Watch and see us convert a space classic MOON CRESTA with a bad monitor to a new LCD Flat Panel Television! Watch our tech guru FRANK do all the work---while Todd Watches!
This was one of my favorite games at the arcades when I was a "younger man"! It was a real treat watching you guys bring this unit back to life. The LCD monitor seems to give the picture a nice new crisp look. On a side note, I spent a couple of years in Bucks County as a kid in the mid 70's in Langhorne. I would relish a trip to either Neshaminy mall or Oxford Valley mall where I would spend all day in Space Port Arcade. Man, you guys just brought back a ton of good memories!
The LCD replacement look so good, it always boggles my mind why some people are so against them. I get the desire to keep things "original", but when it fails, it's time to fix it to last. It's like you said, people with classic cars don't have the same oil in it that was in it when bought new 40-50 years ago when new
If you use MAME with HLSL shaders (or BGFX if you have a fast computer) you can recreate the look of a CRT on an LCD. I use a HDTV monitor and that gives a very convincing effect, but with a 4k monitor and a fast computer you can get it even better.
I finally found the name of the game that i used to always play at Skateland when i was a kid. This was it!! Loved this game! Liked it way more than Galaga and Space Invaders!!
he says something about attention span on another game. is he sure he doesn't have ADD. I've got it and he reminds me of myself.. with the humor oh and chat too much X_X lol
I hate to see classic CRT games with an LCD installed but to be honest, this doesn't look too bad at all. The surrounding bezel supports the look well. Nice job.
Loved the video Todd, I'm doing a LED LCD IPS panel conversion as we speak, wast interesting to see how you mounted it, would live to show you pics of my conversion
Thanks for the video. I am working on my own project now and am getting an error message when I connect the monitor to the VGA adapter. The error message says "the current input timing is not supported by the monitor display" - any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
The cool thing about Moon Cresta is the docking sequence: Survive long enough and you can dock the first ship with the second and get three shots at once, at the cost of making your ship that much bigger. Survive long enough again and you can dock all three sections for five-shot power. The game had a great little home conversion to the ZX Spectrum which was a great little UK, z80 based home computer, so it's one I remember actually playing a lot of.
Pretty neat job of getting this one going again. Would have been nice restore job to do the whole thing if the customer wanted to do it. I never saw the original version when this first came out but I was played "space eggs" on the Apple II which was very similar.
Hi Todd, What did frank have to do to the sync line ? I have one of those converter boards in a Jamma cabinet here, but some games just wont show a picture. I know they work as I test them on a normal arcade monitor, 2 of the games are Pleiades & Jump Bug. Its got to be a sync issue doesn't it ?
simon spencer There were lots of cocktail table arcade games made on many games between 1979 and 1982...and then most production stopped forever on them!
TNT Amusements Inc Yeah .. im in the uk and ive wondered about getting and old cabinet or table myself.. moon cresta would be nice .. karate champ would be top of my list too ;)
Hello I was wondering if you could help? i have a Prototrac cnc control and the crt went bad. i want to replace it with an lcd monitor. the problem i am facing is I have a Lcd monitor out of a minivan. it has a Ps/2 connector and the old CRT has a flat 10 pin edge connector. is there a way i can interface the 2.
Question. I have a Gremlin Depthcharge with the original 1978 TM-600 monitor.Well, it finally went out. Thinking of doing a LCD conversion. I have a Dell monitor and am going to get a converter board.Will it work on this machine? There are only 4 wires going from the board to the monitor. Cant be too difficult.Let me know what you think.Thanks, Rob.
I need some help guys. I have a 1995 indy 500, I bought one of those lcd converter boards but am clueless how to hook it to the machine there are so many boards and wires I'm not positive which one/ones I should be looking at to splice in to. And can find no details that help on the net. I'm not going to touch it till I'm 100% positive. Any pointers??? Thanks.
Well I figured this out after much research and some minor trial and error. I got the best results when I tapped into the 12v power strip and hooked directly in to the RGB connection on the cpu.
OK, so does this mean that if we have a dead monitor on an arcade machine, we can use one of those $30 CGA to VGA adapter boards and just install a computer LCD screen ?
Yes you can....BUT, remember the picture will look different somewhat....the purist may not be happy...all of my games in my collection (almost 100 of them,) have tubes. Todd
My favorit Arcade game ..today 2021 restoration classics cabinets games world for Saloons and associations and in Spain 2 second great more Saloon Arcade Europa .
I have been trying to put a LCD into a Chase HQ game. I bought the vga converter and hooked it up, but I have been unable to get a picture. Anyone have any ideas on what I am doing wrong?
The converter works in other games just not the Chase H.Q. Is this because it is a Taito game? I noticed that the chassis on the original monitor is a bit different.
Amazing video TNT!! I played it in 1981/1982 in Mar del Plata Argentina. But l remeber it has an extra button that saya " warp" Whe never Knew what it was for. We push button and the space ship went crazy and dissapeared. Am l having good memory or Am l confused with another space ship game? Hope u can answer me!!
