Multi-Shooter Showcase Cabinet

Showcase Cabinet Manufactured by Atari / Dynamo

When I picked this showcase cabinet up,  it had Police Trainer in it.  I quickly grew bored with that game and looked to see what else I could easily drop in.  The first game to go in was Area 51 / Maximum Force.  The fact that the pcb included two games in one was attractive.  Needless to say,  the game offered quite a bit more replay value than did Police Trainer.  After a bit of time I decided I wanted to turn the cabinet in to a multi-shooter.  Again I looked at my opinions and ended up picking up an Area 51: Site 4 board set.  I figured if Area 51 was as fun as it was,  Site 4 had to be even better.  Unfortunately it’s not.  Don’t get me wrong,  it’s not a bad game,  but the fact that you don’t have to reload sort of kills one of the strategic elements that made the original fun.  At the time I was running both boards through a 2-in-1 JAMMA PCB.  It worked great.  Flash forward a few months and I acquired an Atomiswave PCB with Ranger Mission in it.

I wanted to run all 3 games in the cabinet and had to make a decision as to what direction I was going to go from here.  I could go with the common 6-in-1 multi JAMMA that is quite prevalent,  or I could pick up a Clay Cowgill multi JAMMA,  which would allow for up to 8 PCBs.  After some debate and comparing the pluses and minuses of each solution I decided to pick up a Clay Cowgill multi JAMMA.  I wired in Ranger Mission but since the game uses the “rifle” guns with a cocking mechanism,  I added two rifles to the pedestal.  Using the Atomiswave I could swap carts and run other games than just Ranger Mission.  I ended up picking up Sport Shooting USA next … then about a month later an Extreme Hunting full system (Atomiswave hardware included) came up for a real good price on ebay.  I picked it up and wired the 2nd Atomiswave system in to the cabinet.  I like the fact that the Atomiswave system saves high scores,  but,  unfortunately,  if you swap carts,  you lose those high scores.  Losing scores for games like Extreme Hunter and Sport Shoot Shooting USA sucks because your prior scores give you something to aim to beat each game afterward.

My next plans are to wire in the Point Blank PCB I just picked up this week.  Unfortunately,  Point Blank uses NAMCO guns using HAPP guns like I have in the cabinet is possible,  but requires some hacking.  The next couple PCB’s l’d like to get are either Lethal Enforcers or Lethal Enforcers 2… and of course I’d love to find a nice cheap Carnevil kit.

As for the cabinet itself,  it’s in good solid original shape.  The coin door needs some serious help.  The game came from GameWorld,  a local “large” arcade that went belly up and they used a card system with their cabinets.  All games coming from GameWorld ended up with a large hole in the coin door and this cabinet is no exception.  I do plan on replacing the coin door with a complete one when I come across one cheap enough to warrant it.  Until then,  the coin door remains ugly.  There isn’t any major damage to the cabinet,  other than the usual scuffs one would expect from a machine that has seen many days of commercial business.  The handguns are brand new whereas the riffles are pretty used but both do work.  The monitor is a CGA 37″ (or 39″?) monster.  I wish it were tri-res,  but such is life.

As I add more game to this cabinet I will update this blog with more photos and info.

Update 4/6/2015:

After some investigating and a little soldering I was able to get my HAPP guns to work with the Point Blank PCB I picked up recently.  Point Blank is a great game…but it’s doesn’t natively work with HAPP guns.  Luckily with a little bit of solder and some wire it can be made to work with HAPP guns. As you can see in the photo to the right,  I’ve run some wires from the small edge connector to the Gun Position PCB … and a few wires from the JAMMA connector (GND, +5, Vsync) to the same PCB.  The game works great now… I just wish it would save high scores / initials.  Evidently it only saves the individual mini games highest score but not each games total scores & initials.

In order to fit the damn thing in (it’s a pretty decent sized PCB) I had to move a few things.  One Atomiswave system went on the side wall.. the other and the switcher PCB had to be moved further from the middle as well.  I did manage to get my 5th game in there however… There surely isn’t much room left though.  The cab now plays: Area 51/Maximum Force, Area 51: Site 4, Point Blank, and two Atomiswave cabinets and I have 3 carts … Extreme Hunting, Ranger Mission (both of which are currently installed) and Sport Shooting USA.

Update 3/11/16:

Last year after getting Point Blank working with this cabinet I started experiencing issues with the Clay Multi-JAMMA.  I was experiencing odd video-bleed from one game to the next.  Some games were worse,  others not so bad.  The two (at the time) Atomiswave games seemed to cause the most problems with Extreme Hunter and Ranger Mission bleeding over bigtime to each other as well as Area 51, A51: Site 4 and Point Blank.  In an effort to determine what was causing this issue I managed to (a) Kill my Area 51: Site 4 PCB (voltage spike caused when adjusting one of the switchers (I will NEVER adjust voltage while on again!))… (b) NOT fix the issue… and (c) decide the issue was enough of a problem that I had to try a different avenue…based on my experiences using Clays kit… which has all games running at the same time with multiple power supplies,  I wanted to try the Chinese 6-in-1 solution which only powers up one PCB at a time.  Unfortunately,  this solution has it’s own set of “issues” to overcome.

First off,  the 6-in-1 needs to be modified ITSELF out of the box.  There are a whole slew of modification that need be done to bring the product “up to snuff” including the addition of a -5v circuit… in addition I wanted to be able to switch games without the need of the stock remote control… so a product called “Nomote” is a necessity… luckily I came across a KLOVian who was selling a number of these 6-in-1 kits already modified WITH the Nomote kits installed… I should have bought two.

