Weekend Project - XB360 to Jamma

After finally receiving Mushihimesama Futari for XB360 in the mail last week (14 days shipping!), I took some time this weekend to get my XB360 hooked up proper to my Exceleena cab.

Used xbox controllers were $20 each from gamestop (what a ripoff!), $10 project box from Fry's, a fingerboard I had laying around, and two 12 position barrier strips from Radio Shack.

Connected the two barrier strips together with quick-zip ties, disassembled the joysticks and soldered wires to the digital controls. Next, drilled and trimmed the fingerboard, and soldered wires onto it. Then ran both sets of wires to the 12 position barrier strip, which is just enough for 1 joystick, 6 buttons, 1 start, and 1 ground.

Why did I use a barrier strip? This allowed me to rewire the button configuration if I needed, and ended up having to do this after I finished the project. I initially wired the buttons to match the XB360 Street Fighter IV tournament stick, but realized afterwards that arcade cabinets have A,B,C buttons on the top row, not the bottom row. Also standard jamma only supports 3 buttons (some cabs support 4), so I ended up mapping A,B,X,Y buttons to the first 4 in the jamma connector.

Next was to take out the dremmel and trim my project box so I could mount the fingerboard between the two end screws, and have it still close properly. It was a tight fit, and just barely got everything squeezed inside this small box.

Final touch was to drill two strain relief holes for the controller plugs right at the seam, and close it up. And here is the final product.

Since I plan to play the XB360 on my Exceleena cab, there was no need for audio or video to the jamma box, all that would be taken care of via the cab's vga connector and stereo amplifier. But to make this really jamma compatible, future enhancements could include my Ultracade UVC converter to downscale 480p to 15khz or 24khz, and a mono amp, although that requires 12v from somewhere. Lastly, I'd probably wire a capcom kickharness to use the lower 3 buttons properly if I wanted to play some fighter games.

Anyway, here we are in hires shmupping goodness!

Update: I have since made one more modification to this converter which makes it a bit safer to operaate!

Live from Japan, its KET!

Woke up to a treat this morning. While on #shmups IRC someone posted a link to KET's Garegga Lab where KET was streaming a live broadcast of himself playing several Psikyo games, and of course Battle Garegga. After many attempts (and trying almost every character) he finally cleared the first loop of Sengoku Ace 2, then played several credits of Dragon Blaze (only making it to stage 5), and finally onto Battle Garegga.




The best part was that he was also streaming his voice live, and responding to peoples questions (posted in chat) while playing. He was also fond of humming parts of garegga's soundtrack while playing. :) Although 95% of it was in Japanese, he did answer a few short questions in english. Then after 2+ hours he excused himself saying it was 5am in Japan and wished everyone an enjoyable weekend.

Watching recorded superplays of pros from Japan can get pretty intimidating. So it was nice to watch KET play live, and make mistakes just like the rest of us would. Its easy to forget that supreplays are typically only one run out of a hundred (if even that).

Windy Love

One of the reasons why I let out a big smile whenever walking into my gameroom.


[Update 03/10/10 - Added an additional Konami Windy 2, with proper blue marquees]

Taito Type X in da house

Finally got my hands on a Taito Type X mobo, and what a beauty this thing is running on my Exceleena at 31khz! I'll gush on the technical details later, but couldn't wait to jump in on some vertical Gigawing Generations!

Box of panels

Things slowly returning back to normal

Well its finally over! Months of planning still didn't prepare us for all the work that goes into a wedding. Anyway, my only advice to anyone who may be about to go through this, is to pay for a wedding coordinator to take care of as many of the details as possible (and not just "day-of" coordination), it will be worth every penny!

Lack of updates

The good news is I'm getting married this summer. The bad news is any available free time is going towards the planning of this "once in a lifetime event"...so don't expect any blog/gaming updates until the fall.

