Chicagoland Winter Carnival 2011 - March 4th-6th

[szycag]

I need to get me one of those tupper-guns.

You Michigan guys and gal missed some snow flurries and slick roads by leaving that night, we had to mess with that stuff going home towards Missouri that morning.

THIRD PLACE woo! That was mostly on the part of giving some effort but I don't feel like being modest. The cabs were awesome but there were some thrills to be had edging out some scores between Andi and Dave and the other dudes too.

Thanks drboom again for hosting and it was awesome to meet all of you. Make sure Dave keeps his score up on that watch for us.

[gunbird18]

A second BIG THANK YOU to Dr Boom for hosting the Chicagoland Winter Carnival 09!

Thank you for your hospitality and for being a great host! Thank you so much for getting Hudson Soft (that's right- HUDSON SOFT) to acknowledge the Tournament. This kind of participation rarely happens people!

Thank you for letting us play your awesome collection of boards and console games. V-V and Dogyuun on cabs? I'm speechless! Awesome games!

Thanks to Dave for the use of his Astro City and Deathsmiles and Progear.

It was great to meet all of the Illinois/Michigan/Ohio members. It was great to meet with other members who share the same passions and interests in these great games. Until next time....

[drboom]

Thanks for the props everyone. I had a ball. Wish I could have played Ibara, tho. Too busy drinking and cavorting. Plus, the game really is beautiful. An actual joy to watch.

gunbird18 - I should have convinced you to leave Armed Police Batrider here. That game was amazing. Maybe I could loan you something in exchange?

szycag - please, please upload that footage here when you get a chance of Ayanami killing APB.

Here's the link to the Photobucket album with all the photos. There are a lot of them.

Man, that tupper-gun was pretty amazing. There's a good pic of it in the album.

[szycag]

Uploading it to Youtube. I missed whatever comment he made at the end because I was messing with the zoom and that cuts out the sound. Didn't keep it too steady either. Crap, I should have made a video of Davey owning that Shooting Watch. Goddamn!

Probably will take an hour or so, the raw file is 400 mb. If anyone wants me to send the raw file to them or will host it I can do that up too.

[t0yrobo]

Looks like it was a hell of a time. Do you think this may turn into an annual thing? If I weren't starting a new job I would've been there.

[drboom]

Thanks szycag. BTW - I wish I had a 'furthest traveled' award to give you. 8+ hours for you to get here. Damn - mad props.

I'm planning on making it annual, but I might wait until its a little less 'wintery' next year. We got a few inches of snow on the last day, can't imagine what those long drives were like.

I do like the idea of playing the Carnival games for score and there was some heated competition for sure among a few guys. I may trim it down to two modes instead of four. The five-minute modes were a bitch to clear. Dave was the only one to post a 5-Minute Recca score!

[croikle]

Yeah, Recca 5-min is tough. I've cleared a few times playing emulated at home, but it took a lot of work. Also, getting the clear before the boss would take quite a bit more skill and consistency, so scores below 4:15 or so are far harder to get.

It's too bad I didn't make it up for this one, but I didn't manage to talk to my parents about it before Friday, and that wasn't quite enough notice to change their minds. Looks like it was a great time, and I'm looking forward to future events with you all!

[mrtie]

I need to get me one of those tupper-guns.

Quicky Guide for any of you that wanna make a Tupper-gun, whether or not you can top my supreme ghettoness is another discussion, but her ya go.


Things You'll need to buy

A case of some sort. Tupperware-Free or under $5

A RGB to NTSC convertorhttp://www.arcadeplaying.com/rgbntsc/index.php
Depending on the connection options you want between $60-130.

A Jamma Harness 3'. $5-15 on e-bay or your local amusement dealer.

An ATX pc power supplyhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817182001
Free to $25 bucks JAMMA pcb's are not computer you wont need 800watt psu or anything like that 300watts is totally overkill fine.

