About a month ago Darin from Phoenix Arcade (www.phoenixarcade.com) announced that he would be shortly offering a programmable multigame PCB for sale. It wasn't long or hard to determine that this new programmable multigame PCB is the next generation multigame PCB from Clay Cowgills company. These are the same folks who produced the Arcadeshop Programmable Multigame board that was sold for a number of years at Arcadeshop but had been discontinued a while back.
I personally own two Arcadeshop boards, and while I had some gripes regarding the end-of-cycle handling of things for that particular product, I've always recommended the Arcadeshop board over any competitor when it came to quality, accuracy of emulation, menu, sound, etc... will I now be able to recommend the Phoenix Arcade ArcadeSD Programmable Multigame board? The short answer is... YES. If you want to know why... keep reading.
The PCB itself is red (at least mine is) and, I imagine due to moving the memory to a SD Memory card, actually a bit SMALLER than the already diminutive Arcadeshop PCB.. cutting the depth by about 1/2 inch or so...
You no longer need a serial cable to program the board. Gone is the power supply necessary to program the board away from the arcade cab. What you have left is... an SD Memory card. Simply mount the PCB with easy access to the board form the coin door and updating is just a matter of reaching through and removing the memory card... taking it to your PC... adding games as necessary... re-installing the card in the board via the coin door and powering on. Done! When i initially programmed my board, I couldn't locate a few ROMS and I was chomping at the bit to get to testing it out so I programmed without those games... I later decided to go looking for the ROMs and managed to locate most of them. I updated the SD memory card, re-programmed the PCB and all it did was add the new games. High scores that were there remained. It was easy as pie.
Another nice feature is that you can setup your games options BEFORE you write to the SD memory card. If you're not much for going through the different setup screens for each game while sitting at your cab, it's VERY simple to set those options via your PC and the ArcadeSD.exe program. The same goes with general options (coin value, home/arcade mode, etc.).
Overall I was impressed with the ArcadeSD.exe program and how well it worked. If you have a folder with thousands of ROMS, including multiples of the same ROM (different versions, etc)... simply direct the program to that folder and it will pick and choose the correct ROMS to use. Did it work 100%? Nope... I ended up with about a dozen games that I evidently didn't have exact matching ROM versions for. I ended up finding all but 3... two hacks (Galaga 2000 and Galaga Enduring Freedom) and Pac N Pal. For the life of me I can't find the right version of Pac N Pal to work... but it's not a huge loss as Pac N' Pal isn't the best of games (and I am sure I will locate the right ROM some day).
Getting this thing going was a breeze. This is exactly what I did:
(1) Removed Arcadeshop PCB
(2) Installed ArcadeSD PCB
(3) Formatted my SD Memory Card with FAT (not FAT32) on my PC
(4) Inserted formatted SD Memory Card in to ArcadeSD PCB.
(5) The game PCB ran through a little procedure on powerup... I then powered down the PCB and removed the memory card.
(6) Plugged the memory card in the PC... ran ArcadeSD.exe and input my ROM folder. The program found a ton of games. I set it to vertical mode and I programmed the available games to the SD memory card.
(7) I plugged in the memory card to the PCB and fired up. After a minute or two of programming (all with on-screen indicators) ... the menu popped up. DONE!
At first I couldn't use the trackball. After discovering the CONTROLS screen by hitting P2 start I then set P2 for trackball and the trackball worked.
The first "problem" I noticed was that my Atari LED lamps weren't working (P1 and P2 should flash). I double checked all settings and tried alternate settings to no avail. I've since reported the issue to Clay and he's responded that he was able to reproduce the issue and that there is, indeed, a problem and that it will be shortly rectified. Until then I will have to live with flashless LED's....
I immediately went to playing games. First I wanted to check out my one of my all-time favorites... Excitebike. See, I owned an actual Excitebike but sold it because the damn thing doesn't save high scores or (more importantly IMHO), track times. Well guess what... Excitebike on the ArcadeSD Multigame Board SAVES HIGH SCORES... AND TRACK TIMES! I know some of you are going "huh? Excitebike is a horizontal game!" ... well, it's one of a number of "horizontal" games that have been converted to work well on a vertical monitor. Others include: Liberator, Soccer, Golf, Star Luster, Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros, Missile Command, and more!
After being delighted by Excitebike, I had high hopes that all games would have high score saves. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. There are many games that still do not save high score. I am hoping that the issues with them saving high scores will be addressed and I am firmly convinced they will be. Some games that saved high scores on the AS board doesn't in this version (yet). Again... I am sure that many of these games will get a high score makeover at some point.
Emulation on the other hand, seems to be pretty spot on. There are a couple of things here and there that could be addressed (Donkey Kong 3's missing sounds from the AS board are still missing here, Scrambles "explosion" sound appears to be a hair loud (to me), Time Pilot's intro music seems a hair too "fast") ... but nothing terribly bad. I did encounter a single "shot" that remained on screen until the end of the first "wave" during a Gorf game... for example... but I am sure, again, that anything that comes up will be addressed.
As for the service mode options... basically you get the same options you got when you were first programming the SD memory card on your PC plus a few "cab only" options like monitor tests, controller tests, etc. I REALLY like the voltage meter built right in the main service menu. When i fired up I was at 5.18v which was a bit hotter than I like so I dropped it down to 5.07. The menu's are pretty straight forward. If you have a trackball, make sure you enable trackball as your P2 control or it won't work.