Next step was coming up with extension harnesses for up to 6 PCB’s… there are two ways this can be handled… the cheap way or the expensive way.  The costly option is to buy high-quality full extension harnesses from someone like Bob… but the cost gets up there when you have to pick up 5 or 6.  The cheap(er) Chinese options work… but again,  they require modification right out of the box.  It seems the folks in China rarely use -5VDC voltages as their products seem to NEVER have that circuit implemented… and such was the case here.  +5VDC and GND lines also needed to be fortified as the wire used is less than adequate.

OK… now that we have the (modified) switcher and all necessary extension harnesses,  one would assume you could plug everything in and GO.  Right?  Nope.  Prior,  when I had the Clay Multi-JAMMA kit going…while all PCBs were powered up I had ZERO issue with the light guns being wired together.  Trigger… movement… it all just worked,  regardless of the game that was being displayed on screen.  Now,  however,  when only ONE game is powered up at a time,  I was experiencing issues with the trigger and movement.  After doing a little reading I discovered that I was going to need to solder in diodes on all trigger lines to prevent “feedback”.  I have no idea why there was no “feedback” when all games were ON,  but when they are all off but one,  “feedback” happen and when it happens it essentially sends back false “trigger” and/or ground signals causing problems with the one game playing.

After soldering in diodes to all trigger lines (line facing AWAY from the PCB in question),  things got better… but not perfect.  The Atomiswave games,  using the shotgun,  worked great.  The 3 games by this time (I’d added Sharp Shooter at some point during the year) that use the HAPP handguns were having issues.  After some testing I determined that with A51/Maximum Force plugged in the other two games would not work properly.  The trigger was working,  but there was no optical signal…no movement.  If I unplugged Area 51,  the other two games would work fine.  If I plugged one gun back in to Area 51,  the other two games again wouldn’t register that one gun.  I kept the cabinet wired this way for about 6 months.  One handgun worked for A51 and the other for Point Blank and Sharp Shooter.  I figured I would re-visit this issue eventually.

In early March I won an auction on Ebay for an Extreme Hunter 2 kit.  The kit included the Atomiswave motherboard, network PCB (required to play the game), Sega I/O + sound PCB,  and the cartridge.  I got all 3 for a real good price… and the seller was semi-local (about an hours drive).  After talking with the seller I ended up making the drive to his place to pick the game up and to check out some other goodies including a trip over to an operators warehouse (the seller worked for the OP).  After all was said and done,  I ended up picking up the kit I won on ebay plus an additional working Atomiswave motherboard,  an additional working Extreme Hunter 2 cartridge,  and additional network PCB (non-working unfortunately), and additional I/O + sound PCB,  a control panel with 1 Sega “speaker” shotgun (has a speaker in the gun), and marquee for only a little more dough.

When I adding this PCB to the showcase cabinet I figured it was a great time to re-visit the Area 51 issue as well. I figured I would try adding a diode to the optical line for Area 51.  That did it.  Once the diode was installed,  Area 51 worked great as well as Point Blank and Sharp Shooter.  Success!  Right now the current lineup in the cabinet is: [1] Point Blank (handgun), [2] Ranger Mission (shotgun), [3] Extreme Hunting (shotgun), [4] Extreme Hunting 2 (shotgun), [5] Area 51 / Maximum Force (handgun), [6] Sharp Shooter (handgun).  I have a Sports Shooting USA (including another Atomiswave motherboard) I can drop in at any time but I think I prefer to keep it 3 games shotgun + 3 games handgun.  I am not really a fan of Sharp Shooter… it’s more-or-less a filler PCB until I can find something else to put in.  Unfortunately whatever I put in will have to have a pretty small PCB footprint as I am just about out of room as you can see.  FINALLY… the multi-shooter cabinet is 100% functional!

Update 3/27/19:

Here we are with a new game update just a few days over three years after the last update.  This time around I had to make a few changes in the location of a couple of the games in order to physically fit the new game in the cabinet.  I ended up moving Atomiswave unit that was on the door to the back wall of the cabinet … which meant that the Atomiswave that was on the back wall already had to be moved up to make room.  I already had six games in the cabinet with the 6th being the really really basic game “Sharp Shooter” which actually plugged directly in to the switcher and was mounted to the side wall (it worked out nicely frankly)… and that game was going to be the game that was being replaced … BUT the new game (nor any other that I currently have) would fit where Sharp Shooter currently resided.  Since I was going to have to utilize a JAMMA extension cable anyway,  I ended up keeping the Sharp Shooter in the cabinet,  just moving it up a few inches from the switcher so that should I ever want to play Sharp Shooter (doubtful,  but who knows?) I could just plug right in… I ended up putting the new game on the door,  where the Atomiswave was.

The new shooter is Midway’s “Invasion: The Abductors”.  It seems to be sort of a spiritual successor to Area 51,  but not exactly.  I got the board for a decent price and figured that if I didn’t like the game,  I could always convert it to a Mortal Kombat 4 and make a bit of profit off it.  Thus far,  it seems like a decent enough game.  There are some small issues to deal with however … and a slightly annoying way the bullets are fired/reloaded that mar what otherwise could have been a pretty kick ass experience.  When firing,  your gun,  even most lowly of guns seems to fire in “bursts” rather than individual bullets.   Once you realize this,  it’s a workable situation,  albeit not entirely desirable, situation.  Another issue I noticed with firing is that during periods of extreme action,  the bullet firing seems to “lag”… with bullets continuing to be fired long after (seconds) you stop pulling the trigger.

The graphics,  especially considering their low resolution,  are pretty darned good… with some quite unique looking alien ships and aliens themselves.  The sounds are decent enough with serviceable voice overs that don’t distract… aside from that damn RELOAD voice … which isn’t bad … but is heard QUITE A LOT during game play.

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