Interesting look of Namco's Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune PCB

PC Engine Fan X! · Post by **PC Engine Fan X!** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:44 am

At my local pizza place called John's Incredible Pizza Place in Modesto, California, there is a dual-player sit down deluxe arcade racing game by the name of Namco's Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune that accepts those cool Player data cards. Well, the 2nd player side wasn't accepting credits even though it would take tokens but not register a single credit...a game attendant was summoned and she fiddled around with the Arcade Operator's Menu screen setting but she couldn't get it to register a credit and gave the kid next me his tokens back.

An interesting observation of the Namco's Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune arcade PCB is that it runs on JVS output settings (which leads me to believe that it outputs to a 31kHz PC "flat screen" type monitor as the standard method of displaying the cool racing graphics). (I did not know that but it's cool to learn a little bit more about what kind of hardware that Maximum Tune {and Maximum Tune 2 as well} both run on.)

I haven't gotten the chance to try out Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 2 yet...look forward to trying it out if the local Maximum Tune arcade machine is upgraded to the "2nd version".

It would be ace if Namco would indeed release a home port of either it's arcade-based Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune racing games...only time will tell if that's to be or not. Support for the Logitech Driving Force Pro would be even better if such a port were made for an PS2 or PS3 based iteration.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Skyline · Post by **Skyline** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 2:17 am

Maximum Tune and Maximum Tune 2 both run on Sega's Chihiro board, which uses an nVidia chip for visual output. So the display output method isn't really surprising in that respect.

And yeah...a home port of this game would be sick. I play the crap out of this game in the arcades (well over 2500KM in mileage points), and a home port would help a lot in practicing for time-attack runs.

jindo · Post by **jindo** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 2:49 am

PS2 port has been out for while.
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-41- ... 0-1d7.html

Post by **nZero** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 3:54 am

That's the original, not Maximum Tune.

TWITCHDOCTOR · Post by **TWITCHDOCTOR** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 5:05 am

You mean Wangan Midnight? I'd buy it if my PS2 played Japanese games.
I'll take an arcade version of Tokyo Extreme Racer any day!