Side blog

With all the copious amount of free time I have (yeah right!), I started a small side blog to document my thoughts on "Dual Play" also known as "Double Play". This alternate way of playing certain shmup games has rekindled my interest in older (early 90s) shooters, and has given me a new appreciation for some games I got burnt out on (i.e. Viper Phase 1). I find it quite challenging and exciting to be able to pull off some cool looking runs with symmetrical patterns. Of course I'll never be as good as VTF-INO and his awesome Ikaruga double play, but I never try to emulate superplays either.

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.

Sanwa and Seimitsu mounting plates

I was digging through my arcade junk boxes and found a total of six different types of joystick mounting plates. To help me remember, and to share with anyone else who cares, I snapped some pics and added descriptions of which plates work with which machines/panels/sticks.

Disclaimers: I do not know the actual part numbers of these plates for ordering, and the names I use may not be official product names. I am not offering any for sale here. This is just a pictorial reference to understand what type/shape of plates are out there for Japanese arcade control panels (Sega/Namco/Konami).



1: Sanwa flat mounting plate which fits my Namco Exceleena square control panel (with four mounting posts welded to the panel). Note: this plate should come with 4 small nuts which go INSIDE the sanwa stick, and 4 small screws. This is used to secure the plate to the stick.

2: Sanwa S-Plate used to mount a Sanwa stick to an original Sega Astro City (type 1) panel. Note: this plate should come with 4 small nuts which go INSIDE the Sanwa stick, and 4 small screws. This is used to secure the plate to the stick.

3: Chinese flat mounting plate (also has 2 holes for Sanwa) which fits my Namco Exeleena square control panel (with four mounting posts welded to the panel). For Sanwa sticks, use the 2 above/below holes, for Chinese sticks, use the 4 holes.

4: Seimitsu flat mounting plate which fits my Namco Exceleena square control panel (with four mounting posts welded to the panel).

5: Seimitsu shallow S-Plate used to mount on an original Sega Astro City (type 2) panel.

6: Seimitsu S-Plate used to mount on an original Sega Astro City (type 1) panel.

For further reference, here are some pics of my panels with various sticks/plates mounted.

Astro City (type 1) panel, with Seimitsu Stick and plate #6.
Astro City (type 2) panel, with Seimitsu Stick and plate #5.
Namco panel, with Sanwa Stick and plate #1.*
*This also fits perfectly on an Astro type 2 panel.
Astro City (type 2) panel, with Chinese Stick and plate #3.**
**This is a hack, note the two orange zip ties on the bottom since the holes did not exactly line up.
Konami Windy panel, with Sanwa Stick.***
***No plate needed, as this panel has built in metal mounting points for above/below screws).

Its Mame-o-licious

My Namco Exceleena Blue cab has gone through several major changes over the years. When I first got it, I completely gutted the insides, replaced the monitor, converting it into a 31khz Dreamcast machine (poor man's Naomi GD system). About a year ago I restored it back to Jamma compatible, and bought an MGCD and JPAC so I could play all three: Jamma, Consoles, and Mame/PC games. I never paid much attention to Mame though, since it didn't match up to the real PCBs I already own, except for the fact that you can practice using savestates. But recently, I started playing more hidden jems that were either hard to track down the PCB, or not worth adding to my already bloated collection. Thats when I decided to get more serious about my mame setup.

So I updated the cab once more, before the last shmupmeet. Its still Jamma compatible (and console compatible via MGCD), but is now running Windows XP with the Mala front end. Mala not only supports vertical displays, but it also has a plug-in architecture allowing other developers to write add-ons, like this cool Serial LED display plug-in. And it just so happens that I had a Beta Brite LED sign that I knew would come in handy some day. :-)

Arcade Posters

If collecting rare Japanese arcade posters wasn't expensive enough, trying to frame them for hanging will surely put you in the poor house. The problem is two fold, Japanese B1 poster size is larger than American B1 poster size, and no store in America carries pre-made frames larger than B1. This leaves you with two options, trim the poster to fit American B1 size (unthinkable by most!) or have a custom frame built.

