New arrival - Shippu Mahou Daisakusen

I got a rather nice parcel in the post from Japan yesterday. It contatined this little chunk of raizing loveliness. The game is Shippu Mahou Daisakusen, called Kingdom Grandprix overseas. It's a shooter with a race element to it. You and your competitors race through the levels. You have to dodge bullets and shoot enemies as with other shooties but you can also nudge your fellow racers into danger. Sitting higher up the screen is more dangerous but allows you to travel faster. You can also hold down the A button which stops you from shooting but gives you a speed boost. It's a nice idea for a game.

I've not had all that many games yet. It's pretty looking and the sound is pretty good but I'm not sold on the gameplay yet. Will have to give it a little more time.

New arrivals - ROM cassettes

As Takashi Nishiyama refers to MVS carts in this rather lovely interview at 1UP. I've heard other folks use the term before. I like it.


I had these five new games turn up today. KOF 2000 / last blade 2 / league bowling / pulstar / super sidekicks 3. I'm especially looking forward to playing pulstar. I can see that being in the U4 for quite a while!

The arts were a nice extra. I already had a last blade mini but I didn't have any paperwork. It's a shame they're holepunched. I wonder why so much MVS art is. I can't think of a real reason why people would do it.

With this bunch I have 80 of the 148 MVS games.

New arrival - Cute art

I got these repro cute art bits today: a control panel overlay and the coin entry sticker. I still have some more art to get later on. I was generously gifted some nice kick rubber recently too. Once I have a bit of time I'll dismatle the cab and get it ready for painting.

I still have to sort a monitor. Not had any joy with a few wanted ads. I may have to get hold of a tube from a TV and have a custom arcade chassis built. It should give a nice result. Won't be cheap but shouldn't be too bad. I'll be keeping my eye out for an 18" TV with a quality tube.

New arrivals - A nice seibu pcb, and a cab and such

I've received a few things since I last posted. First was this samurai showdown IV cart in a rather fetching rental cart. That makes 75 / 148 MVS games I now own.


As I've said before, despite not being a fighter fan really I like the Samurai Showdown series. They have a great atmosphere and music. I'm happy to just listen and watch the backgrounds and sprites while I get a kicking from the CP :) I was a lot more interested in this game though! I'd been looking for one for a while. I eventually bought this one from France. Cross channel postage was pleasantly rapid!



The layout of stuff on this board is pretty wacky. The large black bits are insulated sub boards which are on legs which bend at 90 degrees. There are other chips underneath. The game is...

Seibu's proto raiden release Air Raid. This was released in 1987, three years before the first raiden game. The graphics are very cutesy (and awesome) but the gameplay reveals the family resemblance. It only arrived a couple of hours ago but so far I'm liking it. The design is great. The sound isn't really, especially the effects. Game play is pretty good. There are a few different power ups including a speed up and bubble shield which aren't in raiden. I'm not sure there's a vulcan weapon sadly. I haven't found one yet anyway. Kind of a shame.


And over the weekend I also collected this beautiful Jaleco Pony III 25. After christmas some time I'll move it to sit next to my other one. They'll make a beautiful couple. It's been repainted and converted to 240V but it's otherwise original. The convergence isn't amazing but it's good enough to not bother me during play. I love these little things. So, so pretty.

New arrivals - Sexy parodius and an F3 cart

What a terrible photo that is. I was just testing the puzzle bobble 4 cart I got yesterday. The monitor's in the wrong orientation but I still managed to put in a reasonably decent performance on my test credit. I like puzzle games. They're my second favourite genre after shooters. Speaking of which:

I also got this lovely thing.

The marvellous sexy parodius from konami. It's a fantastically fun game. I really need to adjust the monitor on the candy 18 to fit since the image is slightly high and too wide but I was having too much fun playing to bother! I prefer vertical to horizontal shooters so I don't have many of them. This one is a goodie though.

