Mad Dog McCree 2 3DO to Multi-Rom Laserdisc Restoration / Conversion

Les Manley

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Mad Dog McCree 2 3DO to Multi-Rom Laserdisc Restoration / Conversion

I am posting this now to jump start my motivation for continuing to work on this project. The history behind this is, I loved Mad Dog 1 and 2 as a kid and I have very fond memories of playing them with my parents at different places. A few years ago, I found this cabinet on eBay, complete and working. I had never seen one for sale, complete and/or working, so I jumped on this and had it shipped to me.

What I didn't realize is that in 94, ALG starting using 3DOs instead of LD players in their arcade games. It wasn't a big deal, except for the fact that the video quality is not as good as a LD.

A few months ago, I found a guy through the Dragon's Lair LD forums that made a multi-rom board for all ALG games. With a disc swap and a turn of a dial, you could now play any ALG game. This was all the motivation I needed to convert my 3DO ALG setup to a LD ALG setup.
 

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The first thing I needed to do was find the guts of an ALG LD cab. Dj Dns on the forums happened to have all the parts from a working cab, along with the LDs for Crime Patrol 1 and 2. I contacted him and made a deal for everything and I was on my way. Unfortunately when things arrived, the LD had been destroyed in shipping. This was the 3rd LD player I had shipped that had been broken in shipping. I tested the discs and things worked fine, so I worked out a partial refund with Dj Dns. This turned out alright when I found another compatible LD player I had actually worked, when I thought it was broken. This would be the player I would use for the cabinet.

Now, I needed to sell all my 3DO parts for the ALG cabinet. I posted a for sale post here and in a couple of other places and got interest very quickly. I made the sale and started pulling out the components to ship them out to the buyer.

Here are some pics for the inside of the game as I am sure most people here have not ever seen in one of these before.
 

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I will take pics of the ALG LD stuff before putting it in the new cab and wiring everything up. Some other things I have done in the meantime are purchasing black metal revolver guns like the original game came with, to replace the orange plastic guns on there now. They are the middle style gun in the pic below. The orange ones are different than in the pic, they look more like an automatic gun similiar to the red and blue guns in Area 51 for example. I also purchased Mad Dog 1 and 2 LDs from Channelmaniac on here, as the 3DO Mad Dog 2 disc would not work and was on it's way to the new buyer.'

I included a pic of the 3DO arcade Mad Dog 2 game. It looks just like a normal 3DO game, but will not work on a home system and says arcade version on the disc itself.

The cabinet itself is in great shape, except for some slight seperation you can see on the right side in the pic below. I will get that back together and make it solid again. These cabinets are constructed so well with the bottom opening and slide out drawer.
 

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Sounds like an awesome project. My brother and I played the crap out of Mad Dog back in the day. Keep it up.
 
Nice, can't wait to see the end result. Is there any difference in video quality from the Home MD2 and the arcade version?
 
That's crazy that they basically plunked a 3DO home system in there and run the machine off of that. Great pics and project!
 
So the home version isn't as good? Did you try playing any home discs in the the arcade 3DO?

Yes. The way they did it was they modified a 3DO to hold up to arcade use as a normal 3DO isn't capable of handling that long of play per day. LD players were vanishing, 3DO was struggling and ALG was struggling so they combined to try to help each other out. Good idea in theory, but it didn't last long. Home 3DO games will not play on the arcade 3DO and vice versa. I have seen the home versions of the games and they look basically the same as the arcade 3DO versions. Both are graphically inferior to the LD gameplay, but that is about it.
 
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