Custom framing is great business in the US with huge markups because you have no where else to go. I've priced a custom frame with the cheapest frame border, and cheapest/thinnest plexiglass at Michael's Art Supply which came out to $275! That price does NOT include mounting or anything, just the metal frame, backing, and plexi front. Unbelievable! Of course the sales person said "for this week only" there was a $99 off custom frames over $200...so the price would have dropped to $176. No thanks.

Since I was very reluctant to trim these rare posters, I decided to try and make my own frames. Since I'm no carpenter, have no woodworking tools, I didn't feel like making 50 pound wood/glass frames from homedepot (so not sure what that would cost total). What I did was visit a local plastics store called Tap Plastics. There, I ordered a 1/8 thick plexiglass square cut to 40"1/2 x 28"3/4 size (thats Japanese B1) for $30, then a 1/8 think foam-core backing of the same size for $15. My ghetto solution for holding the pieces together were small office binder clips (19mm in size) found in Walmart for $0.79 a box of 12. After clipping the backing to the plexi (with poster sandwiched in the middle) I removed the front side metal wing-tabs on the clips. To hang the poster, Tap Plastics had this very cool Uniframe 40" kit for $10. So total cost of my custom frame came out to about $55.

Notice the two foam-core blocks I taped to the back, these were instructions that the Uniframe kit gave to give the frame better support. Two simple picture frame nails is all that is needed to hang via the plastic parts just below the supports. Since the entire thing is pretty light weight (about 5 lbs), nothing would be damaged if it happened to come off the wall (never happened yet).

The true test of this design was fitting a similar frame for my Espgaluda II poster, which is a double B1 size of 79" x 28"3/4! Price for the plexi and foam-core obviously came out to twice as much ($90) but there was no framing system suitable for this extremely long length. So again, I went ghetto, headed back to Walmart, and bought several more boxes of those small size binder clips. This time, I didn't use any framing system and just used the single side of the binder clip tab-wing to attach to the wall via small poster nails. The result was perfectly secure to the wall! Since hanging all my extra large posters this way, I've since seen some new internet framing shops in the UK that offer > 40" custom frames around this same price, but I'm not sure what the shipping costs would be on such large pieces of plexiglass overseas. I don't have the link handy, but its been mentioned in several of the poster threads on the shmups message board.

The things we do for love

Not exactly arcade related, but on some level just as masochistic as playing shmups. Having a girlfriend who is studying optometry for an OD degree, means I get to play guinea pig to her poking, prodding, lid flipping, corneal staining, dilating, phoropting, picture taking fun. That last part, the picture taking, is no cakewalk either. She shoves what looks like a jewlers lens against my cornea with her bare hand, and holds it there while using a camera (which is on a stand 4 inches away from my face) with light shining directly into my eye to take pictures for about an hour and a half. Did I forget to mention I don't wear glasses or have any vision problems?...at least not yet...

So now, I give you, the optic disc/nerve of my left eye:

What am I currently playing?

I've neglected this blog for quite some time, mostly because I haven't completed any major projects worth posting about. In response to this, I've created a new section at the top listing what arcade games I'm currently playing. I'll then make some minor posts listing my progress (or lack there of) on these games to keep the blog fresh with content.

Eugene Jarvis

This past weekend I met one of my all time arcade heros, Eugene Jarvis. Eugene, and his partner at the time Larry Demar, were the primary developers of William's Robotron and Defender/Stargate.

I grew up playing Stargate at a local arcade in the early 1980s with my best friend. And let me tell you, we wasted a TON of quarters on this game. Stargate was THE most complex game at the time (and probably still today!), with its 6 buttons, 2-way joystick, and extremely manic style of play. I think the average play time of this game was roughly 2-3 minutes per quarter (for a beginner). I distinctly remember staying away from Robotron, as that game was even harder, and eat about 1 quarter every 1-2 minutes! I cursed these games more times then I care to remember, and vowed revenge every time we ran out of quarters. Well now I have the last laugh, as I bought both of these cabinets around 5-6 years ago, and play them whenever I think they need a good spanking. Well, actually, these games still kick my ass, but at least I'm not wasting any more quarters. :-)

Eugene gave a talk at this years California Extreme (the West coast's largest arcade and pinball show) and I was determined not to miss it. Now before the talk, this very talented guy (Jean Baudin) was warming up the audience playing a very strange guitar which had 11 strings! It had both bass strings and regular guitar strings on a single wide neck, and he played it with two hands like a piano. What made this even cooler, is that he was playing classic video game music tracks, like Nintendo's Mario Bros!

