City Connection / Cruisin'

Kid Dynamite

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I think this game has a pretty small following, but I absolutely love it and was wondering if anyone else feels the same about it.

Also, I've played this game a number of times but am not exactly a seasoned vet at the game. I got my pcb working yesterday for the first time and saw something I hadn't seen before in the game. On level 1 there was what looked like a green UFO flying across the top of the screen. Does anyone know what triggers this or if it's significant in any way? (i.e. warp, points, enemy, etc.).
 
I am a big fan too. It took me about a year just to find a PCB, at which point I ended up with 3 of them all at the same time (every contact I had knew I was looking and two people found them for me the week after one finally popped up on ebay).

I think it has a small following for 2 reasons.
#1. it is terribly, horribly rare to the point where most people never played it back in the day.
#2. The Nes port of it wasn't very good, which probably flavors people's perceptions of the game.

Is yours Cruisin' or City Connection? I was always more attached to the City Connection title since that was the title used on the Nes port. The one board I still have is City Connection, and I have a marquee with a hunk out of it (only City Connection marquee I have ever seen). Been looking for a City Connection control panel overlay going on 10 years now.

I don't remember the UFO, although I haven't played in about 5 years.

Did you get the Cruisin' board that was on ebay a couple months ago.
 
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I had one of these for years and really enjoyed it. Once you get the knack for jumping and turning mid-air, it gets interesting. Damn that cat! Mine was a Cruisin'.
 
I think this game has a pretty small following, but I absolutely love it and was wondering if anyone else feels the same about it.

Also, I've played this game a number of times but am not exactly a seasoned vet at the game. I got my pcb working yesterday for the first time and saw something I hadn't seen before in the game. On level 1 there was what looked like a green UFO flying across the top of the screen. Does anyone know what triggers this or if it's significant in any way? (i.e. warp, points, enemy, etc.).

I have the game and have been playing for years. Currently have a City Connection board and a Cruisin' board. So far, have not noticed any differences. I love the game, enjoy the music on the different stages, one of my favorites. Kit games on KLOV seem to get hated a great deal because original cabinets being converted by operators back in the day.

Yes, I have seen the UFO on the New York stage, maybe Paris also, but have not been able to get it. On some stages there will be hidden items that appear. Seems the hidden items appear randomly, I have not been able to figure out a way to get them to appear regularly. Also, if you can get to 900,000 points, the game starts glitching and you get nearly unlimited cars, but the enemies start coming at you very fast.

1. On the Mt. Fuji, Japan stage sometimes a white rabbit will bounce by. It is worth points if you pick it up.

2. Australia stage, sometimes black rabbits will pop up and if you can keep running them over while one is still on screen, then more will appear. They are worth 10,000 points.

3. On a couple stages, broken pieces of a heart will appear on screen. If you pick them up, they are the same as the balloons. You warp if you get three of them.

If you play the game with an 8-way joystick you can do a back-jump to get to higher parts of the highway. Though I do not believe the developers intended this move. With a 4-way, which the game manual suggests, I have not been able to do that move. I can get better scores with an 8-way compared to the 4-way joystick.
 
There was a City Connection in the bowling alley I frequented BITD. Really fun game, IMO. I was glad to find and enjoy it in MAME. If I get lucky, it'll get added to the ArcadeSD... but I'm not going to hold my breath.
 
I am a big fan too. It took me about a year just to find a PCB, at which point I ended up with 3 of them all at the same time (every contact I had knew I was looking and two people found them for me the week after one finally popped up on ebay).

I think it has a small following for 2 reasons.
#1. it is terribly, horribly rare to the point where most people never played it back in the day.
#2. The Nes port of it wasn't very good, which probably flavors people's perceptions of the game.

Is yours Cruisin' or City Connection? I was always more attached to the City Connection title since that was the title used on the Nes port. The one board I still have is City Connection, and I have a marquee with a hunk out of it (only City Connection marquee I have ever seen). Been looking for a City Connection control panel overlay going on 10 years now.

I don't remember the UFO, although I haven't played in about 5 years.

Did you get the Cruisin' board that was on ebay a couple months ago.

You might be the only one I expected to chime in here. I came across a thread or two of yours re: City Connection while I was in pursuit of my pcb and searching for conversion questions. My pcb is a Cruisin' that is about to become a City Connection. I can tell that my board had roms 4, 10, and 11 reprogrammed at some point, so perhaps it was originally a City Connection?

