General questions about getting into the Arcade scene

[RadiantSvgun]

Is it difficult to learn the whole arcade deal? I'm really only interested in a few- Neo geo mvs, pgm igs, sega titan, and atomiswave. Ive heard its easy by some, but difficult by others. From what my friend showed me, it looked simple. But I hear you have to have a "kick harness" if you want to play a jamma game with more than 2 buttons. Is it easy to pick up and perform on this kind of stuff? I'm not the most technical-savy person...

I've heard with most JAMMA boards, its just plug and play, do motherboards work the same way?

[Flack]

Is it difficult to learn the whole arcade deal? I'm really only interested in a few- Neo geo mvs, pgm igs, sega titan, and atomiswave. Ive heard its easy by some, but difficult by others. From what my friend showed me, it looked simple. But I hear you have to have a "kick harness" if you want to play a jamma game with more than 2 buttons. Is it easy to pick up and perform on this kind of stuff? I'm not the most technical-savy person...

I've heard with most JAMMA boards, its just plug and play, do motherboards work the same way?

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. What do you mean by "the whole arcade deal"? Like, buying games? Fixing them? Running an arcade? What part of "the arcade deal" have you heard is easy or hard?

I posted a thread two days ago showing how to swap a JAMMA board. JAMMA boards are "plug and play" (to a degree) because they are compatible.

If you could clarify a bit about what you're asking I'll try and give better answers.

[RadiantSvgun]

Ah, things like connecting kick harness and connecting motherboards. I saw the inside of a Soul Calibur III one the other day and got a bit overwhelmed. Before I make the splurge and get into arcade collecting, I just want to make sure that its something I don't need an engineering degree in.

I could never run my own arcade around here.

[Arcade Antics]

Ah, things like connecting kick harness and connecting motherboards. I saw the inside of a Soul Calibur III one the other day and got a bit overwhelmed. Before I make the splurge and get into arcade collecting, I just want to make sure that its something I don't need an engineering degree in.

You definitely don't need an engineering degree, but it wouldn't hurt. ;)

The depth of knowledge you need will be determined to some extent by what games you want/have and what you're doing with them. E.g., if you bought that Soul Calibur and it worked fine, there's not really a whole lot of "new" info you'd need. Common sense dictates that you don't go poking around at high voltage stuff (monitor, power, yada) and so forth, if it's not broken, don't fix it. :) There's nothing to connecting a mobo, you just plug it into the edge connector on the harness and away you go.

On the other hand, if your first machine is a dirt cheap Galaxian with no power or a monitor in bad shape, that's something else. Generally, you'll want to read up on cap kits, basic wiring, monitor discharging, etc. which should be easy to find at the links in the sticky post atop this forum. But if you have more specific questions on a particular game / problem, the gang here will do their best to help you out.

[RadiantSvgun]

Ah, okay. I prefer the 2d fighters, the shumps, and the beat-em ups. I'm taking it that its plug and play with those right?

[XYXZYZ]

So you're just talking about knowing arcade hardware rather than aquiring cabinets? Not too hard, just lean what goes with what.

(I'm just going to babble here!) For example, while JAMMA (http://www.jamma.or.jp/) is a bunch of people who make big decisions on the Japanese ammusement machine industry, in the US shen we say "JAMMA", we're usually referring to the Japanese arcade wiring standard.

All JAMMA means to us is that the hardware will have a certain connector (Called a JAMMA harness), where everything like R, G, and B signals are all on the same pins, controls like up, down, button 1 & 2, the coin switches, etc. are all on the same pins so you can just take a Golden Axe board and switch it with a Double Dragon board so everything will work right and you can save a lot of money not messing with new cabinets. Early games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong had their own wiring routine, so you can't take a Robotron 2084 board and switch it with a Golden Axe.

The JAMMA wiring standard only supports three buttons per player. If you want more buttons, you need more wires that aren't on the JAMMA hanress. So one day Capcom wanted Street Fighter 2 to have 3 punch buttons, and three kick buttons. After assigning the three punches, all the buttons were used up. So to get the kick buttons you need another bunch of wires from the control panel to the board, in addition to the JAMMA harness. And this thing is called a "kick harness".

Now, wasn't that educational?

[Flack]

Most 2D fighters have a lot of buttons. Many shmups have vertical monitors. Most beat-em ups are simple JAMMA cabinets. So if you are asking if you could take a board from one of those types of games and swap them into another one of those types of cabinets I would say it would not be plug-and-play.

It's probably me, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out exactly what you are asking. Are you talking about just owning one arcade cabinet, and swapping boards into and out of that one cabinet?

[RadiantSvgun]

It's probably me, but I'm still having a hard time figuring out exactly what you are asking. Are you talking about just owning one arcade cabinet, and swapping boards into and out of that one cabinet?

Yeah! Exactly!

[Arcade Antics]

Yeah! Exactly!

In that case, you'll want to look for a JAMMA cab with enough buttons/controls for the games you'll play most. If you're mainly looking for vertical games (often for shmups), get one with a vertical monitor. If horizontal (often for BMUs), you'll want a cab with a horizontal monitor. If both, you can get a cab that lets you easily rotate the monitor 90 degrees (often pricey), or just get two cabs, one for each screen orientation.

[RadiantSvgun]

In that case, you'll want to look for a JAMMA cab with enough buttons/controls for the games you'll play most. If you're mainly looking for vertical games (often for shmups), get one with a vertical monitor. If horizontal (often for BMUs), you'll want a cab with a horizontal monitor. If both, you can get a cab that lets you easily rotate the monitor 90 degrees (often pricey), or just get two cabs, one for each screen orientation.


Okay! Thanks a lot! I'll start looking into finding which cabinets are good for shmups.

[XYXZYZ]

I just bought a great cabinet for shmups, just get something with a good looking vertical monitor. Candy cabs are popular among shmuppers if you want something small and efficient, but I like having the US style cabs I grew up with.

[MagicMajenta]

www.klov.com This is a good site for information on JAMMA games. To be precise, the games that use more than 3 buttons need a kick harness with the exception of the MVS which doesn't need one despite having 4 button games. Go to that site and check out the games you want. It will give you as much information as possible like what genre the game is or how many buttons it uses or how many players that game has. It will be useful in finding out if you need to do some extra work in adding in a kick harness. Most of the old beat em ups of the 80's and 90's didn't have a kick harness so if those are what interests you, those boards are ready to play as they are. All you need is a supergun or arcade cab.