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Pandora's Box V3 review
maxnew40:
I just installed a Pandora's Box V3 and figured i would start a review thread.
First off this is a 520 in 1 Jamma board from China. It has a whole slew of fighter games, some shooters, and some puzzle games. For some reason they also included some vertical games which don't display all that well on a horizontal game monitor.
The board has a build in amp and VGA connector as well as the Jamma audio and video. It has support for a joystick and six buttons for each player.
I installed this board in a old Sega Buck Rogers cabinet that had been gutted of everything but the monitor and power supply.
I bought the Jamma wiring harness from the same company as the Pandora's Box and I did not have to disconnect any ground wires.
There does not appear to be any Free Play mode, so wiring up a coin switch is required.
The installation was easy and the only issue I had was not a board problem (I had a scrambled screen when I first powered it up, but found a connector had come loose on the monitor chassis board).
First impressions:
It boots up real quick and runs a short video.
After selecting a game the game loads pretty quickly (just a few seconds).
The volume level on the games is all over the place, some being very loud and other being very quiet.
Most of the game I tried seemed to play well, but I did notice some slow down when fighting a boss in I think it was Metal Slug.
I can't seem to get games to continue with player one, but have no problems with player two (I think this might be because the player one button also gets used to display a menu to exit the game).
I will post more when after I get some more time in to playing with the various games.
-Max
opt2not:
--- Quote from: maxnew40 on August 19, 2015, 10:33:37 am ---For some reason they also included some vertical games which don't display all that well on a horizontal game monitor.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, it's because it's scaling the image to maintain the proper aspect ratio. So some pixels with be uneven with other.
If only it had an option to play those games in their normal orientation... :-\
--- Quote from: maxnew40 on August 19, 2015, 10:33:37 am ---I installed this board in a old Sega Buck Rogers cabinet that had been gutted of everything but the monitor and power supply.
I bought the Jamma wiring harness from the same company as the Pandora's Box and I did not have to disconnect any ground wires.
--- End quote ---
This is great if you're wiring a cabinet from scratch. But for those who already have a JAMMA cabinet and looking to not re-wire anything, you can get a nifty adapter from JammaNationX called the JNX v1.1 Atlas Adapter:
* This is the JNX Atlas. It is both a Voltmeter and Pandora/Blue Elf JAMMA adapter. The pinout can be changed between Pandora/Blue Elf and JAMMA pass through simply by moving two jumpers. The JNX Atlas supports both CPS1 and CPS2 kick harnesses. Just plug and play. Anyone who knows James aka XianXi, you know how top quality his stuff is, definitely deserves a plug.
--- Quote from: maxnew40 on August 19, 2015, 10:33:37 am ---Most of the game I tried seemed to play well, but I did notice some slow down when fighting a boss in I think it was Metal Slug.
--- End quote ---
There have been reports that Final Fight and Sunset Riders has some screen tearing, only via 15khz RGB and not VGA. Could you confirm this?
maxnew40:
--- Quote from: opt2not on August 19, 2015, 02:32:00 pm ---
--- Quote from: maxnew40 on August 19, 2015, 10:33:37 am ---For some reason they also included some vertical games which don't display all that well on a horizontal game monitor.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, it's because it's scaling the image to maintain the proper aspect ratio. So some pixels with be uneven with other.
If only it had an option to play those games in their normal orientation... :-\
--- Quote from: maxnew40 on August 19, 2015, 10:33:37 am ---I installed this board in a old Sega Buck Rogers cabinet that had been gutted of everything but the monitor and power supply.
I bought the Jamma wiring harness from the same company as the Pandora's Box and I did not have to disconnect any ground wires.
--- End quote ---
This is great if you're wiring a cabinet from scratch. But for those who already have a JAMMA cabinet and looking to not re-wire anything, you can get a nifty adapter from JammaNationX called the JNX v1.1 Atlas Adapter:
* This is the JNX Atlas. It is both a Voltmeter and Pandora/Blue Elf JAMMA adapter. The pinout can be changed between Pandora/Blue Elf and JAMMA pass through simply by moving two jumpers. The JNX Atlas supports both CPS1 and CPS2 kick harnesses. Just plug and play. Anyone who knows James aka XianXi, you know how top quality his stuff is, definitely deserves a plug.
--- Quote from: maxnew40 on August 19, 2015, 10:33:37 am ---Most of the game I tried seemed to play well, but I did notice some slow down when fighting a boss in I think it was Metal Slug.
--- End quote ---
There have been reports that Final Fight and Sunset Riders has some screen tearing, only via 15khz RGB and not VGA. Could you confirm this?
--- End quote ---
I will see if I can take a look at those games as soon as possible. I am running the right monitor to reproduce the issue.
-Max
monkeybomb:
It looks like there are 2 different boards being sold under the name Pandora's Box 3. They have slightly different cases and game lists. I didn't know that and I think I have a cheap Chinese ripoff of a cheap Chinese ripoff. I was hoping for the original cheap Chinese ripoff. I'm probably going to hide everything other than a few puzzle games and just make it function like a neo geo 6 slot. Very few fighters run correctly.
ChanceKJ:
I have one of these. I honestly don't know hat i should do with it. Might use it to multi a Namco cab from 96' and sell it. pretty cool. just really bad translations. And i wish there was more documentation in actual english. :)
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