New arrivals - A cab in need of love and a little gift

This turned up today. It's been severely tampered with but underneath it all it's still a Capcom Cute. Or mini cute as most people call them. This one has had all sorts done to it. It's been repainted obviously. It's actually a really nice quality paint job but It's going to be covered. It has also had all the internal gubbins stripped out and had an lcd installed. No loom, no monitor, no interior door, no coin mech. It needs a LOT of work. It's a labour of love though. It's the perfect size for my diminuative lady friend and she likes the design. She gets to choose the colour. So far she is leaning towards yellow. I have tracked down most of the artwork hopefully although I won't be able to get my hands on it for a few months since the seller has it in storage. The last thing I need right now is another project but it's the only opportunity I'll have to get a decently priced cute. It'll never be right but I should be able to get it working as new and looking right externally and that's more than enough for the lady friend.


A friend also sent me this awesome shooting game historica Opa Opa :D

It was in with a pcb but that's a christmas present. As such it'll stay wrapped up until the 25th.

Innundated with awesomeness

Today I was deluged wih goodness. In no particular order, the postal folk gave to me:

Espgaluda 2 poster

ketsui poster


Ketsui and Armed Police Batrider pcbs

The majority of an ESPGaluda kit

ESPGaluda II kit
An original E2 Marquee holder

Blue's Journey MVS cart and a pile of buttons. With that cart I now own half of the MVS games.

That's an incredible selection of shooters. Three of the four pcbs were in my top 10 most wanted list. But they came at a price. In order to get hold of them (and not bankrupt myself) I let go of my aero table and a few aero related bits and pieces I had. It pained me to see it go but I certainly got some awesome bits and bobs in return. It all happened in a bit of a whirl. Me and the other end of the trade arranged a deal really quickly and within 18 hours of shaking electronic hands it was gone. Quick and sharp probably was best. No long, drawn out goodbyes.

The aero table was a really beautiful cab. I'll miss it. Especially after all the hours and effort I put into it. If I ever own another cocktail table it will be a Jaleco Table Pony. Unless the lady friend talks me into a ms pacman cocktail. If there's ever one for sale near here it may end up heading this way. She's fanatical!

New arrivals - Paperwork and another cart

An extremely generous friend of mine sent me this viper phase 1 NV art set. What a fellow! I think I'll pop it and the game in a cab this week and have a bit of a session on it.


I also picked up this kit stuff for my muchi muchi pork pcb. It's not a complete kit but it's not far off. Finally I grabbed a breakers MVS cart. It's original with an original label but it's serial clipped. You don't see them all that often so I thought I'd grab this one. Fairly unbeliveably the seller sent it in just a paper envelope. No other packaging at all. It made it safely thankfully. That makes 73 of 148 MVS carts I have.

New arrivals - Couple of MVS carts, couple of shooter pcbs

I had these delivered this week. The left pcb is Heavy Unit by kaneko / taito. Doesn't look any different from the megadrive version if my memory's any good. The right one is aero fighters. It's the third time I've owned it. A few of my friends picked it up recently and I've played a bit of 2 and 3 and fancied a blast again. I may well put it in and instantly remember why I sold it twice.

The MVS carts are Real Bourt Fatal Fury and Garou Mark of The Wolves. Garou will be heading straight into the 4 slot and will probably stay there a while.

With that pair I now have 72 / 148 MVS carts.

New arrivals - The living and the dead

I had a couple of pcbs arrive. Above is a rather nice Wyvern Wings kit. It was purchased as NOS by the previous owner but died on him. He was kind enough to send it my way. I'll post it off for repair pretty soon. Then I'll be able to enjoy the amazing sounding Metallica midi soundtrack.


I also picked up this for the ladyfriend. She's a big Ms Pacman fan. Sadly the original is non-jamma and has strange voltage requirements. This bootleg Ms Pacman CE is jamma though. Not perfect but hopefully it'll keep her happy!

New arrivals - Cab refurb time again

Yesterday I had a very bulky delivery.