1-2 Female crimping housing DB-15 connectors
http://www.amazon.com/DB15-Female-Crimp ... 383&sr=8-7
$2-5

1-2 Male to Male db15 gender changers
$2.50 each on ebay

A Neo-Geo Controller $5-50
Many other controls are possible, I just choose the Neo becuase I have one and it's a standard DB15 plug so it's easy to get parts for. Saturn pad would also work if you use the right connector but for the purposes of this write up I'm just saying what I used and did.

Optional
A six pack of Beer $5-14
Becuase this shit is gonna take a few hours.

a button for test switch: Free-$3
if you have a pcb that requires it or just want one I can literally be any button so long as you can attach 2 wires to it, I used a Hori 30mm sanwa fake for my project I had around.


TOOLS

A wire cutter or knife if you are handy with the steel
Electrical tape
A Dremel or other small cutting tool
Various screws and nuts

Optional
Soldering gun
Crimping tool with copper crimps
Extra wire
wire sheath

HOW IS TUPPER-GUN FORMED!?

The way I made mine require no soldering and the most absolute laymen's electrical knowledge if you can read colors and tape you too can make a tupper-gun.

Step 1: The PSU



Ok so here we have diagram of the big ATX plug on the power supply this is gonna be how our tupper-gun gets power and turns on and off.

"Connect the +12, +5, -5 and GROUND wires from the power supply to the JAMMA harness as indicated in the above diagrams.

As a general rule PC power supply wires are black for ground (GND), red for +5v, yellow for +12v and white for -5v. You can also use the yellow and red wires on the cables that typically go to the hard drive.Don't use the purple "+5v constant" supply as it's always on.Wire a switch (toggle, slide, any type that can stay "on") between pin 14 and any GND. This will allow you to turn the power supply on and off."

Or for that last part you can simply tie pin 14 and ground together that way the PSU power switch itself becomes the on off switch. I went about doing the previous by simply cutting the wires as marked and attaching them to their corresponding JAMMA wires by using wire stripper to give you some bare wire on each twisting them tighte together then appling electrical tap tightly or you can solder or do whater else method will get them to stick I would not suggest maple syrup. And we can see which wires from the psu goto which wire from the JAMMA harness by this diagram.



Component side is basically the board side with all the chips on it, I realize this diagram is for a Neo-geo MVS but for the most part the pin out is the same.

Step 2: How the fuck do I get my ship to move?

Ok so if we have been following along with my nearly incoherent ramblings so far you have a mess of wire on your desk and a power supply twisted & taped or soldered to a JAMMA harness. The next fun phase is setting up a controller port. The first thing you need to do is mount the Female DB to where ever you want to on the case, you can do this any number of ways I personally dremeled a small hole to fit the body of the port inside the case then 2 smaller hole in which I could pass screws and nuts to keep it from falling out.

Now that we have our port mounted in our case we can begin the magic of wiring our controls, or you can leave it un-wired if you enjoy watch attract mode, lord knows my scores might even be better with out controls Anyway for doing this part we need to know excatly what pin controls what for a Neo-Geo Controller. Thankfully the internet is kind enough to supply us with yet another diagram.

http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=cont ... controller

You then can refer to the JAMMA diagram to see which wire on it need to be place into the DB15. For me, my port actually has each pin hole listed, but if you are not so lucky simply refer to the above link. No as far as getting them to stay in place I used an old soviet Kosmonaut trick, superglue. You find the corresponding wire on the JAMMA harness then using your wire stripper give you self about 1/8 to 1/4 inch of bare wire, fold this neatly over itself, dab a touch of super glue at the point in which the wire case start and shove it into the correct hole like a nervous Prom date. The wire actually go quite a way into the port and we double the bare wire over to make sure we make a solid contact with the port. The only Thing of note is I supplied the 1 ground needed from a ground off the PSU and not off the JAMMA harness. The Neo controller has 2 holes for the D button, you only need to use 1. Finally I choose to use Select for coins and Start for star you can do that anyway you see fit.

