New arrival - maybe the worst MVS game

Or I've heard as much. I've not had chance to play it yet.

It's Legend of Success Joe. That's 104 / 148 games.

ROM swapping - fire shark > same! same! same! and Battle Garegga Zakk ROMs

I said there'd be more on those ROMs I received the other day. The ones labelled ZAKK are for my Garegga pcb. The Zakk ROMs fix a number of niggly little issues witht he game such as the rank increasing with plays etc. I fancied that and also wanted some other ROMs anyway since I had an asian board and fancied a JP one with those extends etc. These and the others were burned by the exceptionally helpful Southtown Homebrew.

The chips you need to swap are the two in the centre.

Easily done. I also needed to change the region of my board.

To do so I just had to clip these two jumpers. Located int he bottom right on the board on the above pic.

Another super simple job. And that's it!


Nippon only, just like I like it.

The other 4 chips up there are to turn my fire shark into a same! same! same!. The JP region same game is substantially different. It's one player only (fire shark has 2p) it's zoomed in somewhat and the screen can scroll a little left and right (fire shark is slightly panned out and the screen only scrolls directly up, it has checkpoints (shame since they are mega annoying in any game) and it's substantially harder. There are a bunch of minor differences in enemy fire patterns and pick up colours and stuff too. Well worth doing.


The two sets of chips, including international postage, only set me back $37. And Southtown wouldn't accept payment til I'd confirmed they worked. Superb service, speedy and reasonably priced. I'll certainly use them if I need any mor ROMs burning.

New arrival - Tatsujin

Well, it's not really a new arrival. Just newly living. I picked this up as a faulty board a while back. It's just been resurrected and send back over to me. In case anyone out there has a dead truxton / tatsujin this problem with this one was a dead sound ROM. The pcb won't boot without a working sound one crazy as that sounds. The dude who fixed it just swapped in a working chip and it booted straight up. Strange! This is a nice original JP version. Great game!

New arrivals - A couple more MVS bits

I had these delivered the other day: KOF 99 full JP kit (tatty box), KOF 99 full JP kit (tatty box), KOF 2001 JP cart / box / dips, ASOII cart.

I popped ASOII (aka alpha mission 2) straight into the cab. At the moment I have that, pulstar, ghost pilots and magical drop 3 in there. I'll change it around soon and make it a bit less shooter heavy.

I reckon magical drop 3 / spin master / ASOII / magician lord sounds about what I fancy. I'll swap carts tomorrow to something along those lines.

With this lot I now have 103 / 148 MVS games and mini marquees for 79 / 133 games that came with them.

New arrivals - More MVS, artwork overload!

I had another two parcels of MVS goodness delivered today. The first contained these three NOS kits and two sets of flyers and dips (breakers and super sidekicks 3). Two of the games I already owned as loose carts. The kits were nicely priced though so I picked them up. I'll sell the loose carts and recoup a fair bit of the money.


I also got this pretty awesome haul of MVS art work. There are flyers and dips for a ton of games here, 90% english with a spattering of spanish stuff. Some of it I was really happy to get. There's are for some quality games there.


With the stuff in those parcels I now have 100 of 148 games and mini marquees for 78 of the 133 games that came with them.


I also got these ROMs delivered. More on them shortly!

New arrivals - A bit more MVS art

Today I got two more bare mini marquees and one complete unused art set including mini.


The sengoku 2 mini completes the kit I got last week. The other two are games I like quite a lot (andro dunos and spin master) so I'm especially happy to have tracked minis down for them.

With this little bunch I now have minis for 75 of the 133 games that came with them.

New arrivals - Two more MVS games

Two more carts arrived today. From Italy this time. A nice holo label flip shot cart, and a sengoku 2 kit which is missing the mini marquee and has a box which has seen better days. The kit box isn't bad but it has a burn mark as you can see and a few bends to the lid. The serials are one apart which is relatively common from factory for MVS stuff. It was a nice enough price so I picked it up despite the faults. Hopefully I'll have a mini marquee to go with it soon. That's 99 / 148 games now. Two thirds of the way to a full set!

New arrivals - Another pair of mini marquees

Nice ones too. These are absolutely mint and unused. I have minis for 73 of the 133 MVS games that came with them now.

New arrival - one more MVS cart

I had another cart arrive from Japan yesterday: the mahjong game minasan no okagesamadesu. That brings me to 97 / 148 carts.

