The elusive Space Demon Upright

Space demon predates radar scope. For the control panel it looks like they were too lazy to create new art for it and instead just swapped color scheme and instead of changing the art where the un used button is, they decided to just not drill it and leave a red and white circle there.

I'm assuming this time in the life of Nintendo was a lot of prototyping and experimentation. Some games worked and some didn't so they kept reusing designs.

This cabinet is an interesting example. It has a transformer labeled TST, a power supply labeled TSF and a monitor labeled SDM. The cabinet lable says SDM and the dip switch instructions on the back door say SDM as well. It seems there is a little bit of space firebird, space fever and space demon in this cabinet.

I'll get more pics of it running tomorrow once I attach the instruction cards
 
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Here are a couple of pics. I'll need to figure out how to upload a video
 

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Mainly because I hate the Nintendo 2 way stick and the horrible tiny buttons, I vectorized the control panel and I'm going to have a new plexi made up so I can make a new panel with more usable buttons and stick. I didn't want to touch the original panel for obvious reasons so I'm starting with creating a new CP for this thing.
 
A couple more pics. Also, the marquee does not looked washed out like it does in most of these pics. My cell phone can't handle the back light very well
 

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Here is the bottom of the control panel. You can see some pencil markings on the bottom which gives it even more of a prototype feel
 

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Amazing find mate,i love the colour scheme of the bezel and control panel and I think the game is great.
They might have only made a few of these like sky skipper and play tested them on different locations and it didn't fair well so they scrapped it.
How does your version differ from the mame dump then ?
 
Amazing find mate,i love the colour scheme of the bezel and control panel and I think the game is great.
They might have only made a few of these like sky skipper and play tested them on different locations and it didn't fair well so they scrapped it.
How does your version differ from the mame dump then ?

Check out the link to the video I posted. The Mame version has a horrible blue back ground, no back ground music and the star field is wrong. Here is a link to the mame game play video:

https://youtu.be/e0IPf7-EpJ4
 
Good to see this cabinet getting some attention again.

For those of you interested in playing this game in MAME, too bad so sad...the game doesn't work in MAME. Read below.

Forum member Darthi8nt and I spent a LOT of time in 2013 working on a few Space Demon and Space Firebird board sets when I did the restoration of my Space Demon cabaret. There are 6 different flavors of this game:

Space Demon (Nintendo)
Space Firebird (Nintendo license)
Space Firebird (Sega / Gremlin license)
Space Firebird (bootleg hardware)
Space Bird (bootleg hardwae)
Space Thunderbird (bootleg hardware)

All 6 board sets run on the same basic three-pcb setup: CPU pcb, video pcb, and ESS sound pcb. To my knowlege, the top 5 in that list all use the little black connectors (or the .100 equivalent found on early DK boards) for all connections. The last one, Space Thunderbird, uses an edge connector.

From what I understand, the bottom five games all use the exact same ess sound board.

Space Demon, however, uses a slightly different sound board. It's bigger and has a few extra components on it. The ess board (on all 6 hardware revisions) is where the starfield is generated, as well as the "flashing red screen" when your ship is hit in the Space Firebird flavors. The screen does not flash red when your ship is hit in Space Demon.

Here's why Space Demon doesn't work in MAME:

They (incorrectly) have it listed as a "child" romset under the "parent" rom Space Firebird. This is incorrect. Space Demon should be considered as more of a "sister" to Space Firebird, not as parent/child. Because the MAME devs incorrectly coded Space Demon as a child rom to the Space Firebird parent, they coded the driver in MAME to play the game using Space Firebird hardware, but using the Space Demon prom/eprom data. This doesn't work. The title screen and attract mode looks fine, but the minute you coin up a game and start, the background of the screen takes on a blue tint and stays that way throughout gameplay.

This "blue screen" behavior can be duplicated by taking a Space Demon board set and swapping out the ess pcb with a space firebird pcb. Even if you move the SD sound rom into the SF ess board, you're still going to get the blue screen problem. You NEED to have the Fortrek ESS board in the mix to correctly play space demon. Since the MAME devs have not bothered to go back and update the Space Demon driver with the correct ESS board hardware, we will never be able to play this game correctly in MAME. I've posted about this a few times in the MAME dev forums, and my latest attempt to get any traction with fixing this got me a hand slap. So, there's that.