After all that is done you can screw you male to male plug on your female port and that as ready as it's gonna be for a neo geo controller.

Step 3: "I can't see shit Captain"-Joerdie LeForge of the USS Enerprise

Ok so now we have Power and control but we have no way of seeing or hearing our games, so this is where the NTSC convertor comes into play. Basically this is self explanitory agian we find the corsesponding wires on the jamma harness grab our trusty wire strippers and give our selves a little bare wire. We then take screw driver and loosen up the connectors on the encoder, Shove the wires in and screw then down tight. The wire we will be using are RED BLUE GREEN SYNC and GROUND for the video output, PIN 10 and PIN L for left and right audio and a +5 line off the power supply along with a ground.


Step 4: Making this pile of crap less hazardous

OK so now we basically have complete super gun: power, control, and video. However it's big ugly wired mess, we can alleviated some of this by simply getting ride of excess wires IE cutting them off. I started by cutting down all the remaining 2p JAMMA wire and electrical taping the nubs so that they cannot make contact with anything else. I then did the same to all of the extra PSU connectors and wires. After you have done this you can mount the power supply and NTSC converter in your box or on it or you just leave then out in open if that's your thing. Making this project more aesthetically pleasing is your prerogative not mine and you can go any number of directions with that.

After all is said and done plug a board in and some rca's or s-vid to your convertor, attach your controller, and TV/monitor, and flip that power switch. If all has gone well you now have a cheap and sweet way to play your favorite arcade games on the comfort of your couch.





Tupper-Gun: Becuase all our money is already tied up in limited edition Reco figurines.


Working with electronic is dangerous at time i take no responsibility for killing your Super Mega Duper Ultra Black label copy or Ketsui 3 or any other such thing, this project for the adventurous and builder beware does apply. Any Quote and most diagrams within this post are taken from Ben Heck Neo-Geo supergun write up featured on the website engadget , it can be read in it's entirety in the link below. Beyond all that jazz good luck have fun and score higher

http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/28/how- ... cade-game/

[caldwert]

Looks like a good time. Too bad I couldn't make it. Perhaps there will be another event sometime in the summer. If I had a place of my own, I would hold an event. Maybe sometime in the next year I'll get a place who knows.

[szycag]

Here's that video of Ayanami tearin it up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO0idekLHgk

Oh, update; Since I already own Omega Five, I gave my download code to Rob. I asked him to do a video review of it and he sounded eager to. I think I put that to use pretty well!

[Davey]

Belated thanks to drboom (and everybody who brought shiny toys to play with)!

If we do this again I'll have to remember to hold off on the beer until after Feveron has made its appearance. Awesome game, but not so great buzzed.

if you can read colors and tape you too can make a tupper-gun

Then I just might have to try that out and pick up some cheap PCBs to start out with.

Since I already own Omega Five, I gave my download code to Rob. I asked him to do a video review of it and he sounded eager to. I think I put that to use pretty well!

Hudson must be thrilled.

[jonny5]

looks like you had a full house drboom

if that many people showed up for one of my meets it would be REALLY crowded...anymore than 6-8 people and we are completely out of chairs....

i plan to make the trip for the next one for sure

[robivy64]

I am still amazed at Davey's Dangun Feveron skills. That game requires blood pressure medicine.

I still have some of Ayanami's scores saved on my RF Jet board.

[drboom]

Yeah, the pcb was glitching as well on Dangun, so it wasn't all the alcohol. I think I may have a bad power supply in my Astro cab.

I'd be interested to hear people's impressions of BLEX from playing it at the meet. I played it for a few minutes and was not really impressed. I'm not that great a DOJ player, but the fluidity and exactness of the ps2 port was just not there.

[Sonic R]

Yeah, the pcb was glitching as well on Dangun, so it wasn't all the alcohol. I think I may have a bad power supply in my Astro cab.

I'd be interested to hear people's impressions of BLEX from playing it at the meet. I played it for a few minutes and was not really impressed. I'm not that great a DOJ player, but the fluidity and exactness of the ps2 port was just not there.

