What a $50 Nintendo Vs. Dual Upright looks like...

jawhn

jawhn

Well-known member

Donor 3 years: 2011, 2015, 2018

VAPS


Joined
Jul 16, 2008
Messages
19,967
Reaction score
12,128
Location
Arizona
I've been wanting to start up a thread with this 'title style' for a while now, and then a $50 Ninty double-wide falls into my lap!

attachment.php


This thing is HUGE. I actually modified my home to get my Space Wars into my arcade, but this thing will never even fit into my house. It will live on my back porch. (The concrete-base porch is covered with a roof, and in AZ, so not too bad of living conditions, really)

It's been JAMMAtized, I think. (Atomic Punk/Bomberman was JAMMA, wasn't it?) I haven't taken any pics of the inside yet, but it has a switcher and appears to show the same image on both screens. It 'plays', has sound, but no joysticks or buttons. So after I get those wired up, I'm hoping it plays perfectly.

If anyone can school me on there/show me some FAQ threads about them, it'd be much appreciated.

Can 2 different games be played - one on each screen? Or is it more of 1 game / 4 players? Is the name I'm calling this in my thread title even correct?

Both screens are doing this: (Is that what's known as 'collapse'? Cap kit to fix? Or a board problem? Or just a simple adjustment?)

P1010001.jpgP1010004.jpgP1010005.jpg

And the reason they're upside-down is that the guy who had it before me apparently mixed up which one went on which side, because there are stickers saying "Right Side" and "Left Side" on each monitor, and are of course, backwards.
 

Attachments

  • SuperHangOnandAtomicPunk.jpg
    SuperHangOnandAtomicPunk.jpg
    93.3 KB · Views: 410
Last edited:
jawhn said:
It's been JAMMAtized, I think. (Atomic Punk/Bomberman was JAMMA, wasn't it?) I haven't taken any pics of the inside yet, but it has a switcher and appears to show the same image on both screens. It 'plays', has sound, but no joysticks or buttons. So after I get those wired up, I'm hoping it plays perfectly.
Click to expand...
Whew! More like TRAUMAtized. :) It should be okay once you rewire it. Atomic Punk is JAMMA for sure, Bomberman is probably also JAMMA since it's in there too.

If anyone can school me on there/show me some FAQ threads about them, it'd be much appreciated.

Can 2 different games be played - one on each screen? Or is it more of 1 game / 4 players? Is the name I'm calling this in my thread title even correct?
Click to expand...
Originally you could install a game like Tennis or Baseball and each player would have their own screen. OR, you could install two different games: one side has Hogan's Alley, the other Super Mario.

How it works now depends on what the previous owner did to it. If both screens show the same game, it's a crap shoot on whether or not they knew what they were doing. Once you dig into that and depending on what you find, it might be easier to restore it back to a DualSystem.
 
Been awhile since I've since one of those conjoined twin cabs. Man,who worked on that cab...Stevie Wonder?
 
Ok, took some pics of the inside, so you guys can see how badly it's been hacked... (Or not, it actually didn't look all electrical-tape/spliced wires, etc. Seems like everything went plug to plug, for the most part...?)

It almost looks like whoever converted it used a new JAMMA harness...?

P1010005.jpgP1010006.jpgP1010007.jpgP1010008.jpgP1010010.jpg
 
Internal cabinet pics are wierd!

Nice pickup though. The outside of the cabinet actually doesn't look too bad for what I've seen these end up looking like.

I am restoring two of these right now so feel free to ask any questions you want.. I will say that the internals don't look half bad if you want to try to reinstall the Nintendo VS system. Yes, you can play one VS. game on each side independently or put in a co-op two or four player game in the cabinet. I like having two player co-op Balloon Fight, but a common combination is Excitebike & Super Mario Brothers.

You have two Nintendo monitors and sound cards, you have the original parts of the Nintendo VS. power block. You have the original grounding strap. You would need to replace the PCB cage assembly which in the VS. dualsystem included the power supply mounted on the cage. Bezel, marquees and control easy to come by.

