SF2:CE/Capcom CPS1 and CPS2 Question

Hey guys. Recently, I bought a 2-slot MVS cabinet from a local arcade operator. It's in decent shape, plays great, and I'm loving it.

Now, since I actually followed through with this guy and bought the cabinet, and didn't load him down with tons of support problems, he's started calling me to let me know when he's got other cabinets that he wants to unload. He's currently got one of my all time favorite arcade games on the block.

What he has is a Street Fighter II Champion Edition cabinet. It's one of the dedicated SF2:CE cabs with the high top, and pseudo-stone print on the front panel. It's very nice looking. The controllers are pretty beat up, and there's some graphical garbage on some of the game screens, but the monitor looks good. I'm hoping the garbage can be cleaned up with a good Electro Wash spray. He's currently asking $800, delivered to my house.

Here's the questions part... First, if I understand correctly, Street Fighter 2, all the way up through Turbo, was based on CPS1 hardware, right? Does anyone know how easy it is to switch games on this? How hard is it to find them? It's a lot easier to justify this cost if I can pick up Ghouls'n'Ghosts and Strider for the board for a good price.

Also, does anyone know if it would be possible to also buy a CPS2 board and put it into this cabinet? Did Capcom keep the same wiring harness across the platforms, or are there completely different requirements?

I'll keep digging on my own to see what I can find out. I just thought I'd see what you guys know first.

Sigmund

Sigmund:
Here's the questions part... First, if I understand correctly, Street Fighter 2, all the way up through Turbo, was based on CPS1 hardware, right?

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Street Fighter II - The World Warrior
Street Fighter II - Champion Edition
Street Fighter II - Turbo/Hyper Fighting

These three games are CPS1. All the other Street Fighter games are based on different hardware (CPS2/3).

Sigmund:
Does anyone know how easy it is to switch games on this?

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As easy as on any generic jamma cab.

Sigmund:
How hard is it to find them?

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If you mean other CPS1 games it depends on the games, but quite apart from that keep in mind that you can play practically any jamma games on that cab (even 1-slot MVS), not just CPS1 ones.

Sigmund:
It's a lot easier to justify this cost if I can pick up Ghouls'n'Ghosts and Strider for the board for a good price.

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$800 is a bit on the expensive side if you ask me, all the more so since it's not really a dedicated cab: the game was available as a conversion kit only, so as good looking as it may be it remains a conversion (i.e. not factory made). Note that practically all CPS1 games were like that. Forgotten Worlds, Ghouls'n Ghosts and Mercs are the only dedicated CPS1 cabs that come to my mind.
As for the availability of CPS1 game boards, Strider and especially Ghouls'n Ghosts (or Willow) are quite hard to come by. Other titles like Magic Sword, Final Fight and Mercs are quite common.

Sigmund:
Also, does anyone know if it would be possible to also buy a CPS2 board and put it into this cabinet? Did Capcom keep the same wiring harness across the platforms, or are there completely different requirements?

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CPS2 is also jamma so you can plug these into that cab just as well. The only difficulty is that CPS2 fighting games require a different kick harness than CPS1 (CPS1 has a 10-pin single row connector for the kick harness while on CPS-2 it's a 34-pin dual row one).

<small>[ September 10, 2003, 09:30 AM: Message edited by: MKL ]</small>

Firstly, "graphical garbage" doesn't sound good. Is the SF2CE board in the cab deffinately legit? Check out <a href="http://www.system16.com/cybercade/games/sfiice.html" target="_blank">http://www.system16.com/cybercade/games/sfiice.html</a> for a picture of what the board looks like. If it is legit, a good clean and/or reseating of the boards could fix the problem, but if it doesn't you could be in for some 'fun' repairing the board.

Yes, the whole Street Fighter II seires is CPS1 (not including Super SFII which is on CPS2). The games are very easy to switch. 99% of the time a CPS1 game comes as the whole thing; CPS1 motherboard with game roms and c board on top. It is possible to switch just the top two boards on some games, but not all as there are different CPS1 motherboard revisions with slightly different hardware and clock speeds for different games. SFII Turbo for example needs a motherboard with the higher clock speed.

CPS1 boards are very easy to come by, and will set you back somewhere between $30-$150 depending on the game and how rare/desirable it is. Typically Street Fighter II boards are very easy to find and are the cheapest to buy. You should be able to pick up a CE or Turbo board for around $30-$50. World Warrior boards can be bought for peanuts. More desirable games like Carrier Airwing and Final Fight are a little more expensive but not much harder to find. Strider remains a very collectable game and costs a little more again. Ghouls 'N Ghosts is an uncommon find and will cost the most.

As for CPS2, yes a CPS2 setup will work just fine in that cabinet. The CPS2 extra button connector is slightly different from the CPS1 connector however. It uses exactly the same principle as CPS1, three punches per player through the jamma harness and three kicks per player through the extra button connector. You will need to buy a CPS2 extra button connector (costs about $20), cut your existing CPS1 kick harness at halfway and install molex connectors if they're not there already. The rig up the CPS2 connector to switch between it and the CPS1 connect at the 'business end' if you follow me.

Overall CPS1 and CPS2 are very accessable platforms to get into. Games are in abundance, are priced from cheap to moderately expensive depending on your tastes, and there are many really top quality titles to be had.

If you need any more info let me know.

To follow up, $800 is very expensive for the cabinet, especially with controls that need replacing and a possible faulty game board. Both things are easily fixed, worse case senario a new SF2CE board will set you back $50 and all new buttons and joysticks around $40.

To be honest, even if the board and controls were fine, I wouldn't pay more than $600 unless it was really super mint, and would hope to pay a good bit less than that. As it is I would say around $400 is a good price for the cabinet, then add delivery at cost.

<a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3241637058&category=13716" target="_blank">http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3241637058&category=13716</a>

^ that seems like a much fairer deal. I know this might not be available to you, but it shows you what you should be paying.

Thanks for the advice guys. I think I'm going to go two routes...

First, I'm going to make sure I can actually fit this cabinet into my gameroom. My 2-slot MVS was an easy fit, but this cabinet is quite a bit bigger.

Second, I'm going to see if I can get him to come down in price again. He originally said he wanted to get $1000 for it. But, it's been sitting in his store room for a month, so now he's asking $800, including delivery. Using that eBay auction as an example, I'm going to try to get him down around $500, especially since it needs at least some work.

The only other problem I'm facing is how to pay for it. I blew my budget on the MVS cab. I have to think about whether or not I'm willing to unload my AES collection to finance this.

Thanks again guys!

Sigmund