Checkout the inlays in the fretboards. In the first pic, you can see a Pac-Man inlayed in a guitar on a stand to the right, and the second pic is a closeup of the guitar he was playing, which had a nice Joust inlay. Very cool!

Eugene then gave an hour long talk on how he came up with the idea for Robotron, went into detail on the programming/AI involed, and answered questions from the audience. He also pointed out several bugs in his code which were NOT fixed since they added some interesting gameplay mechanics (made it HARDER!). He is a very animated speaker, and a true pleasure to listen to. If you ever get the chance, pickup the PC CD-Rom "Williams Arcade Classics" as it containts video footage interviews with Eugene, Larry, and a few other Williams developers that echo the same excitement these guys still feel today when talking about their creations.

After the talk, I ran into Eugene on the CA Extreme show floor, and watched him play a few rounds of Robotron. I then talked to him for a bit about the manic nature of his games, and that in Japan today, some companies are still releasing 2D manic shooter games (like Cave). Knowing vertical shooters are still a niche market, I doubt he would ever think about producing one himself with his current company Raw Thrills...but if anyone in America could pull off something like this, he could.

(if you couldn't figure it out, thats me on the left, and Eugene on the right)

Video Junkie

Props to Bloodflowers (on the shmups forum) for digging up this classic clip on youtube. Whats scary is that I didn't look to different from that kid back in the early 80s. :-) Good thing I have a well paying job to support my habbit now!

Dreamcast 9-9-99

The movie "The Omen" wasn't the only thing to capitalize on a special date (6-6-06). My beloved Dreamcast was released on 9-9-99. I still play my DC more than my PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube combined. Maybe its that the hardware is still used in Japanese arcades today. Or maybe its the style of games which are still being released today for the DC! Or maybe its just the cool ass commercials.



This was one of Sega's 9-9-99 launch commercials. Notice the armband the thief is wearing; Sega's slam to Sony, for being first to market before the PS2! Also, in what could be seen as a strange forshadowing, at the end of the commercial Sonic slips off the top of the console and falls flat on his face, loosing all his rings (typical of loosing a life in the sonic games).

Pacman at the Library

I may be oldskool, but Pacman just ain't my bag. Although this is too funy to pass up!

No Pants Allowed

Ran across this today on the shmups forum, and it is a bit dated (being last summer), but worth mentioning. Barcade (located in NYC) hosted a "No Pants Allowed: The Underwear Arcade Video Game Gathering", blog entry here, and flickr photos here.
Warning: links & images are not exactly work safe (PG-13).

Two projects completed

Lack of updates to my blog should indicate my work/life job balance has been leaning almost entirely on the work side of the equation. But I had managed to finish two projects which I began back in December (mentioned in my 12/19 blog entry). I finished repainting the Sega Astro City 2 cabinet, and also finished routing a new control panel/table.

I completely disassembled this cabinet (almost every single screw came out except for two which were stripped :-( ) and repainted the inside and outside with Krylon Fusion spraypaint. Although this stuff is supposed to make a molecular bond to any type plastic, it does not bond well to fiberglass. :-( So I'm not too happy with the outcome, but looks nice for now.

Before (yuck! check out the mold under the control panel):


After (clean as a whistle):





Here is my completed console control panel project. Disregard the masking tape on the top, its there because the hinges currently have a problem when I open/close the top. Should be fixed soon enough.


[update]Here is a pic of the panel with hinge from homedepot.[/updated]