Finished my dedicated R-Type II arcade machine!

[Emig5m]

Since I got a key part (PCB) to this project from a member here (fpflipper) I figured I might as well share my project here.

Long story short, I have a strong nostalgic connection to the original R-Type from playing it with a childhood friend at a little bar down the road when we where kids. Since then I went about 25 years since seeing a R-Type machine in the flesh. About a year ago I got a huge bug to find a original R-Type cab after seeing the cabinet rendering in R-Type Dimensions on the XBox 360. I found and bought one. R-Type II eluded me back in the arcade hey-days, never seen or played it. But I thought it would be cool to also have the sequel to my favorite childhood arcade game plus it would be like a new game to me (I decided not to play far into it on the Xbox and to wait to play through it on the real arcade hardware). Since R-Type II only came as a kit and in R-Type Dimensions they show it in the same Nintendo R-Type style arcade cabinet, I picked up another R-Type machine locally to do a ground up restore and convert to R-Type II and bring what I saw in R-Type Dimensions to real life. I'll save the million pics I took as I progressed through the restore and keep it a simple before & after, but I'll add a link to my complete restore thread on another site below in case anyone is interested in all the tedious work step-by-step put into this project that cost a fortune and I think took around 50+hrs. But It was chewed up, completely missing the coin mechs, worn monitor, and much needed love. Every single piece got taken apart, cleaned, replaced, or restored. But I didn't want to convert a perfect collectors show piece that should be left alone anyway so this was the perfect condition for this project. Honestly, it took me three days to force myself to remove the original side-art. It was a tedious restore... I had never done this before. Never used bondo, never used a router, never did laminate... it was basically a first for everything for me but I was determined.




So without further ado, here she is...




My original idea was to turn this:











Into this:











Although the marquee and side art is the actual & original 26 year old new old stock stuff that I located in a huge arcade warehouse, I had the control panel overlay custom made because the original from the kit was just a plain generic blue one and I wanted to stay faithful with the originals artistic style that Nintendo did with the original cabinet:











Marquee lit up... And to think it sat in a warehouse unused for 26 years just to finally be put to use in 2015!











Before & After...









Just for reference, this is the original control panel overlay from the kit:

^Bleh~ That wasn't going to cut it. I would of just used the original R-Type control panel overlay if it came down to it. It wasn't easy to get through to the guy who made that custom overlay as he was in the process of moving (he did the reproduction artwork for thisoldgame), but I'm so glad I finally did because that was the final and finishing touch to my game and the way it should of looked originally and the way I visioned it if Nintendo had released the dedicated cabinet to R-Type II themselves like they did with the original. Looks like the rendering in R-Type Dimensions too!

I could of bought that cabinet with R-Type II installed pictured above for only $300.... Final cost of mine? Close to 3k and 50+hrs invested! But it was worth it in the end to have a proper and minty fresh R-Type II cabinet that stayed faithful to the style of the original! :p









But anyway, before I leave, for those interested, here's the link to the restore from start to finish: http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=358045
On Facebook, it was my "Fall Project" and I had received the last part, the control panel overlay on the very last day of fall and completed the project just a hour or so before fall was over and perfect timing to give the game to myself as a Christmas present!



fpflipper requested in email to see the cab so I figured I'd post it up here and say thanks again to fpflipper for letting his PCB go. It wasn't easy to find someone to part with theirs. It went to a very good cause! I had to ship parts from all around the world to finish and make this project come to life!

That's it, I'm out,
Peace.

[BIL]

Great read. I've never quite had the nerve to get into the arcade hardware side of the hobby, never mind dedicated cabs, but I do harbour some faint ambitions. Love hearing about stuff like this.

[Strikers1945guy]

Final cost close to 3k?? That's awesome. I love when people go out of the way to make a custom cab dedicated to a single game, regardless of cost or time, just focused on making it as bad ass as possible. Great stuff.

I think System11 spent a lot of money making a dedicated cab that would run Imperishable Night. That was cool too.

I swear one day I'll do this to a cab and make it dedicated to Ibara. Not sure on making the custom side art and all but if I find and old cab that I could do this too I'll figure something out.

[ELabit]

Are you not using the anti glare glass?

[MintyTheCat]

That is dedication, mate.

I can see that you put a lot of work and thought into this. Good to see someone take things all the way.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I've seen some slick fully restored classic arcade game cabs over at the once-a-year California Extreme show and some uber-rare arcade prototypes like Cube Quest (only six complete cabs were ever made back in 1984 + it plays very similar to Squaresoft/Positron's iS: internal section shmup with a dedicated trackball controller setup), The Event & Cosmic Chasm (a 1983 released color vector-based arcade game based off of the 1982 Vectrex game of the same name) as well. The Cosmic Chasm & Cube Quest cabs look absolutely stunning and in super mint condition for their age but were only shown just for one day on "Free Play" and not shown the next day. I've had the rare opportunity to try out the prototype version of Atari Games' Crystal Castles at a past CAX show -- it certainly is something you don't see out there in the wilds of the arcades nowadays.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Stevens]

Truly a labor of love. Enjoy them.

[D]

This is really awesome.
If you build a dedicated Leo, that would make it complete.
Can you imagine? That would be something. Nice to have a series of games together.

[rugdoctor]

There is a lot of love in those two cabinets. Well done!!

[waiwainl]

Wow! Well done, that looks like a pro job!

[Emig5m]

Thanks guys for the comments!

Are you not using the anti glare glass?

I am but I replaced it with a lighter tinted one as the one that came on it just darkened the monitor too much and felt it degraded the image quality. So what I did is take the smoked glass off my other R-Type machine which appeared to be a lot less dark to the glass shop and had them match the tint level and make me a new glass piece....