Read more here:

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=276497

So, long story short is this: If you don't have a genuine Fortrek ESS sound pcb available, you're not going to play Space Demon, ever.

I documented my progress in creating a reproduction Fortrek ESS sound pcb in another thread, here:

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showpost.php?p=3028533&postcount=101

Unfortunately I lack the skills to recreate the board in Eagle. Otherwise I'd try it.

Darthi8nt was going to try and convert a Space Firebird sound board to work correctly with Space Demon, but his life went in another direction in 2013/2014, and now he doesn't really post on the forums any more.
 
And there in lies the Key. The Fortrek boards are rare. really, really rare. I was going to take on recreating the board but it's a lot of work for a game that is not really popular.

Smalltownguy2, you probably have a better accounting of what's out there but just guessing maybe 3 or 4 cocktails, same number of cabarets and one upright. There are a couple of non working boardsets I've heard of but again, more rumor than fact on my end.
 
I know there were two cabaret's in BC Canada.
Rare, but not as rare as everyone thinks. I loved the game.
Most probably got converted to something else and the boards tossed in the trash....

Let's get Jrok on this!

If more people tried this game, I'm sure it would be more popular. Very fun.
 
There are less than 10 known Space Demons in the world. I've done some searching.

Here's what I know.

Where are the other cocktails you know of?

There less than 10 total cabinets that I'm aware of:

Cocktails:
  • Siefer13 in Iowa (1 pcb, working)
  • Mike from Mike's Arcade (unknown working condition)
  • Medi's Pizza in Tacoma, WA (unconfirmed, now Half Pint Pizza - new owners, machine whereabouts unknown)

Cabarets:

Uprights:
  • CptnSteve, (1 Fortrek board, working)


That's 10 confirmed cabinets (if Mike truly does own both a cocktail table and Mini, as he states in this thread) with 1 more floating around the Tacoma, WA area as of 2013. If the table from Medi's pizza could be found, that would make 9 cabinets known to exist.

Also, interesting note: Phetishboy restored a DK cabaret a few years back that had a Space Demon marquee sticker hidden underneath the DK sticker. He sent it to Rich for color matching, and Rich has since completed the marquee and monitor bezel stickers for the cabaret. They are available for sale on his site. That cabaret was likely converted at the factory into a DK.

How cool would it be if we could get a reproduction of the Space Demon CPO, bezel, and marquee for the Nintendo upright??

Until now, I don't believe anyone has ever seen the bezel or CPO for the upright. This is the first we've seen it!
 
I know there were two cabaret's in BC Canada.
Rare, but not as rare as everyone thinks. I loved the game.
Most probably got converted to something else and the boards tossed in the trash....

Let's get Jrok on this!

If more people tried this game, I'm sure it would be more popular. Very fun.

They are rare. I'd be interested in knowing about the cabaret's in BC. As far as I know, no one has ever seen the upright version outside of the one i have. I'd love confirmation of another upright. My serial number is 147 so I'm sure there were at least 146 others made, but the question is, were they just prototypes or were they actually production?

Todd Tuckey sold his, so I know that has changed hands. Also, smalltownguy2 I think has gotten his working now.
 
Well it was a successful weekend at the NWPAS. I had an early issue with the power supply in Space Demon. I quickly wired up an adapter for an ATX power supply so I didn't have to change any of the original wiring. From that point forward to ran perfectly the rest of the weekend. I got a couple folks calling me to try to buy it but since I have not been able to find any additional information on this cabinet and I don't know who to speak with at Nintendo here in Seattle to get any history on these uprights I'm not in a position to price it out.

Needless to say it was a lot of fun and my search for information on this game continues.
 
Well it was a successful weekend at the NWPAS. I had an early issue with the power supply in Space Demon. I quickly wired up an adapter for an ATX power supply so I didn't have to change any of the original wiring. From that point forward to ran perfectly the rest of the weekend. I got a couple folks calling me to try to buy it but since I have not been able to find any additional information on this cabinet and I don't know who to speak with at Nintendo here in Seattle to get any history on these uprights I'm not in a position to price it out.

Needless to say it was a lot of fun and my search for information on this game continues.
It's crazy rare, don't take any low offers! Talk to Alex here on the forums if you want to get an idea on it's value.

This a a low single digits game in the Upright. I think you might have the only known complete cabinet.
 
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