Now on to the games list...
I personally own two Arcadeshop boards, and while I had some gripes regarding the end-of-cycle handling of things for that particular product, I've always recommended the Arcadeshop board over any competitor when it came to quality, accuracy of emulation, menu, sound, etc... will I now be able to recommend the Phoenix Arcade ArcadeSD Programmable Multigame board? The short answer is... YES. If you want to know why... keep reading.
The PCB itself is red (at least mine is) and, I imagine due to moving the memory to a SD Memory card, actually a bit SMALLER than the already diminutive Arcadeshop PCB.. cutting the depth by about 1/2 inch or so...
You no longer need a serial cable to program the board. Gone is the power supply necessary to program the board away from the arcade cab. What you have left is... an SD Memory card. Simply mount the PCB with easy access to the board form the coin door and updating is just a matter of reaching through and removing the memory card... taking it to your PC... adding games as necessary... re-installing the card in the board via the coin door and powering on. Done! When i initially programmed my board, I couldn't locate a few ROMS and I was chomping at the bit to get to testing it out so I programmed without those games... I later decided to go looking for the ROMs and managed to locate most of them. I updated the SD memory card, re-programmed the PCB and all it did was add the new games. High scores that were there remained. It was easy as pie.
Another nice feature is that you can setup your games options BEFORE you write to the SD memory card. If you're not much for going through the different setup screens for each game while sitting at your cab, it's VERY simple to set those options via your PC and the ArcadeSD.exe program. The same goes with general options (coin value, home/arcade mode, etc.).
Overall I was impressed with the ArcadeSD.exe program and how well it worked. If you have a folder with thousands of ROMS, including multiples of the same ROM (different versions, etc)... simply direct the program to that folder and it will pick and choose the correct ROMS to use. Did it work 100%? Nope... I ended up with about a dozen games that I evidently didn't have exact matching ROM versions for. I ended up finding all but 3... two hacks (Galaga 2000 and Galaga Enduring Freedom) and Pac N Pal. For the life of me I can't find the right version of Pac N Pal to work... but it's not a huge loss as Pac N' Pal isn't the best of games (and I am sure I will locate the right ROM some day).
Getting this thing going was a breeze. This is exactly what I did:
(1) Removed Arcadeshop PCB
(2) Installed ArcadeSD PCB
(3) Formatted my SD Memory Card with FAT (not FAT32) on my PC
(4) Inserted formatted SD Memory Card in to ArcadeSD PCB.
(5) The game PCB ran through a little procedure on powerup... I then powered down the PCB and removed the memory card.
(6) Plugged the memory card in the PC... ran ArcadeSD.exe and input my ROM folder. The program found a ton of games. I set it to vertical mode and I programmed the available games to the SD memory card.
(7) I plugged in the memory card to the PCB and fired up. After a minute or two of programming (all with on-screen indicators) ... the menu popped up. DONE!
At first I couldn't use the trackball. After discovering the CONTROLS screen by hitting P2 start I then set P2 for trackball and the trackball worked.
The first "problem" I noticed was that my Atari LED lamps weren't working (P1 and P2 should flash). I double checked all settings and tried alternate settings to no avail. I've since reported the issue to Clay and he's responded that he was able to reproduce the issue and that there is, indeed, a problem and that it will be shortly rectified. Until then I will have to live with flashless LED's....
I immediately went to playing games. First I wanted to check out my one of my all-time favorites... Excitebike. See, I owned an actual Excitebike but sold it because the damn thing doesn't save high scores or (more importantly IMHO), track times. Well guess what... Excitebike on the ArcadeSD Multigame Board SAVES HIGH SCORES... AND TRACK TIMES! I know some of you are going "huh? Excitebike is a horizontal game!" ... well, it's one of a number of "horizontal" games that have been converted to work well on a vertical monitor. Others include: Liberator, Soccer, Golf, Star Luster, Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros, Missile Command, and more!
After being delighted by Excitebike, I had high hopes that all games would have high score saves. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. There are many games that still do not save high score. I am hoping that the issues with them saving high scores will be addressed and I am firmly convinced they will be. Some games that saved high scores on the AS board doesn't in this version (yet). Again... I am sure that many of these games will get a high score makeover at some point.
Emulation on the other hand, seems to be pretty spot on. There are a couple of things here and there that could be addressed (Donkey Kong 3's missing sounds from the AS board are still missing here, Scrambles "explosion" sound appears to be a hair loud (to me), Time Pilot's intro music seems a hair too "fast") ... but nothing terribly bad. I did encounter a single "shot" that remained on screen until the end of the first "wave" during a Gorf game... for example... but I am sure, again, that anything that comes up will be addressed.
As for the service mode options... basically you get the same options you got when you were first programming the SD memory card on your PC plus a few "cab only" options like monitor tests, controller tests, etc. I REALLY like the voltage meter built right in the main service menu. When i fired up I was at 5.18v which was a bit hotter than I like so I dropped it down to 5.07. The menu's are pretty straight forward. If you have a trackball, make sure you enable trackball as your P2 control or it won't work.
Now on to the games list...
Last edited:


