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How long until someone makes replacement arcade system (AKA MVS) game shells with a sleek design?
Interesting New AES-Style Consolized MV-1B on Aliexpress
- Thread starter Neo Alec
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Omega Neo-Geo MVS Replacement Cartridge Shells
Replacement cartridge shells for the Neo-Geo MVS in the style of home version AES Games.
AES-style MVS replacement shells preview
These are some preview pics of the aes-style mvs shells I alluded to way back when (this is not the mystery project I sporadically mention). I'm looking to get some feedback on the design before I add the mounting features. Now is your chance to suggest any changes or call this idea completely...
www.neo-geo.com
Never got funded and didn't happen as far as I know.
Personally, I like the idea, but I like to keep my games original, so I wouldn't have gotten these.
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I like the idea too. Id like to think I could just buy 50 buck mvs bootlegs from Mexico and go to town... But the novelty of stacking your shelves with cheap neo games would wear off quick if it's all fake, like people trying to impress with a collection of SNES games they ordered from China in universal game cases with art they printed off at Staples. It's not like it was hard to get, or like you're preserving some authentic 30 year old antiques. The wow factor and the struggle to find and preserve rare items is missing. Might as well just buy a 161 in 1.
Burning Fight!!
NIS America fan & Rent Free tenant
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That would be completely pointless and it says a lot about someone to actually have that cross your mind. Want beautiful artwork? How about booting the damn game. Jesus fucking Christ.
The MVS cart is beautiful because that's the real deal, scars and all, and the kit linked is cool because it gives a good looking shell for something that's usually in a DIY enclosure or bare at the enthusiast's home, but here we have people missing the point and wanting to treat an arcade operator kit as a SNES or as a stand-in for an AES because that's what the cool kids own.
No wonder the price gougers took a long time to find arcade PCBs and treat it as an investment.
The MVS cart is beautiful because that's the real deal, scars and all, and the kit linked is cool because it gives a good looking shell for something that's usually in a DIY enclosure or bare at the enthusiast's home, but here we have people missing the point and wanting to treat an arcade operator kit as a SNES or as a stand-in for an AES because that's what the cool kids own.
No wonder the price gougers took a long time to find arcade PCBs and treat it as an investment.
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Although I agree the MVS carts are beautiful as is, I do think the AES console is the intended home experience and aesthetic, even though many are playing MVS carts at home now.
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MVS carts ftw. If you want to "spruce up" your cart collection, buy some red, green, yellow, blue, white/jizz carts etc 
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Has anyone on youtube reviewed this MVS in this AES style casing? It looks remarkably similar. But I'm real confused by the USB ports. A Neo Geo with native USB ports? Wha?
Niko
Terry Bogard's Taylor
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The USB ports arnt new with this Chinese CMVS. It’s essentially a ISB decoder so you can use PS3/PS4/Xbox controllers natively.
Also, not many people have received one yet. Apparently the lockdowns are causing some troubles getting these out.
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Those looked kick ass back then. Too steep thoOmega Neo-Geo MVS Replacement Cartridge Shells
Replacement cartridge shells for the Neo-Geo MVS in the style of home version AES Games.www.kickstarter.com
AES-style MVS replacement shells preview
These are some preview pics of the aes-style mvs shells I alluded to way back when (this is not the mystery project I sporadically mention). I'm looking to get some feedback on the design before I add the mounting features. Now is your chance to suggest any changes or call this idea completely...www.neo-geo.com
Never got funded and didn't happen as far as I know.
Personally, I like the idea, but I like to keep my games original, so I wouldn't have gotten these.
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- Dec 14, 2001
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The mv1b's are prone to failure so repairing could be a real pita in the future.I feel they would have made out better just selling custom shells for the mv1c's instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
I do like the fact that they incorporated their version of an rgb to ntsc converter.
Somebody just sell custom cases of various colors and I'm in immediately...with this,I can hold off.
BB
I do like the fact that they incorporated their version of an rgb to ntsc converter.
Somebody just sell custom cases of various colors and I'm in immediately...with this,I can hold off.
BB
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- Sep 28, 2001
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Thread resurrection!
So, my JNX CMVS was on the fritz so I thought what the hell, I bought one of these AES style CMVS's. I've been using it for a month or two to put it through the paces and thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. I've both used the thing, torn it apart and rebuilt it. More on that in a bit.
