Marvel vs Capcom CPS2 B-Board :)

Marvel vs Capcom CPS2 B-Board

This one arrived in the post this week ๐Ÿ™‚ It’s a phoenixed version of Capcom’s awesome 2D brawler Marvel vs Capcom, and isn’t it a beauty? Haven’t had a chance to give it a whirl as yet since the cab’s got the monitor sitting vertically, so whenever I get around to rotating it back to a horizontal position, I’ll look forward to giving it a go ๐Ÿ™‚

Changing the arcade cab’s joysticks – 4-way, 8-way, 2-way

So I’d read quite a while ago about changing the gate or plate on your arcade cab’s joysticks and never really “got” it… I mean, I only remember using standard 8-way joysticks when gaming, but I think I’ve finally worked it all out ๐Ÿ™‚

It all happened as a result of getting the 48-in-1 installed in the machine – when Wifey and I sat down for some retro gamage, we found that in some cases it just wasn’t controlling that well… Pac-man in particular was problematic! So afterwards I popped open the control panel to see how it worked:

Changing the Sanwa JLF standard gate (rectangle), part 1

So, by default my cab was setup for 8-way control (i.e. what most modern games use for control), which for the standard rectangle gate on the Sanwa is in the middle:

Changing the Sanwa JLF standard gate (rectangle), part 3

The shape in the rectangle controls the freedom of movement the base of the joystick shaft has when it sits in the control panel. So, by changing the configuration of the rectangle gate, you can control the joystick’s degree of movement, restricting it to 8-way, 4-way or 2-way (horizontally or vertically).

To get started, remove the screws holding it in place:

Changing the Sanwa JLF standard gate (rectangle), part 4

From here, you’ve got the rectangle plate itself:

Changing the Sanwa JLF standard gate (rectangle), part 5

On the left is the 4-way template, in the middle is the 8-way template, and on the far right is the 2-way template, which you can set for vertical or horizontal. I can’t think of too many vertical 2-way controlled games you’d play with a joystick (I mean, Pong can be setup for vertical play, but you’d normally use a spinner instead of joysticks), but still, I’ll show how you set it up ๐Ÿ™‚

4-way:

Changing the Sanwa JLF standard gate (rectangle), part 6

2-way, vertical:

Changing the Sanwa JLF standard gate (rectangle), part 7

I thought I took a snap of it in the horizontal position, but mustn’t have… go me ๐Ÿ˜› Anywho, you pretty much grab the rectangle as per the above image, and swing it around 90° clockwise, then screw it in again.

Anywho, I’ve currently got the two Sanwa sticks locked into 4-way mode at the moment, which means that, in theory, I should now do much better at Pac-man, right?

Changing the Sanwa JLF standard gate (rectangle), part 9

Oh well, I’d better get back to practicing ๐Ÿ˜‰

… because I am so, so bad at that game!!!!!!

Anywho, there are a handful of extra pics on page two of the Arcade Stuff – Cabinets gallery, so feel free to check it out (and remember, there’s full blah-blah commentary when you click on any of the thumbnails).

Massive cartridge cleaning session

Cartridge cleaning, Winter 2009 (4 of 5)

A few months back I decided to sit down and go through all of my carts and thoroughly clean the contacts on all of them. Despite being a bit finicky over my nerd collection, the reason I actually went and did this was because I’d grab a game off the shelf to play and would end up having to clean the contacts to get it working on whatever system I was playing it on.

So, I hit the windex, grabbed some cotton tips and got cleaning. I didn’t have anywhere near enough cotton tips to spare two per cart, so by the end of the session the cotton tips were absolutely knackered ๐Ÿ˜›

But hopefully with all that done, it means I won’t have to do it for a long time ๐Ÿ™‚ Nowadays whenever I grab an old game that uses a connector (i.e. cart or arcade PCB), I always clean the contact before I get started, saves me doing it down the road I guess ๐Ÿ˜›

Cartridge cleaning, Winter 2009 (5 of 5)

If you’re keen on a few more pics, check out the Collections – Miscellaneous gallery.

Rotating the monitor on my Sega Astro City

Disassembling the Astro part 3...

Finally got around to rotating the monitor on my cabinet on the weekend – my father-in-law was staying with us for a few days, and since he was keen to give Galaxian and Galaga a go (and those are on the 48-in-1 I picked up a while ago, along with plenty of other classics!), it wasn’t too hard to convince him to give me a hand rotating the monitor since I’m not strong enough to do it on my own ๐Ÿ˜‰

Anywho, it wasn’t too tricky – simply take off the shroud by flipping open the control panel, remove the screws holding the plastic housing down, unhook the connection to the speakers (mine was easy to disconnect with a handy molex connector), remove the screws and two plates on the back of the cab (the top panel hides the fluro tube and the speakers, the next one down hides the access to the monitor chassis), then slowly lift the shroud off. Next up, I disconnected the cabling between the RGB lines from the JAMMA connector from the chassis, then tested the AC line to the chassis (plenty of give) and removed the screw that were bolting the cab to the frame. Next up, lift and turn the monitor clockwise or anti-clockwise (erm, I can’t remember which… ๐Ÿ˜‰ ) and re-sit it on the bolts and wind them up again. If you’d like me and the image is upside down, don’t panic – I unplugged the yoke connector on its existing socket on the chassis and plugged it into the other one – fixed it right up (though don’t forget to disconnect the power between these tests!!). Once all that was done and it survived the smoking tests, I wound the voltage on the PSU back to +5v flat without a JAMMA board connected, plugged in the 48-in-1, wound it up to +5v on the mark, tested it up, and bam, worked fine! Mind, the monitor needs a really thorough degaussing, so I’ve added a degaussing wand to my “to-get” list to fix that up.

Disassembling the Astro part 7...

Anywho, on Sunday I jumped in and started messing with the DIP switches, and have it all nicely configured. Also started messing around with the gate on my Sanwa sticks, but that’s something to discuss in another post ๐Ÿ˜€

The important bit, though, is that it was awesome fun to play through the classic games ๐Ÿ˜€ My top pick at this stage is either Space Invaders or Shao-Lin’s Road ๐Ÿ˜€ ๐Ÿ˜€ ๐Ÿ˜€

If you want more pictures of the cabinet and rotating it, you can view them in the new arcade stuff – cabinets gallery.

Finishing Final Fight on my Astro City! :)

It’s obviously a week for awesome arcade gamage ๐Ÿ˜€ My brother-in-law Hamez is currently staying with us while he’s back here visiting from interstate, and last night after some subtle suggestions from yours truly, we jumped onto the arcade cab for some awesomeness. This time it was Capcom’s seminal scrolling beat’em’up Final Fight ๐Ÿ™‚

While I remember playing this one at the arcades, I have probably clocked up more hours playing the amazing Mega CD port back in the 16-bit era. Because of the difficulty and the continues/lives system, I never managed to finish the game beffore, so it was nice to be able to finish the arcade version and see the ending to the game ๐Ÿ™‚ We were actually doing pretty well as far as continues go at the start of the game, but by the time we got to the end, the Free Play setting really came in handy ๐Ÿ˜€

Anywho, I only started taking pics when we got to the end of the last level – the gallery’s below in all its wonky glory since I was trying to play and take photos at the same time ๐Ÿ˜› For those interested, I’m taking up the 2P slot as Guy, whilst Hamez spent the latter half of the game playing as Haggar, doing the grab-jump-piledrive technique over and over again. Because it’s awesome ๐Ÿ™‚