Currently playing:

Sunday, December 30, 2007

DOJ serial number

So having sold my Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou PCB to a friend, I got around to plugging in my spare DOJ board to play a few rounds. Unfortunately this is the first time I booted it up since winning it on YAJ almost 6 months ago (mostly wanted it for the original artwork that came with it). Turns out player 2 bomb button did not work. :-( Whats worse is that this was actually a sealed DOJ, in that the blue case still had the cave sticker fully intact! So I did the dirty deed, broke the seal, and found something pretty cool inside.



Turns out I have PCB number 0014 of god knows how many. Being one of Cave's most popular games in Japan means this is a real treat thinking which game center this board was originally installed at, how long it sat there, and how many Japanese pro's played on it.

Getting back to the problem at hand, turns out that the battery had leaked acid and must have cut through one of the traces (not really noticeable being inside the blue case). I was able to easily solder a wire from the edge connector to the coupling capacitor to restore the connection, even though visually it didn't look like the trace was broken. Damn old batteries. I'm tempted to just unsolder it and leave it without the battery since I never change the defaults anyway, and always use coins to start my games.

Friday, December 21, 2007

And hilarity ensues...

I don't normally IRC, but decided to log into #shmups while doing my daily rounds of shmup reading on the net. Usually I don't see people chatting, outside the occasional grunts and screams from shoe-sama, but tonight there was action, and one very funny video.

Shoe-sama was attempting to replicate this 19 chain puyo puyo fever combo after watching a Japanese replay on youtube. Here is the original replay. Note near the end the guy keeps flipping the puyo puyo's in the air above the bar and somehow gets them to disappear so the next set comes in. Not sure if this is a known feature or bug, but its what allows him to pull off this 19 chain combo.



Now watch shoe-sama attempt to replicate this feat. The sound is crappy because he captured it using an external microphone, but makes this all the more funny when you hear him wailing the controller at the end trying to pull off that move, then learns why emulators suck.