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. :-)
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Its Mame-o-licious
Posted by Arcade Fever at 11:44 PM 5 comments
Labels: Misc
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Pink Sweets bug, I mean feature confirmed
So these strange set of circumstances have led players to stop playing the game, stating its a hallow victory to cheat through to the end, while at the same time giving no motivation to game center operators to upgrade their boards if Arcadia still accepts these bugged scores.
Getting to the actual bug conditions is not an easy matter, even when making some changes to the default settings to allow extends to come quicker. So after much playing this weekend, I finally confirmed my board is the first version with the bug. I guess I'm ok with the bug, as this will open up a new way of playing the game for less skilled players like me. Its still possible to play through to the end without activating the bug, but is something pretty far out of my reach.
* This score obtained by changing default extends to every 1M
[update]Its been confirmed that the infinite lives thing is not a bug, but rather an intended feature by Yagawa. How do we know this? Well apparently Cave reverted this "fix" of infinite lives back to a feature in their latest set of boards updates they are sending out to operators! Unfortunately the damage is done, and the masses have moved on to playing Futari, which is pure Cave mechanics.[/update]
Posted by Arcade Fever at 6:19 PM 0 comments
Labels: Pink Sweets
Saturday, September 08, 2007
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.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 10:47 AM 6 comments
Labels: Misc
Friday, August 31, 2007
First Espgaluda II high score
Posted by Arcade Fever at 6:41 PM 0 comments
Labels: *My High Scores*, Espgaluda II
Saturday, August 04, 2007
First Planet Harriers high score
My first high score posting for Planet Harriers. Lavaa is stage 3, and I barely got half way though, so lots of room for improvement.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 1:08 PM 2 comments
Labels: Planet Harriers
Monday, July 30, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Friday, July 06, 2007
Planet Harriers' Analog Joysticks
I called a local distributor to get a quote for replacement sticks, and best he could do was $175 per stick for Happ replacements. I didn't even want to guess what Sega would have changed for replacing these with original ones. Anyway, I found what looked like the exact same Happ sticks on ebay (marked new/overstock) for much cheaper (thank you ebay!) I got the new sticks in the mail, and they felt pretty stiff, this is actually a good sign, as I wanted accuracy, not loose analog sticks thats don't return to the center.
The mounting points on the plates were exactly the same, so no problem fitting them to the control panel. The only difficulty was in the proprietary Sega connectors. I rigged my own connectors and started up the machine, only to find they would not calibrate correctly. Apparently not all 5K pots are the same. So I then decided to pull out the original Sega pots, put them in the Happ sticks, using the original connectors, and low and behold it works!
Here are pics of the original stick, then the Happ ones I bought, and then what it looks like mounted in the control panel. I may try to attach the rubber boot to the Happ sticks, but it would require me to drill holes in the mounting plate...not sure if I feel like doing that at this point. I also have to tweak the center line of each pot to get the game to accurately perform the extreme left/right dodge maneuver, vital to playing the game accurately. I really can't imagine American arcade operators going to these lengths to make the game this playable...which also tells me why some people found the controls lacking.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 1:39 PM 1 comments
Labels: Planet Harriers
Friday, June 15, 2007
ESPGaluda 1CC
Finally! I 1CC'd (one credit completed) ESPGaluda tonight. For one of Cave's reportedly "easeist shmup", it took me about two months of playing it seriously, around 3 times a week, to complete with a single quarter run. I'm fairly sure I was able to 1-ALL DoDonPachi faster than this. Anyway, now I'll have no guilty conscience moving onto ESPGaluda II. |
My final score was 35,219,710 using Ageha.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 10:32 PM 2 comments
Labels: *My High Scores*, Espgaluda
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Planet Harriers
Posted by Arcade Fever at 12:17 AM 12 comments
Labels: Planet Harriers
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
What rank control?
I've been playing Pink Sweets on and off for about two months now, and have run into a brick wall in Stage 4. The game just gets too difficult, and I wasn't able to break the 4M score barrier. For those that know Raizing type shmups, rank control is a vital strategy to completeing (1CCing) the game. What rank does, is increase the difficulty in direct proportion to how well you are playing/scoring. |
Score too good in early levels (by medaling and picking up weapon options) and the game bitch slaps you in later levels. If you don't medal, or avoid options, and even suicide your ship (if you have extra ones), the rank drops or maintains, giving you a chance to reach the later levels, and thus potential for obtaining a higher overall score. Very ingenious play mechanics like this make it fun to figure out which parts of the game give higher score potentials but minimal rank increases.