First up was this little lady


A second candy 18 which will sit next to it's twin. Twins they may be but they're not identical. There are a couple of minor differences between the pair I may make a post on at some point. Not a massive amount, just some little things with colour on the marquee holder and the stripe around the glass mainly. I'd paid for this a while back but left it with its previous owner for a bit then sent it to replay.

Also in the van were this lot:


Four very tired, ex trocadero Jaleco pony II 28s. I've been searching for one of these for a long time and when the opportunity to grab these I took it. They are in need of a massive amount of work though. They need repainting, new bezels, new CPOs, new header insert, probably new monitors. It won't be cheap or easy but I'm looking forward to restoring them and they should look fantastic once they're finished. I'll put all the progress on here as it happens!

New arrivals and a trip to replay

I had a good weekend. I took the long train journey over to Blackpool to replay. I'd lent a couple of cabs too. Was great to catch up with some friends from arcade otaku and play a few games. There was a bunch of console stuff, masses of pinball cabs and a fair number of woody cabs but I mainly stuck around the candy cabs. Mostly playing games I own too. I was unable to resist the siren call of ibara, the greatest game ever made. I managed to beat my high score on it too! Just a shame it's not on my pcb so it's not on my score table. I'll have to top it on my own. There was a small but nice row of candys. There were due to be a binch more but one exhibitor pulled out at the last minute sadly. I'd have lent more had I known.


While I was there I picked up a couple of bits and bobs

Since it's my favourite game I decided to pick up an ibara kit to go with my bare pcb. I'd love an original poster too in theory but actually I just don't think the picture's all that good. It's a shame. Nearly every ther cave game has a better poster. I also grabbed a stakes winner cart. That brings me to 70 of 148 MVS games owned.

The AWSD panel I plan to get a repro overlay for. I'll patch the card reader hole and turn it into a 1L E2 panel. I'll hold ono my nice original 2L 8B panel too but it's pretty much a dedicated ibara ca so I may as well have a 1L panel in it. I'll perhaps use button 3 as the start button though to make it easier to centre the options.

The new buttons and ball top are for the pony. I swapped them in today. The colours match those in the light up header. I quite like the look.

How to strip / disassemble a Konami WIndy

Taking apart a windy is generally pretty straight forward bu here are a couple of tricks. I thought I'd post a guide up so that anyone else who needs to do the job doesn't have quite as much head scratching to do as I did. I didn't totally strip mine, just took it apart enough to fit it through the doors into the room it will be living in. Doing to final bits to get it totally taken apart would be pretty self explanatory though. Taking one of these doesn't take any specialised tools. A decent Philips head screwdriver is pretty much all you need. Mine also had a single 10mm bolt. That's all though!

First you need to remove the exremely awesome marquee holder. That's just 3 screws around the back. After that you should open up the rear access hatch, discharge the monitor and remove the chassis. That had already been done on mine so no snaps for that. The monitor in these is unframed and the chassis rests on a metal shelf above the coin box.

Next open the cp and remove the 3 large screws holding the hood down.

You then need to remove the screws holding the monitor stays in place. It doesn't matter which end you undo them.

You can them lift the hood right up and undo the screws on the hinges. That will let you lift off the hood entirely.

After that you should very carefully pull out the tube. You'll need to take out a few screws and possibly a bolt holding in a ground wire. Be very careful with the tube's neck obviously since it's unframed.

The next step is to remove the front section (including the cp and door surrounds etc) from the base. With that bit removed the cab's easily small enough to go through even the thinnest door if you poke it through sideways.

Either side of the monitor mounting points inside the cp is a screw whcih goes into that front section. Take those out first.

While you're up there you may as well unhook the necessary wires from the i/o board. You don't need to take out all that many. The two USB cables have to come out along with the 3 on headers in the middle of the board.

To keep it safe you may as well slide out the pcb board and unhook the jamma > jvs converter too.

At this point it's easiest to tip the cab onto its back. Then remove the screws along the sides of the cab.