First off the reason you buy this is the shell. It's surprisingly high quality. Side by side with an actual home system they are extremely similar. If you hold the shell to the light just right you can see some spots here and there that I assume is from the injection molding process. My home cart system has some of those too, but there are a lot more on the CMVS, I presume from a cheaper quality plastic or process. It's not bad though. It comes with some cables that are decent enough if you need them, and what looks like a repurposed laptop PSU. The PSU is overkill, but I'm guessing they wanted to be damn sure that power hungry multicarts, flash carts, and such wouldn't have any issues. I don't trust it and I plan to replace it at some point. The shell doesn't have the Neo Geo logo attached (I presume to pass customs in some areas) but hidden in one of the cable bags was a silver SNK logo and a gold Neo Geo logo. Nice quality on both, but the font of the Neo Geo logo is off. I used the SNK logo but got a gold Neo Geo decal from ebay instead.
Now in actually using it, it plays fine. There are no fitment issues with any cart I tried, everything worked including real carts, bootlegs, and both my multicarts. I don't have a flash cart to test. It outputs composite, component, and a Neo standard RGB output. I haven't used composite, but the component output is decent but not great. The image is nice and sharp, but the colors have a bit of a yellow push to them. If we still had an easily available small component encoder PCB available I'd swap it out, but since it has the RGB out it's no big deal. My old Neo RGB scart cable going into a OSSC works great, as does using an HD Retrovision cable with Neo adapter plugged into my CRT. Sound output through the RCA jacks in the pack is very good, it must have some filtering circuit as it's less harsh than other CMVS units I've used. I do think my JNX video looks a little bit better on my CRT, but it's splitting hairs. The Ali sounds better, but again not a big deal either way.
Overall, for the price it's a solid unit so far, very happy with the purchase. I played it for a few weeks though and ran into an issue, I was getting lines in the sprite layer of everything. Fuck. I open it up to take a look at things and it's a bit of a mixed bag. The MV1B used is kind of a horror show. A very well used and likely busted board that had most of the chips replaced. The repair work was solid, but this was definitely a Yaton tier board. Crappy board aside, the design is pretty clever. Like many other modern CMVS units there is a jamma harness that plugs into a connector which feeds the signals to a PCB with the controller and AV circuity. All the new parts look pretty solidly built. As a test I popped another MV1B into the jamma harness and it did indeed work just fine, less the sound since I had no way of connecting the little sound harness.
I tried to repair it myself but didn't have much luck. I ended up getting the company that made it to send me a new motherboard. Meanwhile, while I was waiting for shipping I fixed my JNX CMVS, it was just a minor sync issue. Sweet. Anyway, the new motherboard arrived and it's in much, much better shape than the original. I put it in, and everything works well.
Conclusion, would I get it again? Yeah, once I swapped out that board it's a pretty sweet system. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who needs the absolute best perfect video quality, but if you just want to play MVS games in a system with a cool shell, this is solid. Just know that these are built with old repaired MV1B motherboards so future reliability is going to be suspect. Even in the best cases MV1Bs are kinda crap and I only use them since they are tiny and fairly cheap still. For most people I'd still recommend JNX if he's taking orders or look into putting together an OMVS.
So, my JNX CMVS was on the fritz so I thought what the hell, I bought one of these AES style CMVS's. I've been using it for a month or two to put it through the paces and thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. I've both used the thing, torn it apart and rebuilt it. More on that in a bit.
First off the reason you buy this is the shell. It's surprisingly high quality. Side by side with an actual home system they are extremely similar. If you hold the shell to the light just right you can see some spots here and there that I assume is from the injection molding process. My home cart system has some of those too, but there are a lot more on the CMVS, I presume from a cheaper quality plastic or process. It's not bad though. It comes with some cables that are decent enough if you need them, and what looks like a repurposed laptop PSU. The PSU is overkill, but I'm guessing they wanted to be damn sure that power hungry multicarts, flash carts, and such wouldn't have any issues. I don't trust it and I plan to replace it at some point. The shell doesn't have the Neo Geo logo attached (I presume to pass customs in some areas) but hidden in one of the cable bags was a silver SNK logo and a gold Neo Geo logo. Nice quality on both, but the font of the Neo Geo logo is off. I used the SNK logo but got a gold Neo Geo decal from ebay instead.
