Why superguns suck

[GaijinPunch]

I've known this for a while, but I'm really feeling it now. For TATE games, there's just no substitute for a cab. Emulation/PCB set aside, I saw the light long ago, but today I've been beaten w/ the flashlight today. 29" screen, tilted back, face a foot or so away. (Draw a picture of that compared to a TV sitting straight up, and draw triangle representing a person's field of vision). It's painfully clear to me and my dual shock which is now in pieces (closest thing to me) that developers have a somewhat standard in mind when they make these fucking shooting games.

Grrr.....

[sven666]

haha

wanna buy an astro city?

[NTSC-J]

Yea I completely agree, nothing beats the full arcade experience that a Pony cabinet delivers. But still, if you're a college boy with a tight budget and you move around a lot, and often to very tight quarters, it's not really an option.

It's like with cars, your first one is a piece of shit, but by the time you're settling down and starting a family, you can finally get that smooth ride you've always wanted.

[mulletgeezer]

angle definitely matters. i've never used a supergun in my own home, but for ps2 games i tate my ferguson 21" TV which has sloping sides and leans back at the perfect angle. my cab is a Metal Magnum - not the best cab in the world but an amazing bargain as i bought it for $500 with 6 boards worth around $400 - which has a vertical screen. i found upon first playing the angle presented a big problem for vert shmups, but as i'm not a very tall chap i find that a wide stance brings my head level with the middle of the screen which makes a huge difference to the gameplay experience. To me a cab is important for the fixed control panel and also just the authenticity provided by standing up and playing on a real cab. Even a pixel perfect console port with a quality joystick cannot compare to this.

One thing that does trouble me about cabs is that the sound quality never approaches that delivered by a console connected to my HiFi. What cab would be best for sound quality?

[icycalm]

Well, I bought 29" RGB TV by Samsung about a month ago. I took it out of the box and put it on its side the moment it arrived. The way its sides are built, the TV naturally sits at an angle when you set it down on a desk. And I'll be damned if the angle is not similar to the one that the Egret II has.

So I put my arcade stick on the desk, right in front of the TV. And when I am playing I'd say that my stance is about 80-90% similar to the one I have playing on the Egret II.

Picture quality is, again, similar to the Egret II, if not better. And I know because just before buying the TV I was playing 2-3 hours a day on that cab.

At some point I am planning to take some pictures and do an article for my site. The moral is that you can get the same experience--it's just not very easy.

[SAM]

but today I've been beaten w/ the flashlight today. 29" screen, tilted back, face a foot or so away.

Well, I won't tell you bull shit like "go buy a cab".

Actually, try turn off all the lighting within the room, put certain over the windows. This way, it would be much better.

One more thing, don't use the dual shock 2, use a joystick, or somthing like the PS2 Saturn pad.

It's painfully clear to me and my dual shock which is now in pieces (closest thing to me) that developers have a somewhat standard in mind when they make these fucking shooting games.

Believe me, they develope the games assuming that they would be played with an Astro City Cab.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Superguns don't suck, especially if you have a nice custom produced one courtesy of Matt along with a cool pair of Sony 100w stereo bookshelf speaker setup. ^_~

My second Supergun is the MAK one and it's a slimmed-down barebones Supergun but at the very least, it does get the job done when booting up arcade Jamma PCBs so one can play them if "space-wise issues" are at a premium. It's completely portable enough to fit in my jacket pocket as well (minus the A/C adapter, of course). ^_~

Back in June of 2002, I submitted a reservation for one of Matt's custom produced Superguns. I bought it blind not knowing how it was going to look...the style of it is simply amazing. Of course, Matt has said on his Supergun page that he would want to make custom Superguns for others to look much better than his "floppy disc based Supergun" setup.

