Games
Trials and Tribulations
The other day I had a hankering for some Street Fighter.
I don’t actually have Street Fighter for any consoles, so my options were limited to emulation or dragging out some arcade gear and playing it for reals. I decided on the latter – emulation doesn’t compare to the real thing, and after all, I’m hardcore.
And by hardcore I mean stupid.
When I moved from Japan to Australia, I brought more than 50 large boxes of games, consoles and controllers with me. It’s a ludicrous amount of stuff, and though it pleases me to have it all, it’s a massive pain in the ass to actually dig out anything when I want to use it. One room of our house is devoted to storing this stuff, and there are still some 40 unpacked boxes in there. All I wanted to do was play Street Fighter, right? Easy!
I knew exactly where my CPS Changer was, so I busted it out quickly. So far so good.
It took me a lot longer to find my CPSC copy of Street Fighter Zero. It was in a dark, unused corner of the room. One hour gone.
Now, where’s my Capcom Power Stick? Oh, yeah, here it is. (Another half hour goes by)
And now, finally, I put it all together. PCB box, add fingerboard, dig out Svideo cable, power, joystick, turn on the TV…
Huh, the screen skips and rolls every ten seconds or so. Dang. WTF, it makes it really hard to hadoken someone’s ass when the TV scrambles your view! And lo! The A button doesn’t work. No weak punch for me.
Cue another hour’s fiddling while I take apart the stick, open up the PCB case, clean all the contacts, reassemble… Still doesn’t work. Fuckit, I’m going to bed.
Next day I have a revelation – the fingerboard on the CPS Changer has a notch in it, like all good JAMMA PCBs should, but there’s no key in the female plug, so I’ve installed it backwards. The notch is on the A button’s pin, so that’s solved.
But… Street Fighter Zero really sucks. And the screen still rolls.
So for whatever reason, it seemed a good idea at the time, I dragged out some CPS2 games – Super Street Fighter 2 and Vampire Savior. I took apart the CPS Changer and plugged it in to the CPS2 board (It won’t normally fit). Then I remember – oh yeah, the CPS2 uses an extra connector for the kick buttons. Sooo… I can only punch. And if I accidentally press hard-kick, the game resets.
And the screen still rolls.
So I go hunting for the crappy JAMMA adaptor I made in Japan out of spare parts. Another hour gone as I locate the power supply, harness and joystick.
It’s midnight, and I’ve gotta work in the morning. I still haven’t played anything for more than 2 minutes. Screw this, I’m going to bed.
Emulation’s looking better all the time.
--NFG
[ Oct 26 2006 ]
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