Anyway, since I've only started playing this, I've been ignoring the rank side of the game, happily picking up options, medals, and milking bosses for all the points they are worth. So I've reached that inevitable brick wall and need to start strategizing.
Tonight, I was able to finally break 4M, again ignoring rank, but only by picking up two extends (extra ships) in Stage 3 using a "super power up" option, which in turn made the game quite pissed. I then proceeded to loose two spare ships on the Stage 3 endboss and two more at the begining of Stage 4. I think I could have avoided these losses, and gotten about 500K more in score, if I reach the Stage 4 endboss. Maybe then I'll begin a rank strategy.
4,091,030 - Lace - Stage 4 - DJK
Posted by Arcade Fever at 12:23 AM 0 comments
Labels: *My High Scores*, Pink Sweets
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
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:
Posted by Arcade Fever at 4:23 PM 2 comments
Labels: Misc
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Girls like Cosmo
I recently bought another cabinet, and have been storing it at my girlfriends place. While keeping it there, I decided to install Cosmo Gang The Video, as its a cutesy shooter game thats pretty easy and fun. Sure enough, I got my girlfriend hooked on it. Whats amazing, is that its even more fun with 2 players. You can read a review of the snes version of it on shmups.com. |
The first weekend we played it, I got a highscore of 4,807,760 Gang 23 (there are 33 Gangs/levels in the game!) After two weeks, my girlfriend was able to beat that with 5,028,420 Gang 25! She was surely hooked. In double play we got up to Gang 28 together, but never finished the game on a single credit. Best I've been able to do since then on my own was 6,700,740 Gang 28.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 11:58 AM 0 comments
Labels: Cosmo Gang
Monday, April 02, 2007
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.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 4:19 PM 0 comments
Labels: Misc
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Spy Hunter Lives!
I've had this sitdown Spy Hunter cab since 1999, when IBM closed down the Taligent offices in Cupertino. The cab was apparently DOA for several months before I rescued it. After opening it up, I found one of the beer-can-sized electrolytic capacitors in the power supply block had blown-up, spewing sticky brown acid into the bottom of the supply. The failure sent a jolt which fried the Power Supply board, main CPU board, and toasted the monitor. It must have been quite a sight to whomever was playing the game at the time, probably a loud bang, and then plume of smoke.
I've been working on restoring it on and off (mostly off) for the last 7 years. I rebuilt the power supply with a switching PS and new harness, replaced the monitor flyback, horizontal transitor, and then recapped the monitor PCB. I aquired a used/working CPU board-set from another collector in San Francisco. But for the longest time, I just could not get the sound or controls to work.
So I decided enough is enough, and dedicated the last two weekends to finishing this project! I bought a new MCR Switching PS from wizzesworkshop and threw out my homemade harness, and sure enough I now had sound with battery backup as a bonus to save scores and analog calibration settings. There were still issues with half the sound effects being distored, and the analog board being dead. I must have swapped out every chip on the SSIO board before realizing the boards were from a standup Spy Hunter model, which has only 2 speakers, so the sound connector is different than my sitdown 4-speaker wiring. After rewiring the connector, sound was solved, although there is still a sizable hum coming from the switching power supply. I don't know why, but the analog controls magically started working after I realized the star-grounding cables were not hooked up to the dual amp boards. Unfortunally this did not fix the loud humming. Last thing was to replace 3 flurecent tubes and starters.
Anothing thing I discovered, is that the cabinet was made from parts of other cool arcade games at the time (apparently this is pretty common). Under the main flooring you can see graphics for a Star Wars upright. And inside the bottom of the seat, Discs of Tron. Both awsome games in their own right.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 4:59 PM 1 comments
Labels: Spy Hunter
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
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)
Posted by Arcade Fever at 10:42 PM 1 comments
Sunday, June 11, 2006
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!
Posted by Arcade Fever at 6:05 PM 1 comments
Labels: Misc
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
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).
Posted by Arcade Fever at 9:34 PM 0 comments
Labels: Misc
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
DDP 2nd Loop
I started playing DoDonPachi again, and finally made it to the 2nd loop with the >50M requirement! I nobomb nomiss'ed up to the end of 1-4. Finished the 1st loop at 52M with 2 ships in stock. Finally died at area 2-3 with a score of 61,891,740 (max hit of 279).
I posted my last highscore back in December.
6/9/06 Score update: just made it to level 2-4 with 74,010,010.
Posted by Arcade Fever at 10:05 PM 1 comments
Labels: *My High Scores*, DoDonPachi
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Pacman at the Library
I may be oldskool, but Pacman just ain't my bag. Although this is too funy to pass up!
Posted by Arcade Fever at 12:18 AM 1 comments
Labels: Misc