When I showed off the Seibu Kaihatsu's SP1 game of Viper Phase 1 U.S.A. at the 2004 Classic Gaming Expo held at the San Jose Convention Center, a lot of people oogled at the lone (but cool) Supergun appearance there. Yep, that was one of Matt's "Da Man" Superguns alrighty! ^_~

I heard some small talk from the organizers of the 2004 CGE show admiring the solitary Supergun setup shown there. Too bad there weren't more Superguns brought to the show to show off some serious arcade shmup PCBs. I wonder what shmups will be shown at the upcoming 2007 CGE show? Here's hoping to see some serious arcade shmup PCBs at the upcoming 2007 CGE event... ^_~

Of course, the real highlight of the 2004 CGE show was the Konami hosted shmup competition of the upcoming PS2 shmup title of "Gradius V". On the very last day of Gradius V high score contest, I heard that all the highest scorers of that event would get his or her scores & names published in the 2nd Edition of Twin Galaxies Video Games Records Book from Walter Day himself. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[D]

....
One thing that does trouble me about cabs is that the sound quality never approaches that delivered by a console connected to my HiFi. What cab would be best for sound quality?

Look no further than bolting a preferably small amplifier inside your cab, now you can control bass and treble levels, wow, ussually the speakers inside cabs are pretty good, but every pcb'gives other audio, boots in particular have bad sound, you'd be surprised how much difference a good amp makes. Mine is a small Sony amplifier unit from one of those mini sets! I couln't believe my ears when I pumped 'normal' music through my cab, great sound. Just put it in. cab expansion is great.
You can get great bassy explosion without overdrive/distortion even.
And those muffy sounding pcb's can be given some extra crisp.
What else, ermm I don't think fitting your cab with other speakers is a good idea since speakers generally have magnetic fields which can decolorize your monitor, but there are probably people that have experimented with this. One day I'm gonna fit me cab with some sub woofer for those ultra low explosions That'll rock.
For those for which this is not enough I advise them to invest in some kind of cheap (but professional quality) effects device and mix a litle reverb in the game, especially for older games this will do wonders.
I can recommend Lexicon in particular, but they are very expensive, but they have low priced modules also, if you could get one for cheap, go for it.
http://instruments.search.ebay.com/lexi ... QQsbrsrtZl
Good luck, you're doing great (SH)

[GaijinPunch]

I've got a Sigma -- arguably the best Supergun out there. It's still not possible as there's no way my bulky monitor is going to be tilted back. Even if it was, I wouldn't beable to sit in the right position anyway. That's not to say they suck per se, but I think when people traditionally fight about emulation versus PCBs, etc., they should be figthing on cab versus no cab. Cab wins hands down.

I agree w/ what NTSC-J says, but I'm not going to be living in a house (and definitley not one that I own) for quite some time, so a cab is definitely not in my future.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go count all the reasons why I need to spend $600 on a PS3.

[mulletgeezer]

thanks, D, for more good advice

i was hoping that somewhere in the world cabs with awesome audio as standard might exist, but i reckon there's no market for such a thing. i guess i could try some shielded home cinema sattelites, or externally mount something like the magnetically shielded mission m70s? That would sound amazing. Your idea of using a dsp module is mad, but sounds fun so i might give that a go

[system11]

It works something like this:

Dedicated cabs > normal cabs > Japanese cabs > supergun on monitor > supergun on TV.

I'm willing to accept some complaint about the normal/jp cab ordering, but hey - some people actually think arcade gaming (not counting special cabs) involves sitting down, and I'll not try to argue with that delusion

[Neon]

They break too >_<

Cabs are great, if you can get a quality stick and decent buttons in it. It's what I'd do if I wasn't constantly shifting between being at home/living in dorms.

[mannerbot]

Back in June of 2002, I submitted a reservation for one of Matt's custom produced Superguns. I bought it blind not knowing how it was going to look...the style of it is simply amazing.

Pics please.

[zinger]

And then there's the voltage issue, atleast on my supergun. There's no way to adjust the voltage on my powersupply, I hope it's replaceable.

[iatneH]

I'm planning to start building my 3rd supergun today

[coolix]

At some point I am planning to take some pictures and do an article for my site. The moral is that you can get the same experience--it's just not very easy.

I'd love to read/see it as i'm planning to do the same.

[cigsthecat]

So GaijinPunch died a lot and smashed a controller, now superguns are the devil.

lol

[elvis]

I'm willing to accept some complaint about the normal/jp cab ordering, but hey - some people actually think arcade gaming (not counting special cabs) involves sitting down, and I'll not try to argue with that delusion

If you're gaming for 20 minutes, standing is fine. If you're gaming for 4 hours, standing sucks.