This was "Stellar Ranger" in the 7/11 on the way to school.I had assumed it was a bootleg, but doing research just now I see the October 11, 1980 Cashbox says some company called Hoei licensed it to Sega!
***** The monitors we use remain in the state they were in if power cuts off...so if we turn them on and then the unit is unplugged, they will turn back on by themselves!
A classic arcade game on a new fresh LCD screen. How cool is that! Arcade games in a new dimension. Todd, can you tell me if a Arcade video cabinet with LCD can be converted to 220V? and... Do you ship to the Netherlands? Actually I'm searching for a Arcade with many memory's for me: The Donkey Kong.
yes...everyone is happy...I thought of course, to just fill a truck up with stuff as we gather it and do it ourselves...but this way we keep the place less cluttered!
Not that I am aware of....but, it would really defeat the whole purpose---as half the beauty of a vector game is the incredibly bright sharp picture that ONLY a vector monitor can produce!
TNT Amusements Inc Vector monitors have incredibly sharp pictures, but does the color ever fade on a vector monitor, like Gyruss, or does the white ever fade on an Asteroids?
The older game boards have completely different pinouts for the most part....so we wait until we have that game in our shop and then test all the spare boards we have of that particular game!
TNT Amusements Inc Back in early 80's I lived in Greece and there was an enforced law that basically said if a cabinet has a lever (joystick), buttons and accepted money it was considered a gambling machine. So it was illegal to play arcade games if you were a minor (I was 12) Ofcourse arcade shops and restaurants took the risk of being fined vs allowing kids to play their games for the profits. We had to be very carefull when playing games nervously watching our backs for police officers doing an age check. So as kids we had a system, we all would take turns keeping watch, sacrificing our game time :). So one day I was playing Moon Cresta at another location where I was not familiar with the kids, and was really engrossed in the game and was doing awesome, I had high Score, I had all 3 ships stacked and was untouchable. I get a tap on the shoulder and this man asks me to step outside, so I look around and noticed the place has been cleared no kids nobody. I look back at the man notice its a police officer...my heart sank...now I'm in trouble. So I was escorted outside in a line up of around 30-35 kids, at this point you can imagine was sweating bricks and could only imagine the kind of trouble I was going to get from my parents. So in the midst of the chaos and police officers collecting information from the kids as to where they lived etc... I used it as my opportunity and snack in a back ally and got away. I never went back to that arcade or any other. So you can imagine my amazement when we moved to North America and the ability to play Arcade games and not worry about being arrested. Believe it or not, this law was still in place and was only recently (5 years ago or so) removed from the law books. I would hope it was not being enforced in the 90's.
Moon Cresta and Astro Fighter; two great Sega/Gremlin classics.
Thats right! I have both an Astro Fighter Super Mini (You Tube video up) and an Astro Fighter Trimline---both games are super, super rare!
Moon Cresta was my favorite arcade game of the 80s
This was one of my favorite games at the arcades when I was a "younger man"! It was a real treat watching you guys bring this unit back to life. The LCD monitor seems to give the picture a nice new crisp look. On a side note, I spent a couple of years in Bucks County as a kid in the mid 70's in Langhorne. I would relish a trip to either Neshaminy mall or Oxford Valley mall where I would spend all day in Space Port Arcade. Man, you guys just brought back a ton of good memories!
Yes...I remember those arcades!! There is still a small one in Neshaminy Mall!
This version is very special, based in the Centuri or the japanese Nichibutsu versions
The panel and the bezels look cool too!
The LCD replacement look so good, it always boggles my mind why some people are so against them. I get the desire to keep things "original", but when it fails, it's time to fix it to last. It's like you said, people with classic cars don't have the same oil in it that was in it when bought new 40-50 years ago when new
Well, we do try to keep original as much as possible...but the LCD are coming fast...and the tubes are dying...thats no doubt.
Ed N display lag
LCD has motion blur that bugs the hell out of me.
If you use MAME with HLSL shaders (or BGFX if you have a fast computer) you can recreate the look of a CRT on an LCD. I use a HDTV monitor and that gives a very convincing effect, but with a 4k monitor and a fast computer you can get it even better.
I finally found the name of the game that i used to always play at Skateland when i was a kid. This was it!! Loved this game! Liked it way more than Galaga and Space Invaders!!
Now you know!
Always thought Moon Cresta was a Nichibutsu game. Learn something new everyday, thanks TNT!
Sega licensed it from them!
TNT never ceases to amaze. Your antics too todd. Lol
he says something about attention span on another game. is he sure he doesn't have ADD. I've got it and he reminds me of myself.. with the humor oh and chat too much X_X lol
Brilliant, I can only add "FAR OUT !!"
I hate to see classic CRT games with an LCD installed but to be honest, this doesn't look too bad at all.
The surrounding bezel supports the look well. Nice job.
A supper club had this game in the cocktail table style back in the mid 80s
Loved the video Todd, I'm doing a LED LCD IPS panel conversion as we speak, wast interesting to see how you mounted it, would live to show you pics of my conversion
Arcade Obsessed We use the plate thats on the stand and remove it (stand gets thrown away).
