Soul Calibur II / Sega ST-V Multigame
Manufactured by Namco (c)2002
& Sega (c) 1995
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Condition When Purchased:
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C+
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Current Condition:
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B-
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I picked up a Soul Calibur II cabinet around the end of 2014 for a very good price. The cabinet is a Mortal Kombat II conversion and in decent shape for the most part. I wish it had a Tri-Res monitor in it, but alas, it's the stock CGA monitor that came with Mortal Kombat II no doubt. The cabinet is solid, but has been painted black and the paint is starting to come off in a few places. I also have a T-Molding issue at th
e front right of the cabinet, but nothing major. The game itself plays great. The monitor needed a cap kit when I picked it up and after recapping it looks as good as new. I decided that due to the space available in the cabinet, this would be a good candidate to use as a Multi JAMMA. Having picked up Darksoft's ST-V Multicart I decided to install it in to the cabinet. Since the majority of games on the ST-V use 4 buttons or less, it worked out great. It's currently using a cheap 2-in-1 JAMMA PCB however, my plans have expanded. I have a Darksoft Multi-CPS2 kit coming shortly and I want to include IT in the cabinet as well. I acquired a 2nd Clay Cowgill JAMMA multikit for a good price a couple weeks ago. I already own one of his multi JAMMA kits running in my Multi-Shooter showcase cabinet and I like how it functions so it was a no-brainer to pick this one up. The multi-kit supports up to 8 different JAMMA devices. The recent kit I picked up included 6 remote PCBs and being I will only be using 3 at this point I decided to use one for the Multi-Shooter cabinet to add Point Blank which I just picked up off ebay this week. I am currently in the process of looking for a CPS2 A+B boa
rd cheap enough to purchase for the Darksoft Multi-CP2 kit. When it all arrives I'll install it in to the cabinet. I will have to cut a new control panel however. I debated whether I wanted to simply add a few more holes (giving each stick 6 buttons) or not and decided on simply cutting a new panel and keeping the Soul Calubur layout panel in the shed in case I ever want to de-convert back to Soul Calibur 2 only again. As for restoration, I am not 100% sure what I am going to do with the cabinet at this point. I figure I have a couple options. (1) I could leave the cabinet as-is… being that it IS pretty much a 90's fighter cabinet, the patina on the cabinet sort of "fits" or (2) I could remove the Soul Calubur artwork, sand, and re-paint. Sure it would look a little nicer, but is all that work really worth it for a multi-fighter? Also, I'm not the type to want to paint over artwork… so that me
ans I'd have to strip paint AND the original Mortal Kombat II art under it. I'm leaning toward simply leaving the cabinet as-is… though I MIGHT touch up some of the wear spots in the black paint.
One thing I need to touch on is the ridiculously ghetto way SOMEONE decided to quiet the game down. When I first got Soul Calibur 2, the sound was extremely "tinny" sounding. I figured the speaker was blown. When I pulled the speaker off the cabinet you can see to the left what I found. Some genius who, evidently, couldn't figure out that there is a sound potentiometer on the PCB, decided the best way to quiet the game would be to stuff FOAM CUSHION in the speaker cavity. As you can see, it's been there a LONG LONG time. Long enough to have formed to the speakers contours. Once the foam cushion was removed … AMAZINGLY … the game sounded awesome! It was LOUD… but a tweak of the sound pot on the PCB brought it down to an acceptable level. It's truly asounding some of the ghetto ways I've seen to quiet a speaker. Do these people think these games didn't come with a way to adjust the volume level?
As for Darksoft's Sega ST-V Multicart… it's pretty awesome. It lets you play ALMOST every ST-V game (a few of the encrypted games aren't supported yet) off one cartridge. You set what game you want to play via a DIP switch (see below) and reboot… the cart loads the game off a micro-SD memory card and places it in the carts memory at which time you reset and the new game comes up as if you'd installed that cartridge. It works great! The ST-V platform is based on the Sega Saturn system and plays a number of fun titles including Radiant Silvergun, Die Hard, and Poyo-Poyo Sun (a great puzzler). To help with game selection I created a menu of games the multi-cart supports with screenshots and DIP settings. You can see that menu below. When I swap out the 2-in-1 for the Clay multikit and add Darksoft's Multi-CPS2 I will add to this blog post. You can check out more pictures of the project as it currently stands below. Thanks for reading.
UPDATE 2/1/2016 – The Soul Calibur PCB set was sold 6 months ago. I had put my Darksoft CPS-2 All-in-One multikit in this cabinet along with the ST-V kit. I recently picked up a Dynamo cabinet for the Capcom CPS-2 kit leaving only the ST-V kit in this cabinet. I decided to go another direction and sold the ST-V kit and will be putting a Pandora's Box 3 in the cabinet and selling it dirt cheap to a friend of mine…
More Photos:
