Zonkers!!! Panic Bomber - My Conversion Project (Complete Details Inside!)

Hello again. I was faced with some rainy weather this weekend so I figured what better way to spend a few hours in the garage before I scuttled off to see Star Wars Episode II than to tackle another NEO conversion project. I decided that, since I had a spare beat up Samurai Shodown home cart that it was fair game to be sacrificed. I wanted to do a conversion for a game that was never officially released the home Neo Geo system.

The game? Panic Bomber. Widely available in the arcade MVS format but only available in prototype form for the Neo Geo home system, this sounded like the perfect little project. And indeed it was.

Upon examining the Panic Bomber MVS cartridge I found that the following circuit boards were used in that build:


PROGTOP
CHA256

The home "sacrificial" cart, Samurai Shodown, used these circuit boards:

PROGGS
CHA42G-4

Upon first inspection it really looked as if the chip swap would not work. But since SNOTURTLE had success with the same project (the inspiration for my project as well) I figured that it was worth a shot.

Firstly, I removed the following chips from the PROGTOP board, taking great care since these chips will be transferred to the PROGGS board:


V1
V2
P1

Next, I removed these chips from the CHA256 board, taking great care since these chips will be transferred to the CHA42G-4 board:


C1
C2
S1
M1

Then, I removed these chips from the sacrifice circuit boards:


V1
V2
P1
PG2
C1
C2
C3
C51
C61
M1
S1

As you can see, the sacrifice board had more chips, it matter not.

Next, I transferred the MVS chips to the corresponding locations on the home cartridge circuit boards. No worries, the boards are clearly labeled. Just take care not to bend any of the pins.

Jumpers. You'll only need to move one jumper for this easy conversion. On the PROGGS board remove jumper 5. Next, connect jumper 1 using the jumper bridge you just removed from jumper 5! Easy, no? All you need to do is to make sure that the HOME PROGGS board matches the jumper settings found on the original MVS PROGTOP (Panic Bomber) board.

Now it's on to the testing phase:





Yahoo!!! it works!

Ok, next up is the art. I whipped something up using a bunch of graphics that I had for the Virtual Boy version of Panic Bomber. Hehehe…. Here's my finished home cartridge and box:



<a href="http://www.tiptonium.com/videogames/reviews/neogeo/images/panicscanlowres.jpg" target="_blank">Click Here To See A Close Up Of The Insert</a>

That was a fun little project. Thanks <a href="http://www.neo-geo.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=002289" target="_blank">SNOTURTLE!</a>

[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: Tiptonium ]</p>

Looks neat, same goes for the insert

You gotta love the engrish on the back of the insert tho, nice touch

// Bhm

Hey, glad you guys like my little stab at engrish...

"Column-type puzzle with much happy fun. Explode bombs with good time for all with cute bomberman."

<img src="graemlins/mrt2.gif" border="0" alt="[Mr T]" />

How do you do inserts like that, Tip? What program do you use? I'd LOVE to do something like that with a couple of my games!

The tools I use inlcude Photoshop, a cheap CANON USB Scanner and a printer capable of printing on tabloid size (11X17) photo quality paper (HP 2500).

Basically, you need a good digital image program to edit, scale, mod, create the graphics. You can get many graphic objects from the web, magazines, game box scans, etc. Much of the art on the Panic Bomber insert was gathered from an old Virtual Boy Panic Bomber manual and the logo was snapped from the actual game itself.

Persoanlly, I've always used Photoshop but you can do a great job with cheaper software like Paint Shop Pro.

Well, in the case of your Panic Bomber insert. Did you simply scan any US insert and then change all the graphics to suit your needs? IE: You kept the Neo Geo logos were availab;e and the meg boxes. You removed all other art, changed the colours of backgrounds and borders. Brightened the whites of the Neo logos and put in your own meg counts. Is this correct?

Ah, the template. I used a widely available template so start off with!

Here's the link! <a href="http://welcome.to/theredparlour" target="_blank">http://welcome.to/theredparlour</a>