I notice that it seems to run more better on my CRT HDTV at home?

I had it hooked up on your tv with the VGA cables so I am not sure if it had made a difference? I had to go into the settings and change a few things to get it looking decent from what I normally run on my television at home.

[TriggerHeartExelica]

Thank goodness we missed the snow. It was bad enough driving down 94 at 2am with it being pitch black.

[zero.otaku]

Damn, that was awesome. Super-huge-mega thanks to drboom for hosting, all the cool dudes for showing up and bringing cool stuff for a poor-ass slacker like me to play, whoever it was that decided to hit up Chipotle, Davey for introducing me to the beauty that is Hopslam, Kevin for keeping me awake on the drive home and anyone else I forgot to mention. Can't wait to do it again.

[Davey]

I am still amazed at Davey's Dangun Feveron skills.

You wouldn't have been this time around. It was a pretty sad showing. I can't even blame the graphical glitches. Coincidentally, I don't think I had a drop of alcohol at Wishicon, so yeah, I'll blame that.

Super-huge-mega thanks to <snip> Kevin for keeping me awake on the drive home

Super-huge-mega apology to Sonic and TriggerHeart for not keeping you awake on the drive home. I was somewhere between half and totally asleep for most of the trip. I was pretty alert going back to Toledo, though, but damn that bed felt good when I got home (6:30ish IIRC).

[mrtie]

Kevin for keeping me awake on the drive home

Anytime man it was good bullshitting with you.

[drboom]

Here are the score totals for the contest, for those who asked.

Summer Carnival '92 - Recca
2-Minute Mode

Name Score Points
Dave 448,915 7
szycag 442,367 5
Andi 420,259 3
Sonic R 417,073 2
mrtie 208,669 1

5-Minute Mode

Name Score Points
Dave 4:18.16 7


Summer Carnival '92 - Alzadick
2-Minute Mode

Name Score Points
Andi 519,100 7
Dave 499,350 5
szycag 494,000 3
gunbird18 457,000 2
mrtie 216,200 1

5-Minute Mode

Name Score Points
Andi 4:42.98 5
szycag 4:55.85 3
Dave 4:32.27 7



Final Totals

Name Total
Dave 26
Andi 15
szycag 11
Sonic R 2
mrtie 2
gunbird18 2

[Ayanami]

Okay, finally got my internet here to work.

Huge thanks to drboom for hosting. I had a great time.

Always great to play Ketsui and APB on cabs. Always.

The big surprise for me though had to be Death Smiles. I did not think the game was going to be that good. Super fun.

It was really cool meeting all you guys, hope to do this again in the future. Maybe I can crack the letter score in APB next time around.

[drboom]

You certainly impressed the hell out of me with your APB play. Stunning.

[GradiusFan]

I used to visit this site quite often a few years ago. Since the Wii's Virtual Console made so many good shmups available I have decided to get back into shmupping. I wish I had done this earlier so I could have gone to some of these shmup meets but count me in for the next time!

[drboom]

You bet.

There may be something brewing for September...Stay tuned!

[jonny5]

You bet.

There may be something brewing for September...Stay tuned!

[stuminator]

You bet.

There may be something brewing for September...Stay tuned!

When in September are you planning something? Hopefully I won't get stuck at work this time...

[Sonic R]

You bet.

There may be something brewing for September...Stay tuned!

[mrtie]

[drboom]

Wow - lolcatz. I feel like this thread has been somehow kicked up a notch.

So, I have yet to solidify a date. I'm waiting to hear about a few trips scheduled for work and once I know about those (in a week or two) I should have a date ready to go forward. I'm going to hammer out some details and I'll let everyone know when I do.

The plan so far is to have 3-4 cabs this time, still a bunch of TV's, hopefully another monitor and another scoring contest.

[drboom]

OK - so its looking like the first weekend in October, the 2nd through the 4th, will be the dates for the next meet. How's that work for everyone?