They’re coming outta the goddamn walls PCB Raid! - Part 2

The next day I was still buzzing about the Raid and couldn’t stop thinking about the awesome haul.  I couldn’t wait to go through the boards, identify the ones I wasn’t sure about and start testing them.  However I also started to get a touch of Raid regret, items I’d left behind, but really should have picked up.  I definitely should have grabbed the Namco Rally-X board.  Also I’d left behind a Sega Mega-Play motherboard complete with four carts, which I wish I’d picked up.  In the end I decided to phone the Op and managed to arrange another visit.

When I arrived at the unit he was in the middle of a big sort out. 

He let me have another rummage round the unit.  On this occasion I was a bit more picky and started to cherry pick through the boards a little bit more.  I think if I’d cherry picked on the first visit, he may not have been quite so keen on me visiting a second time round.  It’s always a bit of a fine balance.

There were various parts and spares everywhere I looked.

 

Rod-Land, a fantastic single-screen arcade platformer by Jaleco, was another top find. 

I actually saw this board on my last visit, put it to one side and thought I’d picked it up.  I would have been a bit gutted if I’d got home only to find I’d left it behind!  I also grabbed the Rally-X and the Sega Mega-Play board and carts.

I then had a better look round the loft area as I’ll call it.  The lighting was poor, but I noticed there were some boards amongst the various parts.  I started pulling out the boards and passing them to my wife. 

It seemed apt that in this poorly lit, confined space, with PCB’s in all the nooks and crannies, I pulled out an Aliens PCB!  It didn’t take long before my wife was running out of space to put them.  I also managed to find Violent Storm, a scrolling beat-em-up by Konami, which had been high on my wants list.

I’d only gone back for a couple more and ended up with this lot!

With the boot loaded up, we left the unit.

There was one Taito board I couldn’t identify and left behind. 

As we drove back to the holiday park, I started googling and found out the board was actually Return of the Invaders, released in 1985 and the third official title in the series.  I’d never heard of it before and thought the game looked pretty cool.  We ended up doing a U-turn and going back for it.  In case you’re wondering, yes I was testing the wife’s patience at this point!

At the end of the HoliRaid, I re-packed the boards a bit better for the journey home.  One cardboard box had boards stacked vertically, and as I took them out I noticed they had been sitting on boards at the bottom!  The first board was WWF Superstars boot, nothing too exciting there.  The second board was none other than Konami’s awesome shooter from 1983, Juno First!  I was so excited to see this one, and I’m almost ashamed to admit I done a little fist pump!

They’re coming outta the goddamn walls PCB Raid!

Raids rarely go completely to plan, and this was no exception!  I first got in contact with this Op over a year ago.  He told me he had an OutRun machine and some boards.  This particular Op is based in a popular seaside town several hours away.  I had planned to visit a few Ops in the area, but unfortunately the dates clashed with his holiday.  He told me he had to have a sort out, but thought he had got rid of most of his boards anyway.  As a result this got put on the back burner.

Fast forward a year, and I called the owner of a local arcade which was closing down.  He said he has an OutRun and some boards.  I expressed my interest and agreed to have a look, and it soon transpired that there had been a mix up.  I had called the wrong number and this wasn’t a local Op, but one who lived several hours away who I had been hoping to visit last year!  Half term was approaching and the daughter was off school, and so I began thinking about going on another holiday / Raid, or HoliRaid as my wife now calls them.  After all, if nothing comes of it, we still get to have a nice few days away.

Before my visit I had a few more chats with the Op.  He said he had quite a few boards, more than he thought he had.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear this and had to ask him to repeat it!  Normally when Ops get back to me I hear the opposite, or worse still, they tell me that all their video games were skipped years ago.  He said he didn’t have the time or inclination to test the boards and was just looking to clear them out, which was great news for me.  The last Op I visited was still very passionate about his boards and ended up parting with very few!  He also said he had cocktail cabinets, a green Neo Geo cab and two OutRun cabs.  I was definitely starting to feel more excited about this Raid!  He asked me about prices for the OutRun, and I explained it’s dependant on condition and difficult to gauge without seeing them, but I offered a couple of hundred quid to get the ball rolling.

