Well, I was thinking about bothering Jago by PM with my questions, but thought maybe this may interest people. I am currently playing TGM and TAP with MAME on my PC, but was wondering if I'd rather buy the PCB of TGM instead. I will ask for basic questions, thanks by advance for your kind answers. Am I supposed to buy the whole machine (screen+sticks+chair ) to play with the PCB? Can I connect it to my PC? TV only? What kinf of stuff do I need to do so? Can I use my USB stick with it? Is it faster, as fast or slower than MAME to launch the system? (I love Mame because it only takes me 2 seconds to play TGM while I was working the previous minute).
You can go about it two ways. If you have the chance to swing by Akihabara, I suggest you check out Mak Japan (http://www.mak-jp.com). They can hook you up with a "control box" (read: supergun), most of which will work with TGM and allow you to hook it up to a TV. As you can see, some come with controllers and some don't. The ones that don't either have extension cables that you can wire to a controller or just give you a pin out (Neo-Geo or otherwise) and let you wire up whatever you want. If you have the money to get the BoardMaster, it's pretty awesome and you should really go for it! Otherwise, you could buy a candy cab (like the cabs at Pier21) to run the game on. I don't know where you would go about buying one of those in Japan, but any of the Sega Astro/Blast/Net City cabs are recommended. I have a Sega "New Astro City" myself, and I've set all of my TGM records on it. It's pretty great! In both cases, it's just as fast as loading up the game in MAME. If you have more questions, feel free to post in the thread, PM me, or even hit me up on AIM or IRC.
Wow, thank you very much! I wanted to work tomorrow... well, I won't If only one game in Hey! could cost less than 100 JPY.
I went there yesterday, thanks for the tips, it was very interesting! The guy in the shop explained me all I wanted to know very kindly, I saw a lot of stuff, good time there ! Seems Kan and Jago already went there together a long time ago. So I guess my japanese apartment won't allow me to buy a cab. Control boards are pretty sexy, especially the little one, but it seems I must have an RGBed television :/. Still possible to hook it to an LCD TV, but it may create some lags. Same thing if I try to connect it to the screen of my PC :/ The guy told me it might be possible to connect the stick to a PC with a special adapter, but it may cause some lags too. Anyone to confirm?
If your display device is a problem, an alternative is to use a VGA CRT together with a Micomsoft XRGB2 adapter, which can be found secondhand fairly easily in Japan. Or get someone's old discarded CRT TV, then you don't need the XRGB2.
My arcade stick was adapted for USB with a chtulu board, it work great but need DIY. If you buy an arcade system, like the SYGMA AV9000, it's still the old fucking composite or Peritel (at best). then you have to use a CRT TV wich might simply NOT exist anymore in japan. the XRGB2+ is a solution but might become complicated for neophite The other way is to find a lag free TFT/plasma TV with a "game mode" wich become the more viable solution. If japan is the video game country i think you can find place or website describing wich is the best TV for playing old console video game. basically, as a TGM player you should only care about the screen display lag free, the quality coming after.
