Sega Blast City or Net City?

[Shuurin]

Finding out I can stick a xbox360 into a hi-res cab with a little bit of work. I want to get a Hi-res cab. I've talked to Ken at thegameroom and he has Blast and Net city cabs. I'm leaning to the Blast city but I'm somewhat hesitant due to some discussion on here and Arcade Otaku about monitor failures on these cabs. Ken's Blasts according to him are straight from Japan and weren't used as bass fishing cabs. So which in the forum's opinion is a better cab? Anyone got any Blasts that have had no problems at all?

[mr_b]

I went for the blast city. I got mine from Ken. My Blast came from his first batch he brought over. Monitor wise, mine is in good shape no burn in. It is the older version of the blast city so it doesn't auto-sync. I looked and mine does have the black goo of death, but it doesn't appear to be an issue or at least to this point. I don't know how easy it is to clean that goo off.

Some of Ken's blast's don't have the original monitors. If you ask him he will tell you what monitors are in them. Some of them had tri-sync Wei-ya installed.

Unless you have a strong taste for one body style over another you really can't go wrong. The sega wiring is going to be the same and any sega control panel will fit.

[Shuurin]

Oh I'll need to ask him if he has auto sync and which blasts have the original monitor. Think I'll go with them as It'll cost a good amount of money for a jamma converter on the Net city.

[emphatic]

I'd go for the Net City if you're ONLY going to play 360 shmups. Don't worry about the cost of JAMMA converter, just hack the 360 pads to matching connectors inside the panel directly. As you'll hook up the video to VGA and sound to whatever the NC has, it should be a piece of cake. I have no personal experience with a Wei Ya in a Blast City, but in AWSD cabinets, there are plenty of issues with geometry. A dedicated high res screen is better than a tri-sync unless it's a Japanese brand (original Blast City monitor). But the goo is no fun.

[SuperPang]

If a Net City is original it probably has the same MS2931 monitor most Blasts have, its likely to be newer though. Don't let JVS put you off too much, you can get a Konami JVS-JAMMA for about 5,000 Yen.

Avoid the Wei-Ya replacements.

If you can't view the cabs yourself, ask the seller to compare the geometry and convergence on his original Nanao auto tri-syncs and pick the best, assuming the cab itself isn't worse than the others.

[Shuurin]

I'm assuming by geometry you mean although the Wei-Ya replacement monitors fit into these cabinets, its not as snug as it should be? Is there any other reason to avoid Wei-Ya monitors? Cause I'm not quite clear what is bad about them.

I'll ask him for sure if the monitor is the original Nanao before making a deposit.

I'm going to be getting some Cave pcbs on the lower end of the spectrum like Dodonpachi, Ibara, and Espgaluda to start off with besides the 360. So to me at least tri-sync and jamma is important. I don't have the floor space to fit a second cab to do a dedicated low-res and high-res cab or I'd seriously consider it. Is it more difficult than I'm thinking to switch from using the 360 in the cab to a pcb?

[SuperPang]

Wei-ya have a reputation for not being as reliable as other more expensive Japanese models (Nanao). The low res picture won't be as good either and geometry is often a little off.

Geometry is essentially how straight the picture is. Cheaper and older monitors suffer more with it. If you hit the test button and look at a dot-cross-hatch you can see how straight the lines are. Also look for blurring at the corners where the 3 colours don't converge properly to form the white line. Together with screen burn, these are the issues that will make your picture look a bit crap.

[Shuurin]

That is a big deal

I'll need to make sure he has one of the cabs with the original nanao monitor.