It’s day one of our holiday, we’re in the caravan, and the Op phones me.  He tells me that his son had put the feelers out on Facebook for the OutRun cabs and there has been incredible interest, with his phone constantly pinging with messages.  He tells me a sale has been agreed, and it’s pretty much a done deal, with someone collecting the cabs that evening.  However everything else is still up for grabs.  I must admit I was more than a little disappointed as I had hoped to buy them, keeping one for myself and selling the other on.  However I remained optimistic and headed down to see him that very afternoon.   I thought if the other stuff ends up on a Facebook group, it will just become a bidding war.

I arrive at the unit and see these machines in the doorway.

 

It turns out they’re not OutRun after all, but OutRunners!  The cabs look decent, although less desirable in my eyes.  I have a quick look over of the machines.  Apparently they have monitor faults.  The steering on one machine feels clunky, and on the other the steering wheel is hanging loose on the shaft.  They will be great projects for someone, but I’m starting to think I dodged a bullet with these.

 

Just inside the unit I notice a couple of control panels.

Next I spy this very clean looking Lordsvale Neo Geo MVS cab.

Apparently it had just come back off site.  I ended up buying this one and found two carts in the bottom, Puzzled and Tecmo World Soccer ’96.  Not the most exciting titles, but a nice bonus all the same.

A couple of Space Invader boards stacked between the fruit machines.

This Video Master cab was missing the monitor, although I did grab the Cyber Lip MVS cart and motherboard which was just sitting inside.  Later on I also found 3 Count Bout and Windjammers carts.

Maximum Force.  It had a monitor fault and was a bit pricey, so I ended up leaving it.

The workbench, complete with a random selection of PCB’s.  There were some really good ones as well, including Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker and Time Pilot ’84.

The Op tried to sell me the Noddy car, but I had to decline as sadly I don’t have the space for another sit down driver.

Moving up the stairs, I could see a few cocktail cabs stashed away.

At the top of the stairs were these two Video World cabs. 

I really like the look of these.  Nice, small, compact cabs, but the Op was inclined to keep these, with intentions of putting them back on site.

The Op had begun pulling out boxes of PCB’s, and I was confronted with this lot!

Flicky, released on Sega System 1 hardware in 1984, was one of today’s top finds.  Curiously the board had a hand written ‘Flicky 2’ label attached.  I suspect the Op had multiple boards.

These Sega Mega-Play motherboards and carts were a cool find.  They looked in almost brand new condition.  I’ve picked up Sega Mega-Tech systems on previous Raids, but it’s the first time I’ve come across its successor, the Mega-Play.  This system utilises a more traditional arcade operation than the Mega-Tech, with credits used to buy lives instead of time.  Also it has four cart slots instead of eight.

In addition to the above titles, I also picked up Bio-Hazard Battle, Columns III: Revenge of Columns and GrandSlam: The Tennis Tournament ’92.  I can’t wait to play Streets of Rage II in a cab.  Or Street of Rage II as the label says.

Cocktail cabs quite literally stacked up to the ceiling. 

They were mostly Taito Space Invaders, although I did see a couple of Zaccaria machines amongst them. 

They looked nice and original and in great condition for their age.  These were sited in all the local guest houses back in the day.

Boards could be found in just about every nook and cranny.

A couple of driving cab dashboards.

The pool table parts section, with various video game parts thrown in.  Notice though that all these parts are sitting on cocktail cabs as well!

A random PCB in the corner, with an obligatory fruit machine reel sitting on top.  Hang on, that looks like Konami GX400 hardware!  Could it be Nemesis?

Sadly not, it was City Bomber, a vehicular combat game released in 1987.  However I did manage to find a Salamander board which made up for the slight disappointment.

Here is a short walk through video of the unit.

I started going through the boards.  They were a good price, and the Op was throwing in extras, so I wasn’t too picky.  There was a nice eclectic mix of eighties and nineties titles.  The majority of the boards were original, although I did grab a couple of Bubble Bobble boots.  The haul includes early obscure Sega titles (Flicky, My Hero, Ninja Princess, Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns), a few Sega System 16 boards (Altered Beast, Dynamite Düx), Sega System 18 (Moonwalker, D.D. Crew), Sega Mega-Play motherboards and carts, lots of great Konami boards (Circus Charlie, Salamander, Super Contra, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles), Capcom (1942, Commando, Final Fight, Street Fighter II), Irem (Hammerin’ Harry, Kung-Fu Master), Namco (Pac-Land, Rolling Thunder), SNK (Alpha Mission, Guerilla War, Ikari Warriors), Tehkan (Bomb Jack, Star Force), Toaplan (Demon’s World, Snow Bros) and loads more!

