Point Blank 2
I had never played Point Blank prior to purchasing a PCB for the “multi-shooter” showcase cabinet I have in the garage arcade. I picked it up based on the advise posted on KLOV by more than one member recommending the game to folks who enjoy shooting gallery type games. I am glad that I took the advise and gave it a try… it’s one of the more entertaining gun shooters you’ll find!
It is with that mind that when I was poking through a local operators warehouse and came across what I thought was a dedicated Point Blank 2… I made him an offer and he accepted. When I say “I thought it was dedicated”, I say so because I had seen at least three prior Point Blank 2’s in the exact same cabinet. Alas, it is NOT a dedicated Point Blank 2 cabinet, but rather a converted Tekken cabinet. Now, I do believe it COULD have been a factory conversion as there is no indication of Tekken artwork and the installation is a bit too precise for the average operator installation, but who knows. I only know that it’s not a dedicated Point Blank 2 because I can’t find a single bit of documentation online showing this style cabinet… that said, I have only ever seen a total of four Point Blank 2’s and all 4 were in the same cabinet (actually, the same op has one more in the same cabinet in the warehouse).
One thing is for sure… I experienced the “Costco” effect when I decided to purchase this game (like when you buy a 70″ TV at Costco thinking it doesn’t look THAT big only to realize it’s HUGE when you get it in your living room). In the op’s warehouse the game didn’t look NEARLY as large as it did when I got it in to the garagecade. The cabinet is easily one and a half times the size of your average arcade game… if not larger. Suddenly, the plan as to where I was going to put the thing didn’t quite work out. Not if I was looking at actually having access to my work area… or the garage door. It took a bit of planning (and work moving the damn thing around the garage trying to find that “perfect” place, but eventually I found it. Right next to the Multi-shooter showcase cabinet.
The game itself was in pretty decent physical condition. The art isn’t perfect but it’s not horrible. The control panel overlay isn’t right … and I 
“may” end up replacing it because it bugs me… but the one source I’ve found for it wants $60.00 for the damn thing and, well, I’m not sure if I care that much to be 100% honest. The monitor in it was bad… and as some may notice in the photo, there are no guns. I did get a promise for working guns from the op… or at least some credit for my next purchase… and I already had a brand new Happ gun to use so I could at least get up and going with one player without much issue. My first plan on action was to get a working monitor in the cabinet. I knew I had four 25″-27″ monitors in the shed, and I THOUGHT that one of them was working. It took me removing three of those monitors to test before I came across the working one. It’s a Pentranic 25″… not exactly a great monitor to be 100% honest, but it’s serviceable for now (at least until I can rebuild one of the THREE U2000’s I have sitting in the shed). Installing the monitor wasn’t as tricky as it could have been as the OP had already hacked a way to fit a 25″ monitor in to a 27″ hole. One of those U2000’s I need to rebuild is the monitor pulled from this cabinet. Installing my Happ gun was very simple as the OP had also already done the modification necessary to eliminate the 2 extra 
wires that Namco uses for their solenoid “recoil” gun. It was literally a matter of tightening the three bolts that hold the gun in to place and then connecting the 4-pin connector to the empty 4-pin male connector waiting for it.
Next, I managed to acquire a set of Recoil SF-X recoiling guns … brand new for a very good price. These guns make any game a recoil game, however they work better on some games and not so great on others. By that I mean these guns simply recoil with the trigger pull. They don’t receive a signal from the motherboard to recoil. It’s literally just a switch that tells the solenoid to fire at the trigger. This works perfectly fine with a game like Point Blank 2 where you NEVER acquire an automatic fire weapon… nor do you have to “fire offscreen” to reload. For this game, the Recol SF-X guns are perfect… unlike a game like Area 51 where you do have to fire off-screen to reload (which would cause a recoil) and even worse, you do acquire 
automatic weapons (the gun would simply recoil ONCE when you pulled the trigger while your gun on-screen would be spraying the area with bullets… not exactly what I call realistic).
They installed in to the cabinet pretty easily, but because this cabinet has an “ATX” style PS with plugs and what not and I didn’t want to hack it, I installed a spare switcher power supply I had sitting around to power the guns. These guns use 12VDC and 5VDC power unlike the stock Namco guns that use 24VDC. The 24VDC PS was still in the cabinet making it very easy to swap in the 12VDC/5VDC power supply. Next installation called for attaching wires to the coin switches as well as the P1 and P2 start buttons. Basically the guns are only powered up when a coin is inserted and then the P1 or P2 start buttons are pushed.
Getting the guns to register on screen, however… took a bit of work. It seems that HAPP guns aren’t nearly as picky as to how the monitor is set compared to these guns. After a bit of work dialing in the monitor however, the guns seem to be working great. The recoil is a little weaker than the original Namco guns, but the effect is there and it does at a little to the gameplay. As for the game itself… it’s essentially an extension of Point Blank… which is a game I do enjoy playing… plus it’s a nice, safe theme for my son and his friends. It’s a worthy addition to the garagecade for sure.
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