Shaun helped me out with this months ago but I never got around to finishing it. Tonight I did so.
Several months ago I bought a new 64GB micro USB 3.1 drive, formatted it with an exFAT file system, copied everything over from my Dexter's original 16GB USB drive, and grabbed the new menu system image file and the
Cliff Hanger laserdisc image file and copied those to the new drive. Updated my DexterManager app and ran it to install the new images. Got a new v3.0 ROM for my Merlin-DX in the mail from swood... and then got distracted for four months.

Jeez, all I had to do was plug the shit in!
Tonight I picked up where I left off. Threw the new, previously updated 64GB USB drive into my Dexter and fired up the cab. It took a little while to copy over all the images and run the firmware update -- I'm not sure how long since I didn't babysit it; maybe 30 minutes? -- but eventually it appeared to have finished everything, as it just sat on a blank screen for a while. Powered down, removed the v2.0 ROM from my Merlin-DX and popped in the new v3.0 ROM, and fired up the cab and held my breath.
It booted to
Dragon's Lair as usual, so I waited for it to run that attract twice... then the
Dragon's Lair II attract twice... then the
Space Ace attract twice... and then
Cliff Hanger appeared! Yes, I could have used the controls to bring up the menu and just cycled through to see if it was there, but I liked the suspense. Will it work? Or will it finish the second
Space Ace attract and then give me the finger and cycle back to
Dragon's Lair? Because with my luck it will be the latter.
Nope. It worked perfectly.

And the
Cliff Hanger attract is hilarious. I'm gonna dig discovering this game. I never saw
Cliff Hanger back in the day. Never knew it existed until I got into collecting back in 2008. Still have never seen a
Cliff Hanger machine in the flesh. Hell I'd never seen the game play or even a YouTube video showing game play footage. This is a golden era game that is totally new to me, which is freaking cool. I've heard lots of people talk up
Cliff Hanger over the years and how awesome it is. I've heard many say it is their favorite laserdisc game. I played one game of it and only made it past the first scene.

But this is gonna be a fun one to get to know.
Many thanks to Shaun Wood for being awesome.