Tales of Console Collecting – Megadrive collecting and retro shopping in Norwich

I’ve never really talked much about my console collecting as my blog is predominantly about arcade gaming.  I had a Pal Megadrive back in the day and sold it to focus on Japanese games.  The games run at 60Hz and have no borders, and I considered the box art vastly superior.  For me these were the definitive versions.  Back then I was regularly going to Japan and bringing back as many games as I could.  I remember one evening before a flight back home, I was packing my cases, ran out of room, and I had to make a mad dash into Chiba to buy a new case.  I went through a lot of clothes during this period as I frequently had to leave most of them behind!

I pretty much still have all these games and have amassed quite a large collection over the years.  It’s far from a complete collection though, comprising of games I thought I’d enjoy and ones I found appealing.

So what’s this got to do with retro game shopping in Norwich?  Well, I’ve started to pick up some Pal games.  This was triggered by Urban Strike.  I have Jungle and Desert Strike, and I really wanted to complete the Megadrive Strike trilogy.  However it turns out Urban Strike never received a Japanese release.  I saw the Pal release at the Norwich Gaming Market and snapped it up.  This got me thinking about other games I want to play and have in my collection, but were never released in Japan.  Looking into it a little bit more, the absence of some titles in Japan is certainly strange.  Take Konami’s Sunset Riders, and Capcoms’s Saturday Night Slam Masters and The Punisher for example.  Great games produced by Japanese companies, but no Japanese release.  Maybe it was because these came out late in the console’s life, and the Megadrive wasn’t as big in Japan.  VR Troopers is another oddity.  It’s a versus fighting game, developed in the UK and based on the TV show by Saban.  However it was never released in Japan, which is somewhat surprising given its Japanese roots.  Admittedly I’ve never played the game, and I don’t know how good it is.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to expand upon my Megadrive collection with the following loose guidelines.

1. Games I want to play and have in the collection, but were never released in Japan.

2. Games I really love which have alternative cover art and/or other regional differences, e.g. I’m a big Splatterhouse fan, and I really like the cover art on the Pal version.  Also being a massive OutRun fan I want the Pal version.

3. Games I want to play, but were released in Japan in comparatively small numbers and are expensive compared to the Pal version, e.g. Judge Dredd and Comix Zone.  Whilst I like these games, I simply don’t like them enough to justify the much higher cost of the Japanese versions.

4. Games which I had in my original Pal Megadrive collection back in the day (thankfully I didn’t have that many!).

I visited two retro game shops in Norwich in order to pick up a few titles.  As usual I went off on a bit of a tangent, picking up some items I never knew I wanted!

Regenerating Gaming

My first stop, and I didn’t pick up any Megadrive games here.  They have a pretty good stock of titles, but unfortunately the ones I was interested in weren’t complete or in the condition I wanted.  Here are some pics of the shop.

However I did pick up some great condition Master System games, including OutRun, OutRun Europa and some arcade conversions.

Next Level Games

In this shop I picked up a couple of Megadrive titles, and there were some nice surprises.

I thought this LCD game shelf was pretty cool.

I was very surprised to see some Japanese Famicom games on the shelf. 

I asked the shop owner about them.  Apparently someone had picked them up from Trader in Akihabara, but couldn’t get their Famicom to work in the UK and so traded them in.  It did raise a smile when he mentioned Trader.  I loved game shopping in the Trader stores and it seemed strange that these games have made the journey all the way from Japan to this retro game shop in Norwich.  The boxed games were Double Dragon II, Space Invaders and The Transformers: Convoy no Nazo, translated as Mystery of Convoy.  I had no idea about the latter, but it’s Transformers and the box art is cool.  

Here are my pick ups.  I’m especially pleased with the Famicom games and the Pac-Land LCD.  There is also a Splatterhouse one which I’d love to own.  Reading about The Transformers online, the game is a side scrolling and vertical scrolling platform game, impossibly difficult and by all accounts not very good!  I’m keen to give it a go and see for myself.