The one that I thought was too dark is on the left in the picture below and the one off my other R-Type is on the right...



As you can see in a brightly lit room you can barely see the marquee behind the glass on the left and the one on the right has just a little tint too it. I honestly have no idea which one is original and what one was replaced with the wrong level of tint but the dark one really makes the picture too dark even with the brightness turned up all the way so I decided to match both my games to the lighter tinted glass. I would tend to believe the lighter one is the original glass since the game had a low play count (14,xxx) and was in great shape all around and all original except a tube swap. The R-Type I got with the real dark glass was beat to hell and back, front panel kicked in and cracked, over 100,000 plays on the counter, obviously WAY more used so I believe the glass was replaced on that one with too dark of a tint level. That's just a guess, it could be the other way around, but I didn't like the image degradation with the darker one anyway.





Oh and since I made this post I got a original flyer from a member on here and some brand new key chains and fridge magnets from a guy in Spain...







If I didn't have stairs to contend with, I'd love to bring my games to arcade shows, especially the R-Type II since you're never going to see one of these in the wild and I'm sure would stick out from all the normal games you always see at these shows and everywhere else (Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, etc) heh.

[Squire Grooktook]

Looks real cozy in your house. Spread the IREM love.

[Emig5m]

This is really awesome.
If you build a dedicated Leo, that would make it complete.
Can you imagine? That would be something. Nice to have a series of games together.

Sadly, I hate LEO, lol. But I know of someone who built a brand new LEO to look just like a original R-Type cab with custom LEO artwork and marquee (the guy who made me the custom R-Type II control panel overlay). Actually if I ever can get a hold of a nice clean original Dragon Breed PCB I already have two sets of original new old stock side art and marquee's ready to rock n' roll for my next project...



In each poster frame is two copies of each piece. Just like with R-Type II, I plan to use a set on a cabinet and keep a set framed for safe keeping forever. I have a cabinet already sitting on the porch ready for the madness to begin all over again, heh.... Just need to get a hold of that elusive PCB, heh. I tried Dragon Breed in MAME and liked it a lot more than R-Type LEO so I'm choosing that for my next potential project. If I can't get a PCB, at least I have some cool artwork to look at, hehe. But yea, spread the IREM love... not going with LEO but keeping it in the IREM shooter family!

[monouchi]

Serious dedication, well done.
I love the side art.

Edit: Reading through your project thread at Klov.
Amazing patience on fixing all the small damages on the cab. And I also know the joy of goof off and razor on old art.

[Emig5m]

Serious dedication, well done.
I love the side art.

Edit: Reading through your project thread at Klov.
Amazing patience on fixing all the small damages on the cab. And I also know the joy of goof off and razor on old art.

Thanks.


Anyway I've been trying to film a gameplay video with my GoPro and Galaxy S5 but was getting severe white washout when filming the CRT screen up close and just figured out I could manually adjust the gain and exposure time using my Logitech webcam to greatly lower the washout but inadvertently adds some flicker but I think it's a well worth trade off that I can live with so I just made a playthough video on the cab:

(can't embed youtube videos here?)
https://youtu.be/iYUXziRbDOY

[rtw]

Read through the thread at KLOV as well, really admire your perseverance

One thing to note is if you still have your original RTYPE II PCB you should be able to "transplant" the ROMs over to your Japanese PCB.

[Emig5m]

Read through the thread at KLOV as well, really admire your perseverance

One thing to note is if you still have your original RTYPE II PCB you should be able to "transplant" the ROMs over to your Japanese PCB.

I still kinda have my R-Type II (World) PCB. It's still out for repair on the other side of my country. Apparently it has multiple problems. The guy who's repairing it still might be waiting for some new chips being shipped from China, I don't really know. He's keeping the repair work cheap and I'm not really anxious to get it back anyway. I even told him if he's able to fix it that he could borrow it and play it if he wants. I like the added difficulty of the Japanese ROMs so I don't really want to go back to the other ROMs at this point. But I was wondering if the ROMs could be swapped (no regional security for example)

And yea, I was surely on a mission with my R-Type II build and had a lot of stuff going against me from searching high and low for a nice Nintendo monitor to having my PCB die on me literally right upon completion, lol. When I was searching for my first R-Type cab a little over a year ago I came across John Jacobsen's/John's Arcade Youtube channel where he got a R-Type arcade machine and I was like, cool, I never seen the inside of a arcade machine before let alone my childhood favorite. Little did I know what was in store for me in the coming months after, lol. Good thing I watched all his restore videos because I learned everything for my restore from his videos... bondo, laminate, using a router for the t-molding groove and tracing out the laminate, rebuilding the control panel, re-capping a monitor, and everything else in-between, lol. He literally came out with his first how-to laminate a arcade cabinet right before I did mine so it was perfect timing, heh. It was fun, it was aggravating, not to mention costly, but very well worth it in the end to have a minty new-like R-Type II arcade machine in the original style Nintendo R-Type cabinet....a cabinet that had a history of over 113,000+ plays on it in it's life over the years.

[Bydobasher]

Oh, those are beautiful!

I prefer the Japanese version of RT2 as well....

[Satan]

Can't say I'm a huge fan of the series, but you've done a sterling job there. Very nice.

[DjMcDougal]

amazing. i love r-type so much having those cabs would make things just feel complete, great job .

[boagman]

This is just beautiful. My word...I don't know how anyone would be expected to get through the last stage unscathed without the upper and lower bits. You even died there, and you had them! The enemy and their fire is coming so fast and furious at that point that I don't know how you could possibly make it through without bits.

I'd forgotten that you could time out the bosses...good idea, there on the boss with the changing blocks.