Playing around on the BVM-2110p and Last of the Main Event

Armed with my 112 in 1 MD cart, I proceeded to play some games I missed during the transition period of MD to NeoGeo to PlayStation..

First up is Hyperstone Heist, it plays very well.

Not only did it recycled some of the characters from Turtles in Time, but introduced some original (albeit, boring ) characters. Special mention goes to Rocksteady, he does not look too good.

Next I had a blast on Gaiaries. It is a pretty awesome game, nicely paced, decent power-ups and deaths are fair and not cheap at all. The death blow sound has a nice bass to it, really impressed with this game.

A close up of MD gun turrets in the foreground as it shoots bullets into the background. Definitely something implemented for RF or Composite where the fuzziness would of smoothen the blockiness.

Had a little more celebration that I anticipated. Cue epileptic light show! You have been warned...

I had 3 copies of this game: 2 x 2 Players rom versions and 1 x 4 Players. I decided to only keep one of these and decided the 4 Players is the way to go since that was the version I grew up on.

The 4 Players version here:

And here we have the 2 Players version:

Going back old school.

I got a complete cabinet (coin mech and all) for less than a price of a CAPCOM PCB. Overall, it is in great condition. The body is complete and sound. The electrics is all tidy and dust free. The coin mechanism accepts the old 20c coin. The installed buttons and joystick was rubbish though. There is even a light bulb socket in the cavity for illumination! The marque light is also illuminated by a light bulb which is handy to replace if it blows.

The tube is a Phillips brand and seems to only have Contrast and Brightness the only adjustable variable. Less tinkering I suppose? The image is pretty sharp.

The included game is: Main Event (Japanese revision)

So, onto the first phase of restoring the cabinet to a comfortable zone.

Partial trade for the Atomiswave motherboard...

I just received this as part of a trade for my Atomiswave motherboard. It is the 3rd copy in my collection. Brilliant side scrolling game with fair game play mechanics. Highly recommended!!

And its working as it should...

End of my CRT search.

I spotted this set ( a BVM 2011p) on Trademe and thought to myself "That is 8 years you been waiting for this CRT, 8 years...." so I had to have it. Unfortunately, I was out bided by $6 but relatively new players on the retrogaming circuit..at $756NZD I thought they can keep it. 2 days later I had an email from the seller describing the dissatisfaction of the transaction and ghost bidding what not. 

I offered a relatively comfortable price for him and we made the deal. Suffice to say I was over the moon and excited over the prospect of owning one of these finally.

The first impression  I got of it was it was really really big for a 20" monitor. It could easily been 2 14" mashed together and still room for a videogame console.

After fluffing about for a day, I came to the conclusion that it only accepts C-Sync ( Raw Sync, Pure Sync, Video Sync...) and you can not use composite video for the sync. Most of the information about the required quality of the sync input is not well documented with people feeding sync into the green input tomfoolery. I put my MVS on the monitor through a supergun that only outputs video sync for case and point.

World heroes never looked so good. It is a quality game that does not take itself seriously.

Next I pulled up the internal geometry test screen. Its perfect.

Now to use something I got many moons ago...my Sync Strike! Basically it draws the required power to enable the sync stripping circuit to work from the SCART cable from the console and you can output C-Sync or H-Sync/V-Sync if you so inclined. I can not exactly remember why I got it but I am happy now that I did. The cool thing about it is you can output 2 sets of video signals from the one source...so I might chain it to the smaller 9" PVM I have that seems to be fussy with sync as well. The BVM also lacks audio input/output. So I will output the audio through the phono plugs from the Sync Strike.

Some MD action here:

Drills and Coin Mechs.

A friend suggested I should install coin mechs for the cabinets. One of the cabinet has accessible coin door while the other two not so much as I don't have the keys for them. 

The only option is to drill the locks rather than guessing what keys they take, plus one of the locks has already been pilot drilled so there is no point to get the keys.

The aim of the exercise is to obliterate the shaft that holds the locking tongue so in effect the lock will snap off at that point. The whole process is pretty painful and stressful as the coin counter housing is pretty close to the lock and I also wanted to preserve the locking tongue for the replacement locks.

What I learnt is that the drilling process requires periodic cooling to retain the strength and sharpness of the drill bits and also to change up the diameter...things I could of been told instead of just "drill it out in the middle" as people put it.

To my shock one of the cabinet is missing the coin chute and luckily I found someone selling what I need across the ditch.

Keeping things OG...

An appointment with an old friend...

I had an opportunity to get some private photos with an old friend of mine. We played with the lighting and angles in the game room to see what type of shots we can get from it.