Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu X360

I got this yesterday morning, and my eyeballs have been bleeding all different kinds of colors ever since. Cave really pushed this game to the visual limit, and made the Xbox 360 port fun with extra modes. A definite buy of any fan, regardless if you own the PCB or not.

I'm really looking forward to the special package version of DFK BL + Ketsui BL in February.

More D9200 neckboard problems

The Wells-Gardner D9200 continues to be a source of problems for me, despite the neckboards being modified per this service bulletin. Its no wonder these monitor chassis were recalled a long time ago.

You may remember me fixing this issue before when some of the colors would randomly stop and start working. But this time, rather than loosing colors, the Red gun seemed to be stuck on at 100% and wash out the other colors. I confirmed this by going into the digital controls and trying to lower Red to no effect.

Following the neckboard schematics I visually traced the Red signal pathway through the components, and spotted this bulging/blown transistor at Q203.

According to the schematic, Q203, which is a KSP2222A transistor, is what limits the Red signal, so I'm sure its the culprit in this problem. I placed an order with Mouser Electronics for a bunch of these, and a few more NTE2501's just in case. :)

[11/17/10 Update] Well that didn't fix it, so back to troubleshooting. :( [/update]

Great Mahou Daisakusen item collection

I may not be great at item collections in Dimahoo / Great Mahou Daisakusen, but at least I was able to complete this full art set. :)



(With special thanks to Mikhail, Tom, and Laurent for helping me obtain a few of these pieces.)

Hacking the MGCD (Part 2)

The Dreamcast version of the MGCD has a similar issue to the PS2 version, of not being exactly JAMMA plug-in play. The last two edge pins on either side of the connector are mapped to joystick buttons rather than grounds (per the JAMMA spec). If these are grounded when you power up the MGCD, it will not accept any inputs from the joystick or other buttons, which is a pretty bad design flaw. So like the PS2 MGCD in Part 1, a simple adapter is needed to isolate these from the edge connector. If you actually need to use buttons 5 & 6 from both players, you can manually connect wires to the adapter and run them up to your control panel.

Above we have the MGCD, with edge adapter, mounted to a Dreamcast, and ready to be connected to any 15khz JAMMA cabinet. I should mention that the same hack used to disable the timer overlay on the PS2 version also works on the Dreamcast version. Also note this MGCD comes with an extra cable to attach a DC memory unit.

If you are like me, you relish the fact that the Dreamcast can output high resolution (31khz/VGA) natively, and I happen to have some JVS/JAMMA cabinets with tri-sync monitors. So you might think that simply using a DC-VGA adapater in place of the MGCD AV cable would work. Unfortunately its not that easy. The MGCD seems to stop working if there is no input video sync present at the MGCD AV connector. So a small hack is required to the DC-VGA box.



Shown above is my DC VGA box, which has its Composite Video Output connector modified to also be connected to composite sync, which is pin #10 on the Dreamcast AV input cable. You do not need to disconnect composite video pin #13, having both connected to the RCA jack at the same time will work fine. The blue video sync plug, shown above, is then soldered directly to the MGCD AV connector input pins (as shown below), along with Left and Right sound outputs from the VGA box.




So now I have a choice of using the MGCD amplified mono sound out of the PCB, or using the DC-VGA box's stereo headphone output if my cab has its own stereo amplifier. BTW: only the "Madness Gameware" or "DC Blaze VGA" box has headphone output and volume controls.

Lastly, you may have noticed a toggle switch on my Madness Gameware VGA box, this is a non-related hack I wrote about back in 2002 to force it into either 15khz RGB or 31khz VGA output. This is not needed for the MGCD, since you can get great 15khz RGB output by using the original MGCD AV cable.



So, below is the completed MGCD with Dreamcast VGA and stereo output connectors ready to go on a JVS/JAMMA cab.

Bakraid Love

(With special thanks to Seth and Paul for helping me obtain a few of these lovely pieces!)

Hacking the MGCD (Part 1)

The MGCD is a console to JAMMA converter created by Taiwanese company Frolicker, and distributed by many Taiwanese arcade resellers. Several versions of the MGCD were produced for Dreamcast, Playstation2, Gamecube, and Xbox. What makes the MGCD unique to other pay-to-play console timer PCBs, was the MGCD could be programed to recognize the start game screen of a particular title, as well as the end game screen, allowing it to disable all input, sound, and even video, until the game was fully loaded and start game screen ready. So in a sense, the MGCD could disguise the fact that you were playing the console version of an arcade game. Here is the manual for the MGCD-B Version, showing all the nifty features and settings.

For a pretty stupid reason, the MGCD isn't exactly plug and play with most JAMMA setups. The problem is in the fact that the MGCD maps 12 player action buttons to the jamma finger board, utilizing the last 2 pins on each side, which are typically tied to ground on most JAMMA looms. If these connections are tied to ground, the MGCD will not boot up properly, and simply not work. To get around this, you must either modify your JAMMA loom connector of your cabinet, detaching the ground wires to these last pins, and connecting them to player buttons 5 & 6, or just leave them off completely. So instead of modifying my cabinet, I just created a fingerboard which lifts these last two pins on each side, allowing me to play on any JAMMA cab. If I wanted to use these last two buttons for fighting games, I could simply run a wire to the fingerboard up to the control panel.


Leave the last two pins on either side disconnected.

Similar to other pay-for-play "timer" PCBs, the MGCD can also play credits for time, although with an annoying timer countdown that is displayed once per minute at the bottom of the screen. With the limited number of games recognized by the MGCD firmware, the timer feature is primarily used by most people, where you can setup a single credit to play for a maximum of 256 minutes. The problem, of course, is that that annoying time displayed at the bottom of the screen.