I highly recommend you watch this short gameplay video. Pretty stunning!

New arrivals - MVS goodness and DOJ

This cart arrived the other day along with a nice original mini marquee and flyer. It's Quiz Daisousa Sen. I got the sequel a couple of weeks ago and had a couple of credits on it. It seemed kind of interesting but basically unplayable to me since I can't read Japanese. It's a shame cause there looked to be a couple of interesting things going on.

One more cart and one more mini marquee brings me to 96 / 148 carts and 71 / 133 minis

I also got this rather lovely pcb. The fairly sublime Dodonpachi DOJ by Cave. I cracked open the case to have a look.


The original battery was still on there... Uh oh.

As often happens it had leaked. This is bad news because the acid can eat through the traces and kill the pcb. The battery only saves the soft dip settings so, as long as you don't mind it booting on default settings every time, you can just remove it rather than replace it. I snipped it off and treated that area of the board (top and bottom) with a paste of baking soda and water to neutralise the acid. I then cleaned it up thoroughly and left it overnight to make sure it was totally dry.


It still seems well anyway.

I've got all three cave PGM games now. Once the windy chassis is fixed (it's off for repair at the moment) I think I'll pop them in the three 29" cabs which are lined up together. The graphics are a lot less impressive than the SH3 games but there's something beautiful about the way they look. I like the slightly blocky sprites and the music on all of these three is awesome.

Stinger video

It's up on youtube now if you're interested.

New arrivals - A little more MVS and another oldie

A day or two the minis above, and the carts below arrived. After the last lot it's nice to get some pretty minty stuff. With this little lot I now have 95 / 148 carts and 70 / 133 minis.


I also got this old, old pcb. It's Stinger by Seibu Denshi. It was released in 1983 and was Seibu's first release. I paid for this ages and ages ago but due to a string of delays it only arrived the other day. With this there's not only one Seibu shooter I haven't got. This one is really interesting.

It's horizontally scrolling on a vertical screen with isometric sections. I recorded this video of my first credit. The dip settings seem a little strange and I had no idea what I was doing. A couple of really silly deaths near the start too but it'll give you a bit of an idea how it plays. I can't think of another side scrolling vert shooter.

[Blogger doesn't seem to want to upload the vid. Maybe it's too large. I'll put it on youtube some time soon and link to it.]

New arrivals - MVS cart deluge, mini marquees and a pcb

Over the last few days I had a little flurry of parcels. Most of this stuff came from trades rather than outright purchases. First up, another raizing shooter. This time it's their first: mahou daisakusen. I've only had chance to play a couple of credits since I unpacked it but I like it a lot so far. I'll give it a proper workout over the weekend.

Then I had a couple of parcels of mini marquees. The first through a trade with a guy in Sweden:

And the second delivered from the US:
I was especially happy to get that blazing star mini since it completes my kit.


And finally I got this pile of carts. The majority of them have terrible condition or repro labels and two of them have horrible fake carts but they are all legit pcbs. At some point I'll grab a couple of legit shells and have some nice repro labels printed off for the carts that need them. I'd prefer to just get carts in nice shape but these were available as part of a trade and it was too good an opportunity to pass up really. If the price is good I'll take a sketchy label. Legit pcbs only though. If and when I find a nice original label car for a good price I can always upgrade my copy.

With all of this stuff I now have
92 / 148 carts
68 / 133 mini marquees

So this little lot cracked the half way mark for minis. It'll be a lot harder to track down the ones in the home stretch I'm sure.

New arrivals - MVS carts

I got another two parcels of MVS goodness today. One from Italy, the other was a UK purchase from ebay. Between them there were four carts bringing my total up to 85 of 148 MVS games.

The four are:
Quiz Meitantei Neo & Geo: Quiz Daisousa Sen Part 2
Pop 'n' Bounce
Stakes Winner 2
Ghost Pilots

All are in nice shape with nice original labels. I have another batch in the post on the way here. Sadly the condition of those is at the other end of the scale as you'll see when they arrive.

Scion lives!

I work with a guy who's a great solderer. The replacement sound amp for my scion pcb arrived and he kindly replaced it for me.

I popped the repaired board and the motherboard back together, put it in a cab and...




