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Arcade Question (And Huge Thanks for your site/videos)
Question: Would I be able to get a vertical Multi-JAMMA board and swap it out inside my Gauntlet legends game?
Concern 1: Controller – I wasn’t sure if the 49 way optical joystick basically would not work with other JAMMA board games (Double Dragon, Final Fight and such). I know it may be problem with MAME machines, but I wasn’t sure regarding a board swap out compatibility.
Concern 2: Medium Resolution Monitor – Would this cause a problem for other JAMMA games or is that just a MAME issue I seem to read about where they want a low res monitor?
Concern 3: JAMMA Boards – With this using additional connections for 4 player support, I wasn’t sure if that would be a major problem with a board swap out. I was kind of thinking that Player 1 and 2 may be the left two controlers, which isn’t ideal but something I believe I could rewire with joysticks and buttons if I wanted the center two controllers to be connected to the standard Jamma pin board
I ideally would like to preserve this game as is, but swap out with a multi board so that we could play a lot of games I love. I was starting to think that this cabinet may not be the best to make into a Multi-Arcade but I wanted to start with what I had on hand. My ideal goal is to have 2 multicade cabinets for vertical and horizontal monitor set up games. Any advice or feedback on converting a Gauntlet Legends would be MOST appreciated. Thanks. I have roughly a $1,000 budget to apply here and wouldn’t mind spending a few hundred bucks to get a good JAMMA Multi-Board. Thank you again for any guidance.
Tom
1 answer
Response from Jonathan: Tom,
First off, thanks for the kind words. We’re glad that you find the content on our website useful. As for your questions…
Question: Yes, you could get a vertical Multi-JAMMA board and swap it into your Gauntlet Legends but you would have some issues. Issue 1 is your screen orientation. Since Gauntlet Legends has a horizontally mounted monitor, the bottom of the picture would be displayed on either the left or right side of your monitor. You would have to rotate your monitor to get it to display correctly. Issue 2 is discussed below in the Concern 2 section.
Concern 1: I know that some Multi-JAMMA boards support the 49 way joysticks (the ArcadeSD comes to mind) but I’m not sure how any other boards would do with these joysticks. Sean Riddle has a good article on how to use an EPROM to translate a 49-way joystick’s outputs to be used with games that use normal digital joysticks if you’re interested. Here’s a link: http://www.seanriddle.com/49way.html. If you decide to use this as a MAME cabinet, GP-Wiz makes a 49 way joystick to USB interface that would allow you to use these joysticks with a computer. Here’s a link: http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=233.
Concern 2: Yes, your medium resolution (25 kHz) monitor would present some problems as most standard JAMMA boards output standard resolution (15 kHz). Some boards are switchable (Golden Tee and NFL Blitz come to mind) but most only do standard resolution. With that said, if you went the MAME route and used an ArcadeVGA card in your computer it should work fine as this video card puts out either standard or medium resolution depending on the setting.
Concern 3: Yes, I believe you are correct. The left most controls would be for Players 1 & 2. Of course, this does depend on your wiring and can be changed pretty easily.
As you can probably tell from my responses, this cabinet is really not the ideal setup for a swappable JAMMA arcade cabinet. You could probably get a better candidate for way less than the $1000 budget that would save you a lot of trouble in the long run. Of course, MAME is an option but (considering the popularity of Gauntlet Legends) might not be the best option for this particular cabinet.
Hope that helps. Thank you for your questions and good luck with your future repairs.
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