Wednesday 28 June 2017

More boards under the microscope...

Winter is definitely upon us so let us go back testing arcade boards shall we? 

First up we have a familiar board..with a familiar problem. Again proving white (robotic) man cant jump as the resistor array was fried from inappropriate insertion of the JAMMA harness.



 Next we have Hit the Ice, the speech samples are incredible in this game, you really feel the vibe of the game. There was also intermittent fights that break out with blood everywhere.



I have fond memories of this game when I was a teenager. The game looked approachable in the arcades and the enemies don't look threatening. Plus you kill bugs when you are a bug yourself. The Megadrive port changed the sprites for something more futuristic, which killed the game for me.




I had my doubts about the pinout on this board. But it was a JAMMA board. It is a car racing game with 2 buttons for gears and brake. However, the innovation in this game is the control. You hit the direction you want to turn to with the direction of the joystick. This made the game quick and twitchy. You really get the sense of speed in this game.






Next we have Back Fire. Another rally game like World Rally with even more custom controls. The game even let you choose to use either an 8 way joystick movement or 2 way joystick movement. Most of us are accustomed to the 2 way movement so the 8 way was quite fun to try (not!). Damn, playing these games really brings back the 90's tude...I shall spare you less tude from now on. The sound and graphics are outstanding and the developers really tried to make this the king of rally games.




Another Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja board. I should take a break and grab a burger.



OK, something I really need to get off my chest. People need to stop soldering wires directly to connectors! It makes the board look bad and also implants a permanent umbilical wire to the board. That did not stop me from playing this kick ass game though. Konami, you use to be so good.




Ofcause Technos Japan wont take Konamis' reign lying down. This game proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, they were the king of violent yet complex side scrolling beating people up genre. So many moves, so many animation and so much tude....




I just gotta know whether my second copy in the bunch works...and it does! Time to hunt!!




Got another Ninja Turtle game, another one with the ROM swapped to enable character selection with a 2 players co-op game. This board did not escape the soldered connector syndrome though the operator tried to tidy up the solder spots.



Oh my god, is this a clean board or what! Boots up and play wonderfully. This game really made my night as I had one that needed repair yet it has slight issues after it was returned back to me. Maybe my arcade karma is changing?





I am saving powering on this game for later. It looks brand new with documentation etc.


I nearly fainted when I saw the label on the board...and sure enough it was the game. Rainbow Island. One of the first AMIGA games I deemed arcade perfect and now I have the board.




Don't pay attention to the yellow sticker as this game will lash at you with a thousand bullets. Pre-bullet hell games are hard as well. In this case its Psikyo so expect no mercy.




This board needs Mon Amis' attention. Decapitated eeproms sometimes works...but not this guy unfortunately.


SETA really went out of their way to make a highly detailed arcade shooter here. Although I do not have the right controllers for this game, I can appreciate the craft that went into it. I shall endeavor to find the right controllers to fully appreciate this game.



 Yes folks, burning corpses...

My 3rd Sky Soldier here, yay for me!




I would gladly sacrifice 3 Sky Soldiers for this game and you dont have to be smart to work it out. Another one to Mon Ami for attention. So far I only have 2 games requiring his attention, so I consider myself very lucky.



Although this is not an original board, it was an impressionable game for me. Again, a stellar AMIGA port of this was my go to game while taking a break from Ninja Warriors back in the day. I also played the conversion on the PC-Engine later on and it is the controls that killed it for me back then. I still remember the cramps..



 IREM you sly devil you, ripping 90's icons off and even naming a series of arcade cabinets off her name...



I could not get this game to play because the board is so hard to navigate...where is the DEF button gawddamnit...




Another sanitised version of Pipi & Bibis.



Another copy of Devastator, this time the Japanese ROM version.




No comments:

Post a Comment