Now in actually using it, it plays fine. There are no fitment issues with any cart I tried, everything worked including real carts, bootlegs, and both my multicarts. I don't have a flash cart to test. It outputs composite, component, and a Neo standard RGB output. I haven't used composite, but the component output is decent but not great. The image is nice and sharp, but the colors have a bit of a yellow push to them. If we still had an easily available small component encoder PCB available I'd swap it out, but since it has the RGB out it's no big deal. My old Neo RGB scart cable going into a OSSC works great, as does using an HD Retrovision cable with Neo adapter plugged into my CRT. Sound output through the RCA jacks in the pack is very good, it must have some filtering circuit as it's less harsh than other CMVS units I've used. I do think my JNX video looks a little bit better on my CRT, but it's splitting hairs. The Ali sounds better, but again not a big deal either way.
Overall, for the price it's a solid unit so far, very happy with the purchase. I played it for a few weeks though and ran into an issue, I was getting lines in the sprite layer of everything. Fuck. I open it up to take a look at things and it's a bit of a mixed bag. The MV1B used is kind of a horror show. A very well used and likely busted board that had most of the chips replaced. The repair work was solid, but this was definitely a Yaton tier board. Crappy board aside, the design is pretty clever. Like many other modern CMVS units there is a jamma harness that plugs into a connector which feeds the signals to a PCB with the controller and AV circuity. All the new parts look pretty solidly built. As a test I popped another MV1B into the jamma harness and it did indeed work just fine, less the sound since I had no way of connecting the little sound harness.
I tried to repair it myself but didn't have much luck. I ended up getting the company that made it to send me a new motherboard. Meanwhile, while I was waiting for shipping I fixed my JNX CMVS, it was just a minor sync issue. Sweet. Anyway, the new motherboard arrived and it's in much, much better shape than the original. I put it in, and everything works well.
Conclusion, would I get it again? Yeah, once I swapped out that board it's a pretty sweet system. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who needs the absolute best perfect video quality, but if you just want to play MVS games in a system with a cool shell, this is solid. Just know that these are built with old repaired MV1B motherboards so future reliability is going to be suspect. Even in the best cases MV1Bs are kinda crap and I only use them since they are tiny and fairly cheap still. For most people I'd still recommend JNX if he's taking orders or look into putting together an OMVS.
Niko
Terry Bogard's Taylor
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What seller did you buy your unit from? I got mine from TimeHarvest and the board was quite clean. Definitely not Yaton level.
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Found an old pic of my 1B, they sold it in 2018 for 180 € shipped.
Not terrible for that price, I just wouldn't spend 450 € shipped for the AES shell.
Not terrible for that price, I just wouldn't spend 450 € shipped for the AES shell.
Niko
Terry Bogard's Taylor
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They’re nowhere near that cost. They’re $350 shipped… which is a pretty respectable considering everything you’re getting and how quickly you’re getting it.
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Niko
Terry Bogard's Taylor
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Weird, this one is less than 400 € shipped. Still more expensive since it incldues "VAT" I guess. But less than your example.
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They don't ship to Germany. Can't even see the shop without VPN nowadays. They sold me my Samurai Shodown V Perfect but I originally ordered Special. It's the shop Neo Alec linked in the OP. Won't spend 400 anyway, mine for half of that is fine. My boxed AES back then was also only half of that.
Giga_Power32bit
Armored Scrum Object
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I don't know but I just ordered one. I guess I'll have to start collecting MVS now.
Burning Fight!!
NIS America fan & Rent Free tenant
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Hard to bite the bullet when it costs 2k monies for me... I need another price drop
avramce
Kabuki Klasher
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For the cost, it is a very nice lil package, considering that two undamned or usb2db15 adapters would easily add another $100 on top of other CMVS solutions. Given that the AV circuit is just tacked in on a replaceable QSB, I would if it would be possible to improve the RGB out the same way that the Omega replacement AV board works.
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I haven't done it, but replacing the AV should be really easy. The Jamma harness connects to a PCB that routes the signals to the back and it runs through a couple of smaller soldered in PCBs that handle the outputs. I haven't looked at it in depth but I believe one of the PCBs is probably the buffer for the RGB signal and the other is a RGB to component/composite transcoder.
I just ordered some MVS RGB PCBs from OSHpark for another project, if I'm not too lazy I may try to swap the RGB board out with one of the spares. I doubt I'll see much difference in video quality though since the deficiencies in the unit stem from the component transcoder and not the RGB signal.