 10 using a Playchoice 10 to NES cartridge adapter.
Along the same lines as the pick up below, another board I've had interest in is Super Game III. Another collection of NES games in an arcade environment PCB
Here's another recent pick up. Something I've come across repeatedly on eBay over the years, is this 18 in one game that houses NES classics. I finally took the bait, and purchased one. To my surprise, there's actually 35 games rather than the advertised 18!
Years ago, I picked up this space invaders test board. It’s quirky gameplay is kind of fun, but what it lacked was any sound.
It’s not that the board is broken, it’s that the board has no provision for any music or sound effects. Since I wanted to include this game in my rotation of playable games, I chose to give it a soundtrack.
Using a miniature CD player, an audio amp, and a basic stamp to control the CD player, I assembled this to give my space invaders board a voice. I also mixed a few extra CDs of different tunes, to cover whatever attitude I was in.
Power is sucked off the JAMMA connector and feeds both the basic stamp board, the miniature CD player, and the audio amp. Since the CD player started automatically , I use the basic stamp to trigger the power switch on the player, and then to reboot it 20 minutes later after the CD has played through its track list. Worked great for a number of years, but now the CD player is starting to get wonky and tends to skip more than play through. Time to upgrade to a solid-state MP3 player.
Re-using the basic stamp, the amplifier and naturally the game board, I added a MP3 decoder player module that had both USB and Micro SD slots to get my MP3s into a player.
I found a box for this on Thingiverse, but it didn’t have a mounting feet, so I added that to the design. The entire design will soon be l located in the 3-D printing area. The basic stamp was reprogrammed to start the MP3 player. I no longer needed to cycle the power to the music player every 20 minutes, so I added some pull up resistors and tied that output to the NEXT FILE switch on the MP3 player. A quick program to monitor player one and player to start, as well as some wire from the basic stamp to the game board, and we now, have a toggle signal to the MP3 player for the next with a momentary Press of both player one and player two.
So this is something I’ve wanted to do for sometime. I’ve always hated light gun games for their obnoxious and heavy rubber hose that connects the gun to the game.
It’s literally a piece of rubber hose, and as of late, Happ guns have been delivered to me with marked rubber rather than plain black rubber of previous guns. It’s definitely a turn off, and the heavy durometer of rubber makes the play experience uncomfortable. My thought was to replace the rubber wire shield with a steel braided headset cord from old payphones. This is a work in progress, but so far it’s coming out very nicely. Stay tuned for a full ride up on the procedure.
I’ve had a few Sega system 16 games on my want list for a while. One of them has been Fantasy Zone which is pretty hard to find at a reasonable price. But I’ve recently stumbled across a 17 in 1 multi game cartridge that I purchased on eBay. Needing only to replace the encrypted 6800 processor with a standard one, and pop in a Z 80 into the empty socket, most 16 B boards can be adapted to this kit. Replace the ROM cartridge with the multi game one, and add a wire to connector 15, row A, pin 12 and your done
Although the game always boots to Altered Beast, it’s a pretty awesome set up and gives me a few games back that I no longer have in my collection, or have always wanted.
I’ve heard of the Arcade Legends platform, but never saw one until I pick this up. Always been a fan of small arcade boards, and this fits the bill. Offering a collection of licensed titles, Arcade Legends 2 had games that we’re never available in the first or third offerings, but offers a great selection without going the MAME route. This board requires an Exit button for menu access. Stay tuned to see how we add a button, without "adding a button"
Guzzler. A 1983 game I (thought) never heard of it until I saw Todd Tucky of TNT amusements demo it on one of his live sales. This is a Pac-Man type of game but instead of eating darts you’re player fires by shooting liquid. This is a single screen maze game, and now part of my collection..... but here is the funny part. As I'm putting this info online I was digging through my pictures of arcade boards and found a different picture of Guzzler already in my collection! The lesson here is, I have a problem
I was never particularly good at Moon Patrol, So I’ve never wanted to own the actual cabinet. I do, however, enjoy it enough that I would like to have the actual PCB. Was lucky enough to find one, with an included JAMMA adapter, so now I can play it almost anywhere.
One of my printers is showing it’s age, so I thought it was time for an upgrade. Can anybody say dual extrusion? Stay tuned for more
I’ll need to open this box to start my next project, but again, life has gotten in the way and I need to take care of some emergency household projects first, so this will have to wait, and remain as a teaser
Although it’s all about the game, it’s not always strictly about the game.
I’ve been spending some time drawing what will soon become my replacement TV in my shops display system. It seems that my TV set doubling as a computer monitor Is it working out as well as had hoped and I need a dedicated display for each. Making this out of scraps from other projects. More on this later
I think I’ve mentioned, on more than one occasion, that I’ve gotten into collecting odd games.
Well check out this one. Space Bomber! Made in 1998 by Psikyo this game was released in Japan only. What makes this Space invaders type game so different, it’s it’s strange collection of enemies. When was the last time you fought against a garbage can with eyes?
For the most part, I don’t take on repairs especially when it comes to pinball machines. But here’s the exception to the rule as I’m shopping a friends last action hero. This is been in the works for several months, Drawn out with multiple electronics and mechanical problems, not to mention the extreme filth of the machine that hasn’t been shopped in years. It’s kept me more than busy
My first introduction to Crazy Kong was through a girl I was interested in at the time, who regularly visited a diner we affectionately referred to as the red roach diner (if memory serves it was called the red coach diner) In their lobby was the first and only Crazy Kong I ever saw in the wild. My impression was "who would want to play this bootleg Donkey Kong game?”
But I was later to learn that Crazy Kong was its own game. From Wikipedia ..
Crazy Kong is an arcade game developed by Falcon, released in 1981 and similar to Nintendo's Donkey Kong. Although commonly believed to be a bootleg version, it was officially licensed for operation only in Japan when Nintendo couldn't keep up with domestic demand, and is based on different hardware.
And indeed, it plays differently than donkey Kong with totally different sounds and play mechanics and even colors. From a nostalgic perspective, I definitely enjoy it much more today than I did back in the 80s. This is a recent pick up of 3 boards..... I’m surprised I hadn’t done this earlier
I’ve owned a few multi game kits for Pac-Man boards. I’ve had Clay Cowgill‘s kit forever, and still operate that one in my Ms. Pac-Man machine, I’ve had Two bit scores board years ago, but I was late getting on board for Mike Doyle‘s 96 in one kit. In fact, I don’t even think I discovered its existence until years after it was out of production. Nonetheless, I was able to obtain one, and recently picked up a Ms. Pac-Man board to install it on.
It’s an interesting add on, although I would’ve love to have Make Trax or Crush Roller included on it like is on Clays kit. I’ve also designed a mount to support the 96 in one kit that’s available in our 3-D printing section.
One of my more recent projects is an attempt to convert this Millipede board into a Super Multipede board using High score saves multi game kit. Unfortunately, my kit arrived without the circled connector in place making it impossible to attach the ribbon cable that goes between this board and the graphics ROM board. I wait for its replacement
So I’ve decided I want to build a wreck-it Ralph Arcade machine of my own. But instead of putting a standard PC to run the gaming component, I’ve taken the challenge of making it run on a single board computer, specifically the raspberry pi. Overall, it was a challenging part of the project that I’ll detail when I get the project done. Check out the unedited video, running on my raspberry pi with the custom Ralph case I 3-D printed for it.
