Best 'one-button' JAMMA games

trickman

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I have a Tetris in a Dynamo cab. Now I know all Tetris's are conversions, but the one I own has every indication of being straight out of the factory and into an arcade, as it has all the (Atari Corp) stickers and serial numbers intact on the back. So I pretty much want to keep this as original as possible, and not drill more holes in the CP.

Since it's a one-button horizontal game and JAMMA, I was wondering what other one-button horizontal JAMMA games/boards are out there that I could switch out if I wanted to. All I can think of right now is another puzzle game, Columns. What others would be worth pursuing?
 
High Impact Football
Super High Impact
Plotting (puzzle)
Columns (puzzle, might not be jamma?)
Trog
Gal's Panic (all of them?)
Buster Bros. (aka Pang!)

This assumes you have an 8-way joystick,
although I think the original Tetris sticks
might be 4-way. Most of these are 4-way
games, except for Football.
 
High Impact Football
Super High Impact
Plotting (puzzle)
Columns (puzzle, might not be jamma?)
Trog
Gal's Panic (all of them?)
Buster Bros. (aka Pang!)

This assumes you have an 8-way joystick,
although I think the original Tetris sticks
might be 4-way. Most of these are 4-way
games, except for Football.

Ah, Buster Bros. is a great game, so is Trog. Is there a two-player Trog? I've only ever seen 4P.
 
Trog is dip switch adjustable for 1,2,3 or 4 player installations.
But most of us have only seen the 4-player dedicated version.
 
If you connect the 2PL button on the harness to the 2nd fire button on the JAMMA side, you could expand your PCB options (but be limited to 1-player games)...
 
Trog would work just fine with a 4-way stick, as your player can only make left/right/up/down moves and can't go diagonally. It also will work as a 2 player game, you just won't be able to play using Spike (yellow) or Gwen (purple), as they require a separate harness that plugs into the PCB. If you don't mind buying JAMMA adapters, you could play some older PCBs in it too. I just picked up an Elevator Action PCB that included a Taito JAMMA adapter. It should work with single button games like Jungle King or Zookeeper too.
 
Don't all those games with the exception of Klax and Tetris also require a Start button for each player?

Klax and Tetris use Button 1 as Start for each player respectively. Of course you can modify your harness to change one of your "Rotate" buttons (Flip in the case of Klax) to the Start connection on the harness but stock you have a pair of 4 way joysticks with a pair of Button 1's for each player.

I run Tetris as an alternate board in my Klax cabaret and I'm happy with the choice between two of the greatest puzzle games ever created.
 
Trog would work just fine with a 4-way stick, as your player can only make left/right/up/down moves and can't go diagonally. It also will work as a 2 player game, you just won't be able to play using Spike (yellow) or Gwen (purple), as they require a separate harness that plugs into the PCB. If you don't mind buying JAMMA adapters, you could play some older PCBs in it too. I just picked up an Elevator Action PCB that included a Taito JAMMA adapter. It should work with single button games like Jungle King or Zookeeper too.

Great to hear I can make Trog into a 2P game. I think I will be seeking out a Trog board, as it's one of my favorite games from the '90s arcade era. I don't mind JAMMA adapters so those are cool options as well. Also, I noticed the Tetris stick on my control panel has 4-way options, but is missing the UP switch on each stick. I guess because Tetris doesn't use UP in the game at all, they figured why waste the hardware? Easy fix. I can put a new switch in there to make it work. Arcade Legends 1 already has KLAX, so I'm not really seeking this one out.
 
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Thread bump/revival/update:

For my original control panel, I was able to find another good one-button game: Mr. Driller 2. With a double JAMMA harness inside the machine, I can now toggle between Tetris and Mr. Driller 2 boards via a small switcher.

I was going to say Galaga '88 but then I realized it needed to be horizontal.

Not true for Dynamo cabs. The supporting wood for the monitor has cutouts for making the monitor orientation horizontal or vertical. So I could do Galaga '88 in there. The real trick comes in actually FINDING a Galaga '88 for a decent price. :p I tested putting a 60-in-1 in there and it worked great. I also experimented with my first replacement control panel. It's functional; I made a lot of newbie mistakes. But I at least got 3 buttons to work on each side of the CP, so the option for more games can now open up even further.
 
If you can get it, try out Star Trigon, like Mr. Driller 2 and Mr. Driller G it's on Namco System 10 hardware - and it features Susumu, Mr. Driller himself. It only uses one button (plus the start button), no joystick required. It may have only been released in Japan though. Mine was $10, so you may be able to get it cheaply.
 
I have a 19" dynamo tetris cab with 1 button too. Do this- find another control panel. Dynamos are totally modular- The connectors to the panel are molexed, then the panel front itself attaches with 5 nuts. Would take you 5-10 mins max to swap between a spare control panel with 3+ buttons and your original virgin tetris panel. Problem solved and you can open your inventory to many many jamma games.
 
Do! Run Run isn't JAMMA. (But it is an awesome game.)

Yeah, Do! Run Run is a great game. I have it on Arcade Legends and it works good on there; not worth getting it for another machine, IMO.

I have a 19" dynamo tetris cab with 1 button too. Do this- find another control panel. Dynamos are totally modular- The connectors to the panel are molexed, then the panel front itself attaches with 5 nuts. Would take you 5-10 mins max to swap between a spare control panel with 3+ buttons and your original virgin tetris panel. Problem solved and you can open your inventory to many many jamma games.

Yep, if you look up at my post #13 I did exactly that, except I made one myself because even though it looks like an HS-1 in every other respect, the CP on mine is just one MDF board with a hinge to the pull-out board. I plan on making another one with two players this time, since I have successfully tested 3 working buttons per player.
 
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