It works perfectly now. No idea what was up with it to make the first one blow. The video is just a couple of minutes of my test credit when it got back, nothing fancy. I got a tripod so I can record videos of a couple of games, I wanted to test that out so made a little sample video.

New arrivals - MVS art and neo print

I had a couple of neo print mobos arrive the other day. The one on the left here is the same as the one I picked up a few months back but the one on the right is a different model. If anyone out there fancies trading me something for one of the matching pair of mobos then let me know. I certainly don't need two of them. If I see any more neo print stuff I'll pick it up if the price is right.


More excitingly I also got these pieces of MVS artwork. There were a few other art pieces in the parcel, these are just the bits I did't already have. I'm going to try and trade the spares for bits I don't already have.

New bits are:
metal slug 2 - complete art set
real bout fatal fury - complete art set
neo bomberman - complete art set
bust a move - one flyer
puzzled - mini marquee
galaxy fight - mini marquee
aero fighters 2 - mini marquee
and a couple generic mvs mini marquees


That's a nice little haul! I hadn't got any new minis for a fair while. With the added 6 in this lot I now have minis for 62 of the 133 games that had them. I have leads on a couple more deals too. Hopefully they'll work out. I have spares sitting here to trade if anyone out there fancies it. Or I'm always happy to buy ones I don't have yet! Let me know if you have any you'd let go of.

New arrivals - dynablaster / fire shark / mahjong MVS

I had another little influx of goodess! Firstly a nice dynablaster / bomberman pcb. It's really good fun, was nice and cheap and is a beautiful original irem board with a lovely foil seal sticker. I may try to ROM swap it into a bomberman since that has an extra mode in two player I think.


Far more expensive was this beautiful pcb.


It's the fantastic and fantastically hard fire shark. I've played this a LOT since it turned up. It's awesome. I definately need Same! Same! Same! ROMs for it though. The list of ROMs I need is pretty long now. The price adds up when you need a bunch.

And, finally, for this little flurry of parcels, I got this. It's mahjong bakatonosama manyuki. The quiz and mahjong carts aren't very common outside Japan although they are plentiful and cheap there. I imported this one. It was only about £9 including SAL shipping from Japan. With this one I now have 81 / 148 mvs games.

New arrival - Scion

I was excited to get hold of this early seibu shooter. It's pretty uncommon and this set me back a fair few bob. I had to import it from Germany.


It came with a jamma adapter, a copy of the pinout and some tasty marzipan. It's really common in Germany to throw some sweets or something in with a parcel. I do it pretty often myself since I think it's a lovely idea. Haribo Goldbaren seem to be the most common thing I get in with bits from over there.


So I popped it in a cab and switched it on. As the boot screen came up there was pretty exciting burst of flame and smoke from a chip. I quickly shut it off and had a look. It's a good job I was testing it outside of the cab or it'd have taken me a while to notice. The smell is pretty distinctive though.


A chip in the audio section had gone kaput. The game now plays ok but with no sound. I have a replacement chip on order. Fingers crossed when I swap that in it'll be 100% working again. It's a real shame it went though. I'm not sure what caused it to go. The voltages were fine, the adapter seems to be wired right and I couldn't see any shorts or anything. I'll give it a thorough check over when the replacement chip gets here and is ready to go in.

New arrivals - A pair of pcbs

One of these had actually been sitting in the sorting office waiting for me since before christmas. I only managed to get there this morning though. First up is...


It's a rather nice pcb. A lovely Japan version too. Sadly it has a slight fault. I bought it knowing that though. The price was right. Intermittantly there is a sprite fault where all the sprites are replaced with white rectangles. I'm almost certain that it's due to a dry solder. If you keep it in a certain orientation it seems OK so fingers crossed it'll be an alright fix. I managed to play a credit or two just fine so long as I didn't move it.

The other pcb is 100% working



It's supposed to not be a great game though sadly. I'll give it a go and make my own mind up like. Most toaplan stuff is decent.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I hope you all had a fine time over the holidays. I've had a nice restful couple of weeks. I've managed to have a bit of cab time. Eaten and drunk far too much too.

Father christmas brought me something very nice! Who knows how he always knows what will make me happy. Fingers crossed you all got something that made you equally happy.


This is a Taiwan license version of Battle Garegga rather than a Nippon ver. It makes no real difference though since I'll probably put some zakk ROMs in it. I absolutely love the soundtrack to this game!