Figuring out how to remove the timer overlay took some trial and error. At first I tried re-routing the RGB video signal from the console output, directly to the front of the fingerboard. This did work, but the signal was unamplified, and too dark/weak to be displayed on an arcade monitor. So the only other option was to figure out which chip on the MGCD was doing the video overlay, and disabling it. This took a lot of probing around, but eventually I found the chip, and grounded one of the legs to effectively disable it.


Video timer overlay chip highlighted in red.



Connecting these two pins (highlighted in red) will disable the video timer overlay.


Now here is what the output looks like without the timer.



Finally, here is the MGCD installed on my PS2, and ready to be played on any JAMMA machine.




Next, I'll talk about how to take the MGCD Dreamcast version and hook it up to a cabinet at either 15khz or 31khz. (Go to Part 2 here!)

Ketsui: PCB v.s. XB360 port

I was lucky to buy Ketsui back in early 2005 while the hype (and monetary value) was still at a relative low point. Since then, the game had grown into legend with the failed Arika PS2 port and superplay debacle, failed Mame dump attempt, soaring PCB prices, and DS mini-game version giving only a glimpse of this classic Cave style play.

With the recently released 5pb port of the game on Xbox 360, now those who typically trolled the forums with angst towards PCB owners are finally getting their own taste of the game, and realizing it may have been worth the hype as one of Cave's top produced games this decade.

So how does the port stack up against the PCB? Lets find out.


At a recent Bay Area shmupmeet, a side-by-side comparison was setup for participants to judge for themselves. In an attempt to level the playing field, two identical arcade cabinets were used with sanwa arcade controls and tri-sync arcade monitors. The original PCB runs natively at 15khz video resolution, while the XB360's lowest setting 640x480 resolution was used. Obvious differences in the graphical look were apparent, but most participants didn't much mind the XB360 scaled graphics, which were helped by various filters used to reduce the blockiness. A noticable lack of formal HD graphics, and no scanline display options in the 5pb port pailed in comparison to the previous two Cave ports (Mushihemesama Futari, and Espgaluda II). Its arguable that external scaling hardware could be used to restore a 15khz display with native scanlines, although this would not be considered "pixel perfect" by purists. The only Cave ports that have "pixel perfect" bestowed upon them are Arika's PS2 Espgaluda and PS2 DoDonPachi Dai-Ou-Jou, which both run at a native 15khz (non-interlaced).



From this distance, both PCB and port look identical (despite a slight color variation in the monitors), but the game speed was noticeably different.


The next noticeable difference when playing the port was the game speed, which felt slightly faster than the original PCB. Again another compromise when porting a low resolution arcade game to a modern console that displays on consumer LCD screens and television sets. Does this really effect the playability of the port? Certainly not. But rest assured, console players will be quick to point out that they are playing at a slight disadvantage to the PCB.

Lastly, the sound, which normally a port should exceed the PCB, given it can play in stereo and with newly arranged soundtracks, but unfortunately the port being based on the last Ketsui rom fix, includes the slightly louder lock-on sound, which can be quite annoying if you are used to the original PCB rom. Of course with the fixed roms comes no chance of the game crashing during the demo sequence, which I've never personally witnessed on my PCB since I don't use freeplay settings.



So what makes the port better than the PCB?


Being an order of magnitude cheaper than the cost of the PCB is certainly a bonus, but the port has many advantages over the PCB which can't be denied. First and foremost is an all new arrange mode, which takes bullet canceling in Ketsui to a new level. I haven't spent much time with this mode yet, but it certainly looks fun, despite it not being created by IKD/Cave.

Next on my list would have to be the ability to practice individual levels, without which progress for me on the PCB has been quite slow. Being able to practice Stage 4 and 5 the past two days has been a great time saver, not to mention much more pleasurable without making those minor mistakes in the first 3 stages which prevent you from having a high scoring run. Something lacking, is the ability to practice individual bosses, which seems odd given this has been a standard in almost every other Cave port to date.

Last are typical XB360 port features such as arrange soundtrack, online leaderboards with downloadable replays, gamer icons, and wallpapers, all which don't interest me much to be honest. The replays are a nice tool to help see how others approach the game, but there have been plenty of Ketsui superplays/DVDs available before now, its really only worth watching if someone exceeds these previous records.

In Summary, the port is definitely worth owning, and all who played it at the shmupmeet thought it was faithful to the PCB (ignoring the slight speed difference). Unfortunately, 5pb's effort pales in comparison to previous Cave ports in terms of features, modes, and settings. This may be due to the high amount of pressure to release the game on time, and bug free, unlike their failed Dai-Ou-Jou 360 attempt. The question now remains if the port sufficiently bursts the hype bubble around the PCB to deflate its value to any significant degree. Given the largely positive feedback I've read on the forums, I think this may take longer than expected due to a now wider acknowledgment that Ketsui is indeed one of Cave's finest.

April GETs

Keeping with the Milestone theme, I picked up these two Naomi GDRoms relatively cheaply. Not your typical style shooters, Milestone shmups favor function over form with complicated scoring mechanics and simple cell shaded artwork. Maybe its the need for variety over Cave danmaku, but I'm finding these games refreshing. The catchy techno soundtracks also help to hold my interest.

Bombjack Twin highscore

NMK really upped the speed (and thus difficulty) in Bombjack Twin, making average game play times in the single digit minutes. This game is not for casual play, unless you like being stuffed by round 3 all the time. But there is definitely a pattern that can be found, where memorizing paths, and timing when the P icon comes out (which freeze the screen), can really help to finish off stages quickly. Each round has 3 stages, and after two completed rounds a special bonus round contributes to a majority of your score. Thus my highscore table below shows some big jumps after stage 3 and 6. I believe I got an extend icon by round 4 or 5.

DJK - 766,420 7-1