Grail game is close. Ikaruga

[GeddonArchon]

For a long time I’ve wanted ikargua in a vertical candy cab. A while back I got two blast city cabs and set one vertical and one horizontal thinking hey should be pretty easy getting ikaruga running in it right? Not really. They were both setup for standard res jamma. About a year ago I started buying up Naomi stuff and I’ve finally got a Naomi 1, netdimm, Capcom I/o, raspberry pi all setup, vga cable where I yanked out pin 9 (not sure how big of a deal this is, the official Naomi cable does not have that pin and I’ve heard using a regular vga cable cab potentially damage your Naomi if connected to certain displays). I adapted controls to a jvs i/o with mitsu’s jvs helper board, ran into issues using a atx to Naomi power harness so I’m using a sun psu now. Went through a lot of work getting the stupid netdimm updated properly. Installed multibios and the netdimm pic, Got a decent Naomi romset, got ikargua art for my blast city. Recently got the piforce web tools working and Naomi running ikaruga connected vga to a lcd tv mounted vertical. So that is pretty damn close. Naomi was loud and whiny as shit so I replaced her fans and that quieted her down. Tried on the blast city switching the dip switches for 31hz but no dice. People say I need to pull the monitor and adjust for 31hz so that is next. In the meantime I’m enjoying the game on a tv. Sound is ass on the tv so I connected a little mixer and studio monitors which was a huge upgrade. Ironically my netdimm has a rare issue where ikaruga and Tetris work but other games do not, so at least I have ikaruga while I try to solve that. So next step is hopefully fixing the netdimm so it will run all Naomi games and adjusting the monitor on the blast cab with Naomi running to adjust it for 31hz. It has been a journey but I still think it will be awesome to have this game in a proper cab. I get it working it will be dedicated ikaruga for a long time. I know the game is stretched on the lcd. I fixed that after I took the picture. I was overjoyed just seeing the thing work when I took that picture. First time I booted it I didn’t know about the contrast screen so had to wait 500 seconds or whatever and unfortunately didn’t have controls working properly at that time. My harness powering the jvs i/o was not providing 5v. Fixed that and leds lit up on the jvs and the mitsu helper board and I knew I was in business. Hit credit and start and the shit worked. It was awesome. It will be even better when it is in this cabinet.

https://imgur.com/gallery/YnuffhK

[ShotOfSelf]

For a long time I’ve wanted ikargua in a vertical candy cab. A while back I got two blast city cabs and set one vertical and one horizontal thinking hey should be pretty easy getting ikaruga running in it right? Not really. They were both setup for standard res jamma.

About a year ago I started buying up Naomi stuff and I’ve finally got a Naomi 1, netdimm, Capcom I/o, raspberry pi all setup, vga cable where I yanked out pin 9 (not sure how big of a deal this is, the official Naomi cable does not have that pin and I’ve heard using a regular vga cable cab potentially damage your Naomi if connected to certain displays). I adapted controls to a jvs i/o with mitsu’s jvs helper board, ran into issues using a atx to Naomi power harness so I’m using a sun psu now. Went through a lot of work getting the stupid netdimm updated properly. Installed multibios and the netdimm pic, Got a decent Naomi romset, got ikargua art for my blast city. Recently got the piforce web tools working and Naomi running ikaruga connected vga to a lcd tv mounted vertical. So that is pretty damn close.

Naomi was loud and whiny as shit so I replaced her fans and that quieted her down. Tried on the blast city switching the dip switches for 31hz but no dice. People say I need to pull the monitor and adjust for 31hz so that is next. In the meantime I’m enjoying the game on a tv. Sound is ass on the tv so I connected a little mixer and studio monitors which was a huge upgrade. Ironically my netdimm has a rare issue where ikaruga and Tetris work but other games do not, so at least I have ikaruga while I try to solve that.

So next step is hopefully fixing the netdimm so it will run all Naomi games and adjusting the monitor on the blast cab with Naomi running to adjust it for 31hz. It has been a journey but I still think it will be awesome to have this game in a proper cab. I get it working it will be dedicated ikaruga for a long time. I know the game is stretched on the lcd. I fixed that after I took the picture. I was overjoyed just seeing the thing work when I took that picture. First time I booted it I didn’t know about the contrast screen so had to wait 500 seconds or whatever and unfortunately didn’t have controls working properly at that time. My harness powering the jvs i/o was not providing 5v. Fixed that and leds lit up on the jvs and the mitsu helper board and I knew I was in business. Hit credit and start and the shit worked. It was awesome. It will be even better when it is in this cabinet.

https://imgur.com/gallery/YnuffhK

Had to fix the block of text but Ikaruga is definitely a cool game. Congrats!

[dark]

Looks awesome. I can't imagine what all this stuff cost, just getting a candy cab like that in the US is a hard and expensive affair, let alone all the bits and bobs needed for the naomi setup. If this could all be done for like $500 I'd do it myself, but it seems like it'd be more like $2000 with the candy cab taking up a big chunk of that. Will you redo the control panel so its configured primarily for Ikaruga (ie not 6 buttons per player)?

[Xer Xian]

Great job. I know getting a Naomi system up and running is a pain, I bought all the hardware years ago but I've never found the willpower to sit down and set it up.

Was the mitsu board really necessary if your cab was wired for jamma?

[GeddonArchon]

Looks awesome. I can't imagine what all this stuff cost, just getting a candy cab like that in the US is a hard and expensive affair, let alone all the bits and bobs needed for the naomi setup. If this could all be done for like $500 I'd do it myself, but it seems like it'd be more like $2000 with the candy cab taking up a big chunk of that. Will you redo the control panel so its configured primarily for Ikaruga (ie not 6 buttons per player)?

2k is the ballpark. I’ll just leave it as 6 button. The extra buttons don’t really bother me.

[GeddonArchon]

Great job. I know getting a Naomi system up and running is a pain, I bought all the hardware years ago but I've never found the willpower to sit down and set it up.

Was the mitsu board really necessary if your cab was wired for jamma?

For the cab I can use a Capcom I/o. The mitsu board/jvs combo is for when I want to use Naomi anywhere other than an arcade cab. I have a Naomi 1 and a 2 so I can use both I/O at the same time.

Naomi can definitely be a pain. I’m still having trouble getting anything other than ikaruga to boot from the pi. I ordered another netdimm and another zero key. Eventually I’ll get it working.

[GeddonArchon]

I decided to make a dedicated control panel to complete the cabinet. I’m working on art and making it pretty minimal. Someone did something similar for a 6 button panel with just the ship, ikaruga in Japanese and some lines of shots. I’m going for something like that so the panel will be mostly white. Then I’m thinking of using some color for the buttons. The game has white shots with blue outline and black shots with red outline so I thought maybe it would be cool to do something like that with the buttons. Mix the cap and outer part of different color buttons. For shoot white/blue and red/black. For change polarity black/white and for release power I got some metallic red and blue buttons and I can mix those. Not sure what color for ball tops. I have black, white, blue, red so I can figure that out. Anyway I think it will be pretty cool and I’ll post the result once I get the control panel and buttons.