phillv85

That particular cabinet looks like clean and tidy, but I’ve heard some horror stories of cabs from China. Bad reproduction parts, bodged jobs on electrics, badly fitting monitors, horrendous rust etc. If you got pictures of the exact cab before you bought it then I wouldn’t rule out at least checking the shipping price. If you’re after a Blast City I’ve got one I’m potentially moving on, the caveat being that I want to sell it with all the spares I’ve got for it and I have quite a few spares.

Personally I’d just go for the Japanese physical version. It’s in English and you won’t have to wait ages for it.

If you’re willing to import then Japan has a physical version ready for pre-order.

It’s a tough one to answer, there’s 3 big contenders for me: Mega Drive, my first console and the console I’ve probably explored the library for the deepest. Xbox 360, the console that got me back into gaming after I kind of lost interest in anything that wasn’t PES for many years. PS4, the console with a gigantic library with loads of games I’ve not got around to playing, but also plenty of greats I have played. I think it’s probably got to be the Mega Drive, although there’s an absolute wealth of shoot em ups I’d sorely miss on the other two.

Yeah NAOMI motherboards are chunks. What you really need after MVS is IGS PGM. Then get the CAVE bootleg carts and you’ve got 3 of CAVE’s finest shooters. There’s also some decent beat em ups on the PGM.

Sung Villain: Turtles - Shredders Revenge I just didn’t really enjoy this very much. It’s a decent enough game but the mechanics in this one are not what I want from a game in this genre. The lack of stun lock and the combo system just broke this for me. Glad others enjoyed it, but I won’t be going back to this one in a hurry. Unsung Hero: This will have to wait a little longer, I need a few more hours on Evil West first.

I started this today and am about 2 hours in. So far I’m enjoying it. I can see people’s gripes with it, but I’m fine with it being a bit janky, I do like a 7/10 type game. I’ll carry on and see how far I get, I’m already pretty sure it’ll be a single play through and done, but hoping to enjoy that journey.

I’d say start with DDP on Novice mode using strong style or ESP Ra De playing on Super Easy Mode if you’ve not spent much time with bullet hell games before.

To be honest, they don’t age as well as CRT cabs. The stock monitors in a lot of them are not very good, and being in smokey arcades has left a lot of the monitors quite yellowed. There’s still new stock of them coming out, or at least Chinese versions which are fairly well priced. The monitors in them are often not as low latency as you might want though. Quite a few end up with consumer panels in that have just been decased. I personally wouldn’t want one for 15/31khz games, but for 720p games they’re great. If you’re into Taito Type X ownwards releases then a Vewlix is a good choice. The other good thing about a Vewlix is it’s very easy to stick a console inside it. Rigging a Mega Drive up to a CRT cab can be a bit of a bastard, but sticking a PS4 in a Vewlix is a doddle.

Yeah I’ve used a few, never owned one though.

I don’t think there’s any cabs left in Japan to ship out anymore, not in bulk anyway. The candy filled arcades are mostly long since closed and those left are probably here to stay for the medium term. These cabs are 20-30 years old now, even the newest CRT cabs are mid-late 2000’s. Sadly I think the ship has now sailed on bargain cabs. You’re going to have to hit up a collector if you want one unless you get very lucky.

DOJ

The PS2 must have the best 2D fighter library of any console. There’s so many good games on there: Various Guilty Gears Various Street Fighters (including 3rd Strike, the absolute daddy) The above mentioned Hokuto no Ken Various King of Fighters Fatal Fury collections Melty Blood Capcom vs SNK Marvel vs Capcom 2 Samurai Shodown Mark of the Wolves

A kid down the road from me got it and came over to tell me he had “the best game ever”. He must have gotten suckered into the hype, but I hadn’t heard of it. I was only 9 and didn’t have regular access to magazines. I went over and remember asking how it’s the best game ever. He said he didn’t know why it was, but all the magazines were saying it was. No idea what he read, but he had it on the Mega Drive so I assume it was mags covering Sega in some form that he’d seen it in. I do remember thinking it was fucking shite. I think a few days after he got it he also realised it was shite and was really disappointed. It’s all I really remember about the game from back in the day.

Ah well, I love a 6 or 7/10

I’m getting this and Gungrave for Christmas, glad to hear it’s fun.

Disappointing - Stranger of Paradise. I thought this looked pretty cool but was prepared for it to be a little undercooked. What we got was something I just found so boring. The enemies are just so tedious and the stage layouts are no fun. Surprising - Pokemon Legends Arceus. Was just quite a bit better than I expected. Loads of fun running around catching Pokémon.

Yea the 360 version is region locked. I’d definitely recommend playing it though. The IIX mode is my favourite arrange mode of any of the CAVE releases. It’s what DSII should have been. The PS4 version is perfectly playable, just the colours are off and the slowdown is heavily reduced compared to what came before.

Deathsmiles 1 is brilliant on PS4 but DS2 and it’s arranges (particularly IIX) are still varying degrees of worse than the 360 version sadly.

City Connection sure know how to disappoint with their releases. Everything they release seems botched. Inaccurate slowdown, huge lag and now random slowdown.

Default config for Astro and New Astro is JAMMA, default for Astro City 2 (which is really rare) is Sega Model 2. Astro’s and New Astro’s are two of the most common candies, so are reasonably priced comparatively and there’s plenty of spares around. They also come as standard with a Nanao MS8 (most Astro’s) or MS9 (late Astro’s and New Astro’s) which are superb 15khz monitors.

Indeed, Atari holds very little nostalgia for me. I read the articles but it’s not a company I have a great deal of interest in despite the huge impact they had on the games industry.

I used a CGA to VGA adapter board when I was dicking around making a tabletop arcade cab. There’s several inputs on them and you can connect your VGA monitor to it for the output. You can even choose your resolution via the board. One of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111462755254?hash=item19f3b2abb6:g:QDkAAOSwVR1jD1w8

Yea they pretty much always had a join. Even the newer 2 LCD screen Darius game has a visible line down the middle. Most arcade monitors are decased so there’s not usually a bezel between the monitors so less obvious than TX-1, but definitely there. CRT’s were all still curved screens as well back when Ninja Warriors etc. came out so it’s even more obvious because the curvature stands out a mile. It’s still super cool though!

I’ll try to bear you in mind if it’s still kicking around and I decide to sell. I got this one from Rklok, a guy in Holland who imports them from Japan and ships them worldwide. He’s a reliable seller, but I don’t know how many CRT cabs he gets these days as even Japan is running dry now. There’s a couple of forums worth signing up to, Arcade Otaku and UKVAC. Blast’s come up every so often on both forums and there’s a wealth of knowledge on them both.