Arcade ops using actual AES consoles and carts inside arcade machines??

[Jonny l3lanka]

So I just came back from another local operator to have a look at his stash.. Apart from a few rares like Strikers 1945 there wasn't many items of interest. ..until one thing caught my eye.. Among his mvs carts on the shelf was a loose Ninja Combat AES cart..!! Damn how weird.. Don't think I've EVER come across a loose AES game in the wild.. can you imagine? Loose carts without their protecting boxes getting all scuffed and scraped..

The guy was a bit annoying to deal with so I left without checking much, but imagine, there could be a ton of aes systems and games hidden in his cabs..

 

[RabbitTroop]

For a long time I've wondered why we haven't seen a home cart to MVS converter out there. Especially back in the day when the MVS carts debuted at such a high price, but could be bought for around $200-300 in home cart form. Seems like a converter would have been a no-brainer. I'd buy one for sure, just for the novelty.

 

[Jonny l3lanka]

For a long time I've wondered why we haven't seen a home cart to MVS converter out there. Especially back in the day when the MVS carts debuted at such a high price, but could be bought for around $200-300 in home cart form. Seems like a converter would have been a no-brainer. I'd buy one for sure, just for the novelty.

Hmm.. you think he would have been using a converter? I suspect he may have a few aes consoles hooked up in someway and found a way to boot the games in MVS mode.. would be interesting to find out

 

[_rm_]

I've also found a Ninja Combat AES on an operator here in Portugal, that's funny, was that some kind of christmas gift/merchandise from SNK or something?

lolol

 

[Joneo]

I could have sworn I'd heard rumors about the existence of such a converter. There certainly would have been plenty of motivation to make one back then. At the rate Magician Lord is going, we may need one again.

For a long time I've wondered why we haven't seen a home cart to MVS converter out there. Especially back in the day when the MVS carts debuted at such a high price, but could be bought for around $200-300 in home cart form. Seems like a converter would have been a no-brainer. I'd buy one for sure, just for the novelty.

 

[HeavyMachineGoob]

I've never heard of a converter of that kind... But there do exist JAMMA modified AES systems. Heck, there's one mentioned in channelmaniac's repair logs! That's probably more likely than a converter.

 

[RabbitTroop]

I'm not assuming anything with my post. Your best bet would be to ask this operator about it. I'm just saying that I am surprised a converter was never created because it would have been a much cheaper alternative for operators to run home games on MVS systems. Especially in the years before the developer or UNIBIOS were released. Sure, now a home system can be turned into an MVS system with a few soft dip settings, and wiring a home system up to a JAMMA harness or into a cab wouldn't take that much effort.

 

[RabbitTroop]

I could have sworn I'd heard rumors about the existence of such a converter. There certainly would have been plenty of motivation to make one back then. At the rate Magician Lord is going, we may need one again.

Haha, or at this rate, with games like Samurai Shodown 5 Special as well

 

[Fandangos]

I've once saw an arcade cabinet with an AES system hooked to a jamma adapter on the controller ports.

Sicne the AES were cheaper than the MVS in 1994-96 people used to do it.

I got a few AES cartridges loose on a few places I've been here.

 

[ne7]

if your talking greece/cyprus I've seen over the past few years (20yrs) that they often had consoles hooked up to jamma cabs so wouldn't be that odd to see an AES done the same way there they even had kiosks with consoles hooked up to bog standard tv's (snes + md were really common) with coin chutes controlling controller response for timed gameplay when I was younger...

 

[Jonny l3lanka]

if your talking greece/cyprus I've seen over the past few years (20yrs) that they often had consoles hooked up to jamma cabs so wouldn't be that odd to see an AES done the same way there they even had kiosks with consoles hooked up to bog standard tv's (snes + md were really common) with coin chutes controlling controller response for timed gameplay when I was younger...

Haha interesting.. they still have a few setups like that with ps2/ps3 and xbox but mostly for football games.. boring of course!