After that all that remains is to remove the screws which hold that front section to the base. The first few are easy enough to find inside the pcb door.

The last couple are tricker to get to though. They're under the cash box and can't be removed without shifting the cash box housing. First undo the 3 screws holding the coin door on.

Then remove the door surround screws.


With that done you can gently push back the coin box enough to get your screwdriver in and remove the last couple of screws which go into the base. There are 2 in there I think. Possibly three.

At this point the base section is loose. However there are some little raised nubs on the base which snap into the cp front section. That means you can't just slide the cp section forwards. You'll have to pull the base down slightly and lift up the upper portion a little to get the room. This is made a lot easier by having th cab on it's back. Alternatively you could just remove the base entirely I guess. You'll be left with this as the biggest lump. It's nice and light and easy to fit through a tiny doorway on into a car boot.

Other than the messing about with the monitor it's an extremely straightforward job. You'll probably have to undo a few ground wires I haven't mentioned but you'll spot that easy enough.

One out, one in

Yesterday I said farewell to one cab and welcomed another.

The departee was the consolised ID cab. I enjoyed playing about and building it and spent a lot of time playing on it too. I should have kept track of how much forza 3 I played on it. A lot! Outrun 2 was fantastic on it too. But I did use it a little less than my stick cabs and I had the opportunity to pick up something else to take its' place so I said farewell.

So the driver left in the morning. And in the afternoon a friend and I took a trip to collect this


A Konami Windy 2. The cab is in lovely shape overall but needs a bit of work.

The cp is a repro and has a few extra buttons near the starts which I need to sort plugs for. The main issue is the monitor. The cab was originally built with a toshiba tri sync in it but that's long gone. It currently has a pentranic / rodotron trisync but the chassis on it is dead. Even when it was working the geometry was pretty poor and it had quite a bit of side compression in 15k. I need to decide whether to get the current chassis repaired or buy a replacement.

Other than that it's all great though. It plays blind and the konami jamma > jvs converter in it is working great. Stripping it down was OK but it took a bit of figuring out. I'll put a guide up soon to help anyone who has to do it.

New arrival - NAC PSU

I got this bargain NAC PSU in the post today. I got it off ebay for £11 including delivery. It's loads cleaner than the one that was in my NAC and the test and service buttons work unlike on my old one. Result!

New arrival - Mushihime Tama kit

I got this rather nice kit in the post today. There's a ton of stuff in the box (a figure, bundles of flyers, special balltops and loads else). I'll maybe get around to taking some photos some time. For now I've popped it into the candy 18. The new chassis is working but the arc needs looking at I think. Luckily the cab's making its way to replay for the show and there'll be folk there who can give me a little advice on what to do with it.

Over the last couple of days I also moved my cabs around. I wanted to have them all in one room now the winter's drawing in. I tend to not have the heating on in every room. Since cabs don't like cold and damp I thought I'd shift them all together and worry about keeping conditions right in there. I also needed to make space for a new arrival or two I'm expecting in the nearish future... Once replay is over and they're all in one place I may take a line up shot or something.

New arrivals - Candy 18 bits

A friend bought an SNK candy 18 which was in a bit of a sorry state. It had a mahjong pcb and panel and an extremely burnt monitor. He decided to put an lcd in it and wire it for naomi. Since I am a stock guy he traded me the original parts he was discarding for a bit or two I had laying around. Here are my spoils!

A nice candy 18 mahjong cp


complete (but hacked) candy 18 loom with mahjong adapter, coin chute, PSU, service panel


Monitor bezel, marquee holder, a jaleco mahjong pcb (not hooked it up yet so not sure which. There are apparently 5 mahjong games which use this hardware) and, best of all, a nanao ms7 18 chassis. I swapped this with the poorly one on my candy 18. Unfortunately it has a similar arc in the lopt as my original. It doesn't need to warm up like my other though and the arc in this one doesn't affect play like the other. I'm super happy to finally get hold of this lot since it originally got lost in the post on the way to me.