Espgaluda or ketsui pcb owners- question for you

[tzakiel]

For those of you that own espgaluda (1) or ketsui pcbs and a candy cab, how was your experience getting them working with your coin mech?

I ask because I noticed something recently in MAME that is odd. For most other games the coins drop in just fine and give a credit. For instance mushihime futari I own the pcb and I have it for MAME and both coin up just fine. But for these two games, espgaluda and ketsui in MAME I dont get a credit when dropping a coin in. I have to hold down the coin wire a little longer with my finger. I'm wondering if the driver is wrong for these games or if they genuinely need a longer coin pulse to work. If so, would the real pcbs cause me the same problem?

[Shepardus]

I haven't noticed any difference with those games in MAME, though I usually have them set to free play anyway.

[emphatic]

I've had no issues coining my Ketsui or ESPGALUDA PCBs. Futari is on different hardware, so that's hard to compare in this case.

[Some-Mist]

can't say that I know for sure, but I know ibara is notorious for coin mech problems where free play is the best way to avoid the errors.

[IseeThings]

some games expect the coin line to hold for a 'realistic' amount of time in order to try and prevent fraud (people using coins on strings etc.) all the recent PGM games act like this, it isn't really a bug.

for the similar reasons most Taito games (and some Cave SH3 games) will give a 'COIN ERROR' if they detect the coin has been held for too long (which again might happen if you're trying a trick to not drop the coin all the way)

a lot of casino games take this one step further and expect the coin to pass through *multiple* sensors in a realistic amount of time in order to register a coin, as there is more at stake.

some games behave even worse, there's an old UPL game (Nova 2001) that will trigger an anti-cheat protection and reset the game if it detects you've put in coins too quickly, beyond what it thinks is realistic. I'm guessing this caused problems for operators back in the day because hacks of the program have been found on PCBs to remove that 'feature'

but yeah, it's how the games are programmed.

[tzakiel]

b... b-but I'm using a real 100 yen coin dropping thru a real blast city mech. I even tried 2 micro switches.

I was able to make this work by setting an artificial pulse length in mame.ini but my real question is what will happen if I buy one of these pcbs. It won't coin up?

[drunkninja24]

I have a Ketsui PCB and haven't had any issues with the coin mech causing a problem

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Just set them to Free Play. You're emulating them, so it's obviously not an arcade machine being run for money. Depending on the cab, you can also wire up a small coin mech button that you can press to 'insert coin' for games that don't have a Free Play setting.

Ketsui I think has a bug if it's set to free play and the demo plays for too long, though I don't remember the specifics. But I'm pretty sure there's a patch out there for that that trap15 probably made.

Actually, since it's MAME, just setup a specific key combo that you'd never press in normal gameplay to insert coins (three P1 buttons + P2 start, etc). That'd be another easy workaround, right?

[OlDirty]

I have a Ketsui and ESPgaluda PCB and no probs with coin mechanism. But when you hold the coin switch too long on the Ibara PCB you get a coin error. It's a know "problem", which doesn't appear if you use real coins in a cabinet instead of button with a supergun.
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=10272

[tzakiel]

I have no problem forcing these to work in MAME, you can set coin impulse length in the mame ini files. It's more a question of whether my mech will work with the real pcbs if I get them. No I don't "need" to have the coin mech working but it's just fun for me to get it all working properly.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

There's no reason to expect they wouldn't work with coin mechanisms; they're arcade games and were originally intended to be sold to the coin-op market, not to niche collectors to live as Free Play machines. If they didn't work with coin mechs they wouldn't exactly generate arcades any money, would they? I've never heard of any CAVE games having any bugs related to the coin insertion.

MAME isn't accurate in terms of emulation anyways for Espgaluda; when you get massive cancels in kakusei mode there's some really awesome green glitchy graphics which can appear briefly as the multiplier numbers appear. That only happens when playing on the actual PCB, and doesn't show up in an emulator.

[poodude]

I have both pcbs, never had any issue. Coin registers immediately just like any other pcb.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Just set them to Free Play. You're emulating them, so it's obviously not an arcade machine being run for money. Depending on the cab, you can also wire up a small coin mech button that you can press to 'insert coin' for games that don't have a Free Play setting.

Ketsui I think has a bug if it's set to free play and the demo plays for too long, though I don't remember the specifics. But I'm pretty sure there's a patch out there for that that trap15 probably made.

Actually, since it's MAME, just setup a specific key combo that you'd never press in normal gameplay to insert coins (three P1 buttons + P2 start, etc). That'd be another easy workaround, right?

I was the one whom discovered the bug issue with a Ketsui PCB if set on Free Play and running the demo back in 2005 -- it freezes up if implemented. Fellow shmupper rtw goes into more detail about this particular pressing issue at hand: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... ketsui+bug

It's recommened to get a Ketsui with the original eprom and bug-fixed eprom for completeness if owning/playing a Ketsui PCB is what you'd like.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~