Yep, I got that Cruisin' board on ebay and it only took me six months to find it. It was $45 untested with plexi marquee and Jaleco wiring harness (which simplified the JAMMA adapter process). There was actually a Cruisin' with City Connection japanese marquee art for sale on Yahoo Japan Auctions a few months back that sold for over 10,000 yen which would end up costing over $200 after middleman fees, domestic shipping and international shipping. There was also a legit City Connection with a title screen graphic glitch that sold at the same time as my Cruisin' that I got on ebay. I started pursuing this original CC on Yahoo Japan, then the bidding got kinda nuts (about 20,000 JPY, roughly $330 after all fees are accounted for).

I'm curious to know what your City Connection marquee looks like. Typically Japanese arcade hardware comes with paper/cardboard marquee art that goes into a removable holder vs. the american standard plexi or glass marquees.
 
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I love the game, enjoy the music on the different stages, one of my favorites.

Yep, the music is the reason I loved the NES game as a 5-year old. I still find myself nodding to the music while playing the arcade version.

Yes, I have seen the UFO on the New York stage, maybe Paris also, but have not been able to get it. On some stages there will be hidden items that appear. Seems the hidden items appear randomly, I have not been able to figure out a way to get them to appear regularly. Also, if you can get to 900,000 points, the game starts glitching and you get nearly unlimited cars, but the enemies start coming at you very fast.

1. On the Mt. Fuji, Japan stage sometimes a white rabbit will bounce by. It is worth points if you pick it up.

2. Australia stage, sometimes black rabbits will pop up and if you can keep running them over while one is still on screen, then more will appear. They are worth 10,000 points.

3. On a couple stages, broken pieces of a heart will appear on screen. If you pick them up, they are the same as the balloons. You warp if you get three of them.

Thanks for the info! Didn't know anything about these hidden items, looking forward to them now.

If you play the game with an 8-way joystick you can do a back-jump to get to higher parts of the highway. Though I do not believe the developers intended this move. With a 4-way, which the game manual suggests, I have not been able to do that move. I can get better scores with an 8-way compared to the 4-way joystick.

I think I remember you talking about the 8-way advantage before. I tried to do the turning jump with control, looks like that's gonna take a bit of practice.
 
Cruisin and City connection rom swap to each other with no problem. I tested that back when I had both boards.

My marquee looks like the picture below, but with a chunk out of the corner. It is silk screened on thick plexiglass. Thus it is a standard American style marquee.



You might be the only one I expected to chime in here. I came across a thread or two of yours re: City Connection while I was in pursuit of my pcb and searching for conversion questions. My pcb is a Cruisin' that is about to become a City Connection. I can tell that my board had roms 4, 10, and 11 reprogrammed at some point, so perhaps it was originally a City Connection?

Yep, I got that Cruisin' board on ebay and it only took me six months to find it. It was $45 untested with plexi marquee and Jaleco wiring harness (which simplified the JAMMA adapter process). There was actually a Cruisin' with City Connection japanese marquee art for sale on Yahoo Japan Auctions a few months back that sold for over 10,000 yen which would end up costing over $200 after middleman fees, domestic shipping and international shipping. There was also a legit City Connection with a title screen graphic glitch that sold at the same time as my Cruisin' that I got on ebay. I started pursuing this original CC on Yahoo Japan, then the bidding got kinda nuts (about 20,000 JPY, roughly $330 after all fees are accounted for).

I'm curious to know what your City Connection marquee looks like. Typically Japanese arcade hardware comes with paper/cardboard marquee art that goes into a removable holder vs. the american standard plexi or glass marquees.
 

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I like the game. I played it back in the day. I also have the board.

I really like the music. I find that a lot of the games I liked to play had good music (Flicky, Mappy). Also, cats are always evil in 80's video games. :rolleyes:

I'll have to hook mine up for a few games. :D

I don't remember anything about the UFO.
 
Cruisin and City connection rom swap to each other with no problem. I tested that back when I had both boards.

My marquee looks like the picture below, but with a chunk out of the corner. It is silk screened on thick plexiglass. Thus it is a standard American style marquee.

Wow that marquee has me puzzled. Was there another market for City Connection aside from Japan? The reason I ask is that I actually have an original Japanese marquee artpiece with company logo and factory sticker on it which is printed on paper/cardboard as most Japanese marquee art is. The only two full-sized marquee pictures I've seen do not have any company info on it, almost like an aftermarket marquee.
 
Here's the City Connection marquee piece I was talking about. In Japan the cabinets typically have clear plexi marquee spaces with no back lighting that hold art made of gloss paper or card stock. This is why I found the plexi City Connection marquee with no company name puzzling, especially if City Connection was only released as Cruisin' in other countries. Maybe there were City Connections distributed outside Japan?
 

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