Police 911 Multigame

Game Produced by Konami (c)2000

Huge. That is the first word that comes to mind when I think of one of my latest acquisitions. I think it's an appropriate description of the cabinet in question. While it's not MASSIVE like a Galaxian 3 (which is room-sized and takes up almost the space of a 2-car garage)… it IS big. Big enough to warrant large castor wheels not only on the bottom but on the back as well and that is exactly how it was delivered… on it's back. The game in question was a Police 911/2.

It had been advertised on the local craigslist for a while… at least a month and a half, but likely closer to three months. I knew the cabinet was large and the fact that it was advertised as non-working kept me from even bothering to inquire. It was advertised for $300.00 which isn't a huge sum, but a little more than I was willing to pay for a non-working project of a game that took up so much space. Speaking of space, it was at a premium at the time with both sides of my garagecade pretty filled.

I noted the seller was getting more realistic over the next month or two, lowering his price a few different times. What still concerned me was the fact that he was using a stock image pulled from KLOV claiming the actual cabinet was under a tarp in the garage. When the price got down to $150.00 it was enough for me to inquire about it. I asked the seller what was wrong with the game… what did it "do" when he turned it on. I liked the answer. It did "nothing". No marquee. No sound. No power anywhere. I was now possibly interested. I mentioned that I was interested in coming over to take a look and we set up a time for the weekend. A couple days prior I went out the my Dodge Dakota truck to make sure it was ready to go only to find it had a completely dead battery. Being in the middle of the winter and about 20 degrees outside I wasn't too keen on working on the truck at that point so I called the seller and let him know I wasn't going to be able to come by that weekend (because of the truck) and that I would try to get the truck going by the next weekend. I mentioned to him that if someone else dropped by for it, to sell it to them that I was in no-way laying claim on the game in any fashion. We parted ways… over the next two weeks I didn't get to the truck… it was damn cold and frankly, I had very little motivation to bother (to be 100% honest, the truck is STILL sitting outside non-working needing a new battery … and will remain there likely for another few weeks until the temperatures rise above 40 degrees consistently).

I get a phone call from the seller the 3rd week. He needs the game gone. I let him know that my truck was still out of commission and then made an offer I simply couldn't refuse. He said he'd sell me the game for $100 and would deliver it for $20 more. I agreed to the offer on the stipulation that the game was 100% intact… I wasn't interested in a game missing a gun, or the PCB's, or the monitor, etc. He said the game was 100% intact but non-working. I agreed to take it off his hands for the $120 delivered price. When the guy showed up with the game in his trailer (on it's back)… I was simply floored by just how big the damn thing was. I knew it came in at just about 7 foot 6 inches in height… but it's also quite deep and if you take in to account the poles holding the movement sensors, quite wide as well. My garagecade has a ceiling a little over 8 foot so I figured the height wouldn't be much of a problem. I was mistaken. When we rolled the monster in to the garage and attempted to stand it upright something that I SHOULD have considered became glaringly obvious… when we tipped it up there wasn't enough room to tip it fully upright… the sensor bars hit the ceiling before we could tip it fully up. >ARGH< It was obvious the only possible way to get this beast in it's upright position would be to disassemble the sensor bars and let them hang down. While there was STILL a chance the game wouldn't make it to it's upright position, I figured it wasn't the sellers problem now that he'd come through with his end of the bargain, so I paid the man, shook his hand and said goodbye. It took a few minutes for my brother and I to disassemble the bar and used some good ole' duct-tape to hold it against the main cabinet hanging down. I then used a couple pieces of wood to "chock" the castor wheels (estimating where they would hit the floor when my brother and I lifted) and we heaved that heavy bastard up to it's upright position. It took both of us to get it upright but I was quite happy to see that we were able to actually lift it upright. I bet we had maybe 3" of clearance at the ceiling. I am also glad I put those piece of wood down as it was already hard enough to lift that bad boy let alone try to get ahead of it rolling on the bottom castors. The flyer says it's 600 pounds… and I believe it.

Once upright it was time to dive in and see what was wrong with the game.  It didn't come as much of a surprise that when I opened the back I found the culprit… a wire had come loose from the switch at the back/bottom of the cabinet.  I thought "awesome" as I plugged it in and fired the cabinet up.  I was greeted with the marquee lamp coming up and I could see some LEDs bouncing around on the PCB.  There was no high voltage at the monitor though.  Hmmm..  I turned the machine off and checked all the different plugs.  I fired it back up and again the marquee lamp came on,  the PCB's LEDs did their dance and… I could hear "tick…tick…tick…" from the monitor.  Checking the screen I saw nothing and as I was going back to check out the chassis again I noticed that the large resistor next to the flyback was getting hot… RED hot.  I powered down.

