Donkey Kong, J-Pac and the beauty of vertical CRTs

[mrchrister]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to show off my Donkey Kong game extension proejct. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to score a fully functional Donkey Kong cabinet on CL. I installed a high score save kit and put the machine in our Airbnb. I challenged people to beat my high score on the machine (89,000) to win a free night. One game - 1 quarter. A lot of people seem to really enjoy the challenge and I've made a couple of bucks so far, just enough to feed the parking meter every now and then

Recently I started playing around with the idea of displaying some other games on the old Sanyo 20EZ since it probably has only ever seen Donkey Kong for the last 38 years. So I bought this:

-Nintendo to icade conversion Kit - $130

It basically takes care of everything, converts the different plugs from the PCB to Nintendo Edge -> Inverts Colors, converts sound and buttons -> iCade 60 in 1

I had some issues with not getting the screen bright enough. The difference between the input signal strength between the DK pcb and the conversion kit is quite drastic. I had to adjust the Sub Brightness pot on the Sanyo Board and play with the voltage brightness. Now I can have the original PCB on minimum brightness and the iCade on Maximum by adjusting the brightness pot on the breakout pcb of the Sanyo.

The big problem is I don't really like the iCade all that much. It's a great simple plug and play solution for not a lot of money with some great games. BUT the menu sucks, it's ugly and I don't like that I can't stay in a game but get kicked out after playing once. Also high score support is limited in that it doesn't save your initials. Some colors and sounds are off as well. ( Like the red in Donkey Kong for example)

So, I finally decided to go the Mame route:

-Dell Optiplex 7010 w. Radeon 7470 $100 off CL
-J-Pac $60

It took me a while to get into the groove with CRT Emudriver, Groovymame and Super Resolutions but I think I figured it out. It's actually pretty straight forward, it just seems like there are not a lot of straight forward tutorials out there.

The optiplex conveniently fits underneath the coin box in the cabinet and doesn't take up a lot of space. I can highly recommend these little PC's since they are dirt cheap, compact, usually come with a Radeon card that works with CRT emudriver and have enough power to do even more advanced emulation. Mine has an i5@3.2 Ghz.

I can now switch between original PCB and Mame in about 2mins:
Open cabinet, plug in Nintendo edge connector to inverter card and J-Pac, set brightness pot from min to Max and plug in sound cable from inverter card.
One thing I gotta say, Donkey Kong does look slightly worse through the JPac than the original. The pixels are not that well defined and colors are fringing a little. I guess with the inversion card and the J-pac, the signal gets punched around a little too much.

I will limit the amount of games to just a few vertical games I actually play.
- Donkey Kong (Japan Set, Hard Kit, US Set)
- Donkey Kong Jr
- Donkey Kong 3
- Galaga
- Frogger
- Pacman
- Ms. Pacman
- Super Qix
- Space Invaders
- Son of Phoenix
-DoDonPachi (this one is extra challenging with the 4way joystick, still pretty fun to play and looks awesome)

------------
- Arm Wrestling
- Punch Out
-------------
I mostly was interested in seeing how these two Nintendo Games work out on there and it was the main reason to try out Mame and J-Pac. Arm Wrestling was the last Nintendo title released for the Arcades and Donkey Kong was their first real successful title for them, so it kind of feels like coming full circle playing it on a DK cabinet. Dual monitor games look pretty neat on the vertical monitor btw.

 For the frontend I use Hyperspin with a vertical theme called Hyper-V.

And one note to the purists out there, I still run the original PCB 90% of the time but it's really fun seeing some other games on this beautiful CRT every now and then.