First thing you want to do whether you stay Jamma or go VS. is go to Black Offset T Molding thread and throw in for 30' of Tmolding.
 
You have guts picking that up!

I saw it listed on Craigslist, and was hoping someone would give it a proper home....way to go!

Hope you go Vs.!
 
Depending on what sort of games you like, Atari made a conversion kit for these cabinets to change them into... Cyberball 2072! You can get marquees, overlays, and side art. Someone repro'ed them years ago, but I'm not sure if they are still available. Finding original Nintendo joysticks and buttons isn't (or at least it wasn't) very hard, either.
 
Ok, did some minor work on this tonight... Got one of the CPs populated. Had to buy a bunch of hardware, and steal cherry switches and trivial things from other games to do it. I should be cleaning my house. :rolleyes:

Question, though... Should I wire the controls according to the Nintendo Vs. color coding? Or since it's JAMMA, should I look up that color coding? :confused: Maybe they're the same, I dunno.
 
jawhn said:
Question, though... Should I wire the controls according to the Nintendo Vs. color coding? Or since it's JAMMA, should I look up that color coding? :confused: Maybe they're the same, I dunno.
Click to expand...
Not the same, hence the two different system names: JAMMA and Vs. :)

Only you know the answer to which one you want. If you're keeping it JAMMA, wire the CP for JAMMA. If you're converting back to Vs., wire it for that. IMO a proper Vs. rebuild is probably the better way to go here. Throw a gun holster on one side and play Duck Hunt, Hogan's Alley, and Gumshoe. Play everything else on the other side.
 
jawhn said:
If anyone can school me on there/show me some FAQ threads about them, it'd be much appreciated.

Can 2 different games be played - one on each screen? Or is it more of 1 game / 4 players? Is the name I'm calling this in my thread title even correct?
Click to expand...

What you have is a dualsystem which is an upright version of the red tent, i guess you could say.

After you get the thing all squared away with the correct harness, etc, you have some options regarding the PCB. There is one single PCB. This PCB is used on both the unisystems and dualsystems. On this PCB there are two sides. Essentially for you, a left side and a right side. On these sides you can decide to put two unique games, one for each side, or choose from a small handful of games that are designed specifically for the dualsytem. These games are Balloon Fight, Baseball, Tennis, Wrecking Crew, etc. IF you install two sets of these games on your PCB then you can do dual monitor play. With tennis, you can play up to four players.

Check out my site for more info.

http://www.johnsarcade.com/nintendo_vs_ppu_info.php
 
At this point, I am just interested in getting Bomberman working properly... I know everyone wants me to restore this thing back to its Vs. glory, but it appears to be professionally converted to JAMMA, and after all the $$$ and parts it would take to make it original, it won't be worth it to me.

I know a lot of people probably think that's wrong, but remember, I didn't convert this. I just adopted the beaten orphan. ;)

I also like the idea of a 4P cab. Did they make a JAMMA version of Gauntlet? Or another badass 4P game?

Gack, thanks for that link, I will watch it. That may be the guy that sold me the Vs. in the first place, lol.
 
If you're going that route, use a xxxx-n-1 pcb. I probably have another one of those too...
You can use the daughter card on it and play 4 player games. It states that you can link 2 cabos together, so I do not see any issues there...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

RUSTINGEEZER
Looks like a rocket scientist got to my power supply.
2 3
Replies
53
Views
3K
vintagegamer
vintagegamer
vintagegamer
Looks like we lost a brother in MD (Russ Holt)
Replies
15
Views
1K
vintagegamer
vintagegamer
jimbodeanny
Nothing quite like working on a game that's nearly 50 years old. [Exidy Circus]
Replies
0
Views
151
jimbodeanny
jimbodeanny
Bee423
Defender Upright Vs Cocktail
2
Replies
20
Views
1K
Bee423
Bee423
racerx1690
What newer PCB (if any) is like an ArcadeSD PCB
Replies
10
Views
601
DeLuSioNaL29
DeLuSioNaL29
Back
Top Bottom