It was quite apparent that the monitor needed help.  Luckily I just happened to have a NeoTec medium resolution monitor that I had pulled out of a Gauntlet Legends cabinet last year sitting out in the shed.  I went about cleaning the cabinet up and waited until the next day to get the monitor from the shed as it was getting a little late in the evening.  I put the monitor on a work bench situated next to the cabinet and plugged it in… fired up the game and was greeted with text telling me the RTC failed to initialize.  Basically,  it was telling me the RTC "security" NVRAM chip had lost it's power.  Having read about the game prior I was expecting this as it's a pretty common issue.  Now knowing the monitor worked and the PCB worked,  I ordered the necessary NVRAM chips (I bought two) and went about pulling the non-working monitor and replacing it with the working one.  A number of days later the parts arrived.

Now, I have never claimed to be anything but a hack when it comes to using a soldering iron and/or desoldering tool… and a perfect case in point is the brutal job I managed to do to the poor Police 911 PCB trying to remove the current RTC/NVRAM chip that was on it.  Of course (and unfortunately) it wasn't socketed… and even using my trusty Hakko 808 desoldering iron I just could NOT get the damn chip off.  There were 2 real difficult spots that I obviously used TOO MUCH heat on and managed to just screw it up bigtime.  Suspecting that I likely had screwed up a trace (or three) I soldered in the socket and put the new NVRAM in… plugged the PCB back in to the cabinet and fired it up to… SOLID LED's on the pcb.  It was locked up.   Dead.  I wanted to scream.

After some discussions with a few folks (one of which offered to fix my screw-up for free (or at least attempt to),  fellow KLOVian Channelmanic offered me a working Police 911 PCB with the socket already installed for a damn good price.  Police 911 can be upgraded to Police 911/2 using the security dongle I had in my possession as well as the CF memory card for Police 911/2 which I also had in my possession.  The package arrived after a few days.  I was surprised to see not only the PCB socketed as promised,  but also an NVRAM already occuping the space AND a Police 911 (the original version) CF memory card installed!  Awesome!   It was with some trepidation that I dropped the PCB in to the cabinet and fired it up to see what would happen.  Would it fire up and fail some other test (evidently the movement sensors can be problematic)… would it fire up at all?   A flip of the switch and I found out… the screen came up,  the PCB went through the power up tests… the security NVRAM chip worked fine and passed… the sensors worked fine and passed… and the game,  Police 911 then came on screen!  AWESOME!  So I go in to the test mode to calibrate the gun.  Whoops… the gun was not registering.  It would "fire" but I was getting no positional response at all.  Again I poked around the internet and found out that I could use a regular HAPP light gun.  Awesome… I had two brand new guns hanging on the wall above my work bench!  After making a small harness to convert the HAPP connector to the connector Konami used,  I attempted to calibrate the gun and… SUCCESS!!

Well… mostly.  Sure,  the game came up… and sure,  I could play the game… but after about 20 minutes of play I realized that I wasn't quite done fixing this game.  As the game warmed up the brightness would slowly creep upwards eventually showing the retrace lines.  I would then adjust the screen pot on the flyback down and over another 10 minutes the brightness would again creep upward.  After powering down for a while I'd fire the game up to find the brightness very low and over time it would do exactly the same thing.  After poking around online and asking a few questions my suspicions were confirmed… this NeoTec monitor's flyback's pots have a tendency to drift when they are getting old.  Sometimes it's the screen pot… sometimes it's the focus pot.  I'm guessing if you're real unlucky,  both will drift.   In any case,  it was apparent I would need to put a new flyback on the chassis.  I figured if I was going to have the chassis out,  I might as well re-cap it as well.  After purchasing a cap kit and flyback from Bob Roberts (www.therealbobroberts.net) and waiting for said parts to arrive,  I pulled the chassis,  re-capped,  and dropped a new flyback in.  Upon testing not only did the screen pot stop drifting,  but my colors were a bit more vibrant.  I'm always impressed by what a cap kit can do to better the image of a monitor.  Now I had a fully working Police 911… my next step was to burn another security NVRAM chip to use in conjunction with Police 911/2.   It wasn't until AFTER I managed to do so that I realized that I do NOT need to swap the security chip to swap games.  I don't even need to remove the Police 911/2 dongle as Police 911 doesn't care if it's plugged  in.   All I have to do is swap CF memory cards to swap games.  The only negative is that when you swap games you're forced to go in and re-calibrate the guns and set the time.   To make it easier to swap games (who wants to have to move this beast away from the wall each time you want to swap?) I moved the PCB set forward so I could reach in and swap CF memory cards through the coin door.

As for the gameplay… both games are actually quite fun.  The "movement" factor adds quite a bit to the game play.  You have to dodge left, right,  or duck to avoid bullets and to re-load (you dodge to "safety" and it automatically reloads).  The original game seems to be a little harder than the sequel,  requiring more movement.  I actually can build up a sweat playing the game.  The original game also has a single "player" and only one route to follow where as the sequel offers 4 different "players"… one with an automatic weapon,  one with 8 bullets,  one with 12,  etc… and you can choose 4 different "paths" to go (though it appears all 4 visit the same areas,  just in a different order).  I think it will stay in my collection for some time to come (especially considering the fact it would probably take a while to sell it because it just won't fit in many peoples arcades (or garagecades).  I have less than $250 in to it in total,  so when it does go,  I'm guessing I won't "lose" money.

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