Area 51 / Max Force Cabinet Selection Questions? Conversions?

sataneatscheese

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I'm looking strongly at filling my second spot with a rail shooter, and am specifically interested in Area51. There are a couple of Maximum Force cabinets near me on facebook. One is $300 and has a monitor that works but is a bit dark, the other is an Area 51/Maximum Force that looks great and has been recapped, but is listed for $1500. I see I can throw Area 51/Max force Combo chips and hard drives in either cabinet. Is this a hard conversion or just swapping eproms/hard drives?

If its an easy conversion I'd lean toward the cheaper cabinet but if its a POA where I risk nuking things I'd lean toward the ready machine (and heavily negotiating it down).

Also for down the line, if I end up with one of these and want to swap in a different game board is there a list of easily compatible games with the monitor/guns? Just curious if games like Lethal Enforcers or Police Trainer would work in there.

Thanks!
 
Looking further on line it looks like a pretty simple rom swap, so I guess the real question is are there any other games an Area51 cabinet could be swapped to with existing monitor/guns.
 
Yeah, its a super easy thing to do. If you have a ROM burner, you can DIY it, its a quick patch, and a CHD copy.

You can dump CarnEvil into that cabinet (pending you set it for no shotgun reload) relatively easily. Honestly, I think most of the light gun games (not you Sega and your optical guns) will plug in with relative easy. Lethal Enforcers used a mirror, so you *may* have to yoke wire swap to mirror it back to how you want, unless theres a dip switch for that setting.
 
You can swap a ton of different games in there. Basically any JAMMA game that is compatible with Happ guns, which is a lot, will work. Check out my VAPS for all the light gun games I have - those all work in my Max Force cabinet. I did have to do some work to get Friction and Time Crisis to work, neither of those are JAMMA but I made a harness that plugs into JAMMA for them.

Lethel Enforcers has a dip switch setting to mirror the image or not so that works just fine without a mirror. The setting in Carnevil is just in the test menu if I remember correctly. That game is a bit sensitive to monitors though. I initially had my NeoTech monitor in there that came with my Maximum Force cabinet but was having issues with tracking on multiple games I had in there with the switcher installed, but most noticeably was with Carnevil. Once I swapped it with a WG U2000 that I had in my other cabinet, all problems went away. And Police Trainer works no problem, as does it's sequel.

If you are interested, look at the link in my signature. I have a lot more than 1 game in my Maximum Force cabinet.

Also just my opinion, but Maximum Force is a better game than Area 51. I didn't remember how short Area 51 was until I played it at my house lol. It's also pretty damn easy. I do find the actual Area 51 cabinet to be nicer than the Maximum Force one though, artwise.
 
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