I saw a nintendo arcade cab by "gremlin"??

[Mason P.]

I was in a demo home (we're looking at buying a home) and in the bonus room they had an new looking arcade cabnet that was set on free play. It had a few games on it from donky kong to ms. pac-man, pac-man, mario bros and galaga. I think it might have even more. I looked all over the cab for a manufacturer name, but the only thing I saw was the word "gremlin". Now I asked the agent on duty and she said she has been asked 100 times about it, but can't get anybody in "upper management" to tell here where they got the machine. It came with perfessional decals and nice plastic joysticks. I don't think this company would know where to get, let alone make a mame cabnet.

I am just baffled about this. I will try to get some picks if I can get back over there. It is quite a drive from my current house. I just wondered if anybody might know anything.

[ubersaurus]

Gremlin was an old arcade manufacturer as I recall that eventually merged with Sega.

[Flack]

I can shed some light on this.

A lot of new home builders are partnering with coin-op owners for the reason you mentioned (putting demo games in homes for the purpose of making the game room look nicer). What you most likely saw was not a MAME cabinet but a multi-kit. They have JAMMA boards with 4, 8, 39, 48 and more games on one JAMMA board. So it's similar to a MAME cabinet in that it plays multiple games, but it's all on a board so there are no moving computer parts inside.

I spoke with a vendor just yesterday who told me he did the same thing in new homes around here in Oklahoma.

[Mason P.]

Where could I get one of these cabs? This sounds great, a mame cab that has no moving computer parts. But how about the decals?

[Flack]

Typically these are sold on the down low as the boards are not licensed and are technically illegal.

If you want to build your own cabinet, all you need is a JAMMA game (you can find these all over the place) and one of those boards, and then you just swap boards (5 minute job). Search eBay for "jamma 39" or "jamma 48" and you'll usually find the board.

http://cgi.ebay.com/BRAND-NEW-48-in-1-Jamma-PCB-TOP-SUGGESTION_W0QQitemZ290084098234QQihZ019QQcategory Z13716QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Going price for the 48-in-1 seems to be around $300 including shipping.

[Mason P.]

could I just buy an existing arcade cab with the jamma connection in it and then the 48-1 board and have them work together? I am totaly new to to this.

[Flack]

Yes, in fact that's the general idea. Think of the JAMMA connector as, oh, the IDE connector that plugs into your computer's hard drive. Any JAMMA board will plug into any JAMMA harness. There are other things to take into consideration, however. The main thing would be, the 48-in-1 board requires a vertical (up and down) monitor, so if you picked up a game with a horizontal one you could have to rotate it (not difficult, but it would be easier to just pick up one from the start that's vertical).

If you go to klov.com and search for a game (say, Robocop) and look at Conversion Class, it says JAMMA. So you could theoretically swap one of those boards into it (except it's a horizontal monitor, so you would need to rotate it as well).