How were the consoles hooked up exactly do you know?

 

[RetroGiga68k]

Damn how weird.. Don't think I've EVER come across a loose AES game in the wild.. can you imagine? Loose carts without their protecting boxes getting all scuffed and scraped.

No comment on operators side, but for AES in general: Loose AES carts are not that unusual, given the ease with which the pre-snaplock SNK AES cart cases shatter & disintegrate. All the loose AES carts I've purchased for cheap have been fine, not too scuffed/scraped either. (Ironically I've had more headaches & problems with the few sealed NOS carts I bought in the past year, than with any loose carts.)

 

[FOMOCO&CO]

Ive been wanting a "reverse converter" (aes to mvs) since the lat 90's myself, I remember thinking it had already been done back then, but still nothing since then.... Im in for one tho if it happens..

on another note...

(Ironically I've had more headaches & problems with the few sealed NOS carts I bought in
the past year, than with any loose carts.)

Are you buying sealed NOS home carts (at a premium?) to open and play? Just curious..

 

[Joneo]

Or maybe buying some of the NOS stock from a certain French outlet that always seem to have a corner crunched in...

Are you buying sealed NOS home carts (at a premium?) to open and play? Just curious..

 

[CraftyMech]

I would definitely snatch up a AES->MVS converter as well, if one became available. With Magacian Lord plentiful and cheap for the AES, a converter would practically pay for itself.

 

[psychobear85]

When I would spend my summer vacations in Mexico as a kid in the 90s a lot of arcade operators will set up consoles in cabs and operate it by feeding coins and adding time, I saw this with the neo geo and snes.

 

[SNKorSWM]

Games like Ninja Combat and Baseball Stars Professional have these "timers" built in the softdips. The arcade op is able to select how long of a time each credit buys.

 

[GoosehanX]

Are you buying sealed NOS home carts (at a premium?) to open and play? Just curious..

A bunch of NOS older carts flooded the market a couple of years back, so it's not that unusual on certain titles. I bought a lot of 8 NOS games from ebay a while back and still haven't cracked open Super Spy or Riding Hero.

 

[RetroGiga68k]

Are you buying sealed NOS home carts (at a premium?) to open and play?

I just bought cheap-ish NOS a few times out of curiosity, so I would have a couple of "reference" carts at hand for what 100% perfect condition truly looks and feels like.

(I've since realized the hard way, that sealed NOS stock also inherently means any sealed NOS cart hasn't been playtested for 10-20 years, so may have developed undetected hardware defects wherever it was stored all that time.)

 

[LegoSlug]

Yea, AES to MVS would be a good investment. I wouldn't mind playing Magician Lord for less than $130.

 

[BomberHead]

But how would the game start and coin in work? My AES only lets me start a game with 4 credits. thats it.. how would you add credits?

 

[Jonny l3lanka]

But how would the game start and coin in work? My AES only lets me start a game with 4 credits. thats it.. how would you add credits?

Either with a timer mechanism, (like stated above) or by booting the console in MVS mode, but I don't know if they would've had access to multibios chips of any sort back then...

 

[ne7]

they wouldn't have bothered making a aes->mvs converter they'd have just used the console and done a little mod on it (much like the MD jamma one)

games would either lock out controls or blank screen after a certain amount of time - twas very, very simple

 

[sylphia]

Well, I guess this Ninja Combat cart you found was used in a modified AES like this one:

I got this one from an operator a few years ago. So far, I had only seen two copies. It might thus have been a small production run, produced by some european company when AES carts were cheaper than MVS...

If I remember correctly however, the bios is also modified. I couldn't get this thing to work with other games than this Ninja Combat cart

 

[xsq]

Well, I guess this Ninja Combat cart you found was used in a modified AES like this one:

Thanks for the pic, that looks really interesting. Any way you could find out what was done to the BIOS?