A question about Arcade cabinet purchase

So I am about to purchase a Marvel VS capcom 2 conversion Kit complete with cabinet… My question is will I be able to replace the cartridge with SF2 or 3rd strike? I have been searching high and low for information on this.

sounds like you haven’t searched hard enough.

MvC2 runs on Naomi hardware.
3s runs on CPS3
SF2 (depending on version) is CPS1 or 2.

none of it is really interchangable, unless you get different games for eash of the systems.

While you can’t replace the cartridge with 3S or old-school SF (because those games weren’t made on Naomi hardware), you certainly can play those games on your cabinet, because they’re all JAMMA games.

And 3s can be mighty strange if you just get the cartridge or CD. It kinda has to go as a package of the game + the board as a working system to be sure its going to work from what I have been told.

Ok…here we go:

Arcade cabinets started off as people building their own boards to work in the cabinet however they saw fit to work. People soon realized that buying a space invaders cabinet and then when that died out trying to replace it with donkey kong was a pain in the ass. Thus…JAMMA was created. Jamma is the standard that all arcade games/cabinets had to obey - which wires went where and did what. At the time 3 buttons was the Jamma standard.

Then along came SF1 and needed 6 buttons, thus creating it’s on harness and fucking everything up.

If you buy a cabinet these days, it will be Jamma. The games you are talking about wanting will be Jamma also - so you’ll have no immediate problems.

HOWEVER they all run on different systems. Image Jamma being like… a tv. Sure the NES/SNES plugs into your tv but you need different things to play SMB1 vs. SM World.

MvC2 is Naomi.

SF2 - depending on which version you are talking about will be either CPS1 or CPS2 and require a different kick harness. Kick harness is the extra wires it needs to say that the Kick buttons work for Jamma.

3rd Strike is CPS3 and is a pain in the ass as it’s the only real game that runs on CPS3. I don’t want to hear a damn thing about Warzard or other versions of SF3.

There are now a lot of nuances within all these games. CPS1 games are just the board themselves with a special kick harness (affectionately named the, 'CPS1 Kick harness) that plugs into the jamma harness.

CPS2 is where you get the most bang for your buck - ssf2, st, a1 - a3, cota - mvc1, puzzle fighter etc are all cps2. CPS2 comes with an A + B board system. The A board is the equivalent to a SNES and the games are the cartridges. You can swap out B boards easily and USA/Jpnese work together. Oh…and it has it’s own kick harness - called the CPS2 Kick harness.

CPS3 is like a CPU motherboard with a cd rom, a cartridge and some chips if i remember right. It’s been a while. You can change games by switching the cd, the lockout cart and the sim chips. But there are no other real CPS3 games. bleh
This one does use the CPS2 Kick Harness.

Naomi - I do believe there are at least 2 different versions of Naomi. I remember at B5 we had problems with certain cabinets not running both CvS1 and MvC2. What the problems exactly were I don’t remember anymore. There were only a handful of Naomi games made in general also - marvel 2, cvs1 and 2, house of the dead or some shit and some random wrestling games and something else. I hella can’t remember what kick harness these use - prolly CPS2 though.

Having a cabinet is a lot of fun, i’ve owned many. But they do require a little bit more work than what you might be expecting.

Derek Daniels

Nice summary. Ever see the 2 button Street Fighter? It was hilarious.

Naomi 1/2 had a few others too, like GGXX and #Reload, Melty Blood, SFZ3^, VF4, VF4E, VF4FT, plus tons of non fighters. I really liked its wrap around monitor games, I tried a flight sim one once but it was all in japanese so I don’t know what I was doing. Naomi boards were stackable, you just had to dedicate one board to be the controller for the others, then each board could have its own monitor for some extensive multi-monitor playing.

Just a Random Question, but wasnt there a Naomi 2 Released at some part or did it get scrapped, some games got released for it that have not been ported to consoles like Gigawing 3

Naomi 2 came out. I think thats what VF4 and its incarnations ran on. And there was also Atomiswave, which was a modified version of the Naomi/Dreamcast system.

Thanks

So I am translating the only problem being the Kick Harness with CP3 and Naomi, otherwise it should be just fine, because they both use JAMMA… Correct? :xeye:

If you have the whole system CPS3 or Naomi system plus the ame and you want to drop it into the cabinet then yes it should work.

NAOMI is NOT JAMMA, it is JVS. You need an I/O converter.

http://www.sega-naomi.com/

Gigawing 3 is on Taito Type-X

NAOMI 2 was only used for a couple games.

NAOMI has TONS of games…but most were ported to Dreamcast.

www.system16.com is your friend!

Special note : CPS systems (1-3) have suicide batteries that need to be replaced or else your games have the possibility of dying. Read into this more before purchasing please.

Cool, I guess the Naomi machines I saw had that thurr adapter.

Naomi 2 had at least a dozen games that I remember seeing over the years.

only cps2 and 3 have suicide batteries. not cps1

I don’t have a CPS1 but that is what I read here…

http://www.arcadecollecting.com/dead/dead.html

Yep. I should have been more clear than “couple”. Just that a dozen isn’t a lot compared to the original NAOMI.

So honestly if I wanted to play 3S, it’s almost better to just go out and buy a cabinet and the CPS3 board? If compatability is going to be a huge deal, I would rather hunt down a back to back 2 player cabinet (I’ve seen them for as little as 800) and then buy the board seprately.

What kind of cabinet is the MvC2 one you were looking at? If it is JAMMA standard and they are using a I/O converter, then you can play 3S on there. However…sometimes it is cheaper just to go seperately.

When cabinet buying, one other important thing to look at is the monitor quality.

If you are going to get a CPS3 though, please be aware of the Suicide battery and make sure it is changed by someone else before buying, or change it ASAP after you buy.

There’s a guy that will mod CPS 2 boards so that you won’t have to worry about the suicide battery issue anymore. His username is Razoola on the neo geo boards.

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/member.php?userid=4083

Concerning 3rd Strike’s CPS3 suicide battery you should probably try to get the Japanese version. Sending your cart into Capcom Japan to get it repaired is the only way to keep it alive and kicking. They refuse to work on the Asian or English versions batteries.

Razoola only does CPS2 (http://cps2shock.retrogames.com/) . CPS3 has not been decrypted yet.

To send your cart to Japan, you would have to go through someone like Mr. Megalo, who then goes through a Japanese Arcade Operater, who then sends it to CAPCOM. It is not easy, and costs a lot. But Crunch is right…it is prefrable to get a Japanese version as that is always a last option.

I seriously appreciate the help guys… I was literally clueless before I posted here.