[Rastan78]

Cabs are definitely a great thing, but this is total BS. A good player relies on his experience and knowledge of a games patterns/scoring system, not having the monitor tilted at a specific angle. Saying that shmups can only be played correctly on a 29" Astro City because of some kind of developer standard to the monitor configuration is going a bit far. What about console games like Gradius V that have been totally brutalized by expert players without ever having them installed in a cab? Some players can even 1cc difficult shmups using only the keyboard arrows and small computer monitor.

[Rastan78]

P.S. I love my supergun.

[malcolm]

Forgive me, what's a supergun?

Thanks

[rolins]

Forgive me, what's a supergun?

Thanks

A supergun is small device that allows you to play arcade PCBs onto your TV or some other monitor.

[freddiebamboo]

Its like an arcade cabinet without the cabinet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperGun

[malcolm]

I can't believe that I've never heard of this. Where can they be purchased?

[GaijinPunch]

Cabs are definitely a great thing, but this is total BS.

DIdn't say it was impossible. It is obviously not BS though. My claim is that this is what developer have in mind when they make these games. If they weren't, then every fucking cab in Japan wouldn't be almost identical (even the ones made by different manufacturers).

I was in an arcade once, explaining how I had a control box and the PCB to play at home. The guy who was way more skilled than me was like "yeah, but if you change your point of view just a little bit..." He was totally right.

Having played quite a few Cave games extensively on both (ESPgaluda, Galuda II, and Mushi) I can clearly say the cab is the way to go. Moving a 4x4 pixel DOT all over the screen through bullet hell means the less you move your eyes, the more accurate and crisp your moves will be. You can always argue that scooting back or getting a smaller monitor has the same effect, but then you have problems b/c the hit box is so fucking small.

Obviously the issue is exacerbated by the TATE monitor. It's not as big of an issue for a horizontal screen as humans (most that I know anyway) have a wider field of view.

[freddiebamboo]

I can't believe that I've never heard of this. Where can they be purchased?

Ebay has a few on right now if you search supergun, but you're better off doing a WTB on the trading station here as I hear some can be a touch dodgy.

[iatneH]

I can't believe that I've never heard of this. Where can they be purchased?

Ebay has a few on right now if you search supergun, but you're better off doing a WTB on the trading station here as I hear some can be a touch dodgy.

Actually, they are quite simple little devices and it's fairly common for people to build their own. Some of the topics posted long ago here have a few pictures of the DIY superguns of some of the shmups.com members. I'll see if I can dig up a few...

My first supergun
My second supergun
Kiel's supergun
thchardcore's homemade supergun, I really like this one.

I basically followed the schematic here.
In fact, a barebones supergun can be as simple as the one at the bottom of this page. I know that somebody here actually has one like this, but I can't remember who it is. SAM?

Throw in a power supply and some cheap joypads and it's something you can get working for under $40. The video encoder is the expensive part, but you can hack your own or buy a commercial piece.

[system11]

Throw in a power supply and some cheap joypads and it's something you can get working for under $40. The video encoder is the expensive part, but you can hack your own or buy a commercial piece.

And make sure it's a real arcade power supply with an adjustable 5v. As for the video encoder, if you live in Europe you won't need one, you can plug these straight into a SCART capable TV, assuming you add resistors to the colour lines. You also won't need one if you source an old Amiga/etc monitor which take RGB video input.

[Rastan78]

I just think if you have a decent sized, not totally faded out monitor and you're sitting close enough to the screen to see what's goin' on then there shouldn't be anything holding you back from a high score. It's still the same game, still an eight-way controller, pushbuttons. . .

I think the reasons the cabs in Japan are all the same are more because of functionality within the arcade. Easily swappable with another cab, they take up minimal space, it's what people are already used to, etc. All the cars are either black, white or gray. Does that mean those are the only good colors to paint a car?

There's just too many examples of good players being able to rock the arcade or the console, pad or joystick whatever.

[Valgar]

After getting my two New Astro City Cabinets, I never want to play on anything else.