Thanks for the video. I am working on my own project now and am getting an error message when I connect the monitor to the VGA adapter. The error message says "the current input timing is not supported by the monitor display" - any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
That looks amazing..Great Info..
Thanks!
The cool thing about Moon Cresta is the docking sequence: Survive long enough and you can dock the first ship with the second and get three shots at once, at the cost of making your ship that much bigger. Survive long enough again and you can dock all three sections for five-shot power.
The game had a great little home conversion to the ZX Spectrum which was a great little UK, z80 based home computer, so it's one I remember actually playing a lot of.
+TheTurnipKing Thanks for the trivia!!
Pretty neat job of getting this one going again. Would have been nice restore job to do the whole thing if the customer wanted to do it. I never saw the original version when this first came out but I was played "space eggs" on the Apple II which was very similar.
Yes...he didn;t want to spend the extra $$$ yet...but he says maybe he will next year!
So did the lcd give a 120 hz on it
Hey great video I have an old cocktail table missile command do those conversion kits I see online work for it? Thanks for your time
Yes...they do work well!
+TNT Amusement Inc I remember playing Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball lots of times back in my high school days. I loved it then, love it now.
Yes....still very popular!
Hi Todd, What did frank have to do to the sync line ?
I have one of those converter boards in a Jamma cabinet here, but some games just wont show a picture.
I know they work as I test them on a normal arcade monitor, 2 of the games are Pleiades & Jump Bug.
Its got to be a sync issue doesn't it ?
You have to play with the sync...until you find the combination that works...its a real pain in the a...
I played that game in the past at Malibu Grand Prix
I remember that game. It's not bad
I used to play one in the cocktail tables at a bar a long time ago ..great game ..
simon spencer There were lots of cocktail table arcade games made on many games between 1979 and 1982...and then most production stopped forever on them!
TNT Amusements Inc Yeah .. im in the uk and ive wondered about getting and old cabinet or table myself.. moon cresta would be nice .. karate champ would be top of my list too ;)
Hello I was wondering if you could help? i have a Prototrac cnc control and the crt went bad. i want to replace it with an lcd monitor. the problem i am facing is I have a Lcd monitor out of a minivan. it has a Ps/2 connector and the old CRT has a flat 10 pin edge connector. is there a way i can interface the 2.
Fabric8r You can buy a circuit board that will change the signal! From Holland Computers.
Question. I have a Gremlin Depthcharge with the original 1978 TM-600 monitor.Well, it finally went out. Thinking of doing a LCD conversion. I have a Dell monitor and am going to get a converter board.Will it work on this machine? There are only 4 wires going from the board to the monitor. Cant be too difficult.Let me know what you think.Thanks, Rob.
+robbs Haven't tried a B&W game to LCD yet...but color picture tube monitor to LCD was easy
Depthcharge - WOW! The first videogame that I rememberi seeing (I must have been about 7 years old)
I need some help guys. I have a 1995 indy 500, I bought one of those lcd converter boards but am clueless how to hook it to the machine there are so many boards and wires I'm not positive which one/ones I should be looking at to splice in to. And can find no details that help on the net. I'm not going to touch it till I'm 100% positive. Any pointers??? Thanks.
Mundster Mundy Is there anyone out there that can steer this man in the right direction?
Well I figured this out after much research and some minor trial and error. I got the best results when I tapped into the 12v power strip and hooked directly in to the RGB connection on the cpu.
OK, so does this mean that if we have a dead monitor on an arcade machine, we can use one of those $30 CGA to VGA adapter boards and just install a computer LCD screen ?
Yes you can....BUT, remember the picture will look different somewhat....the purist may not be happy...all of my games in my collection (almost 100 of them,) have tubes. Todd
My favorit Arcade game ..today 2021 restoration classics cabinets games world for Saloons and associations and in Spain 2 second great more Saloon Arcade Europa .
I have been trying to put a LCD into a Chase HQ game. I bought the vga converter and hooked it up, but I have been unable to get a picture. Anyone have any ideas on what I am doing wrong?
It seems like one out of three of those shitty boards does not work...you may need to experiment with another
The converter works in other games just not the Chase H.Q. Is this because it is a Taito game? I noticed that the chassis on the original monitor is a bit different.
Amazing video TNT!!
I played it in 1981/1982 in Mar del Plata Argentina. But l remeber it has an extra button that saya " warp"
Whe never Knew what it was for. We push button and the space ship went crazy and dissapeared.
Am l having good memory or Am l confused with another space ship game?
Hope u can answer me!!
Thanks...not sure about what that game could be. Look here and see if you can find it www.klov.com. There may be variants listee
This was "Stellar Ranger" in the 7/11 on the way to school.I had assumed it was a bootleg, but doing research just now I see the October 11, 1980 Cashbox says some company called Hoei licensed it to Sega!
Very few imported or released....
Moon Cresta was a pretty common to find game in table versions in UK pubs back in the day.
Yes...this was big in the European market!
I have a 19" ORION that I just swapped out for a flat screen if your interested ?
thanks for the ofer...we have plenty of monitors!!
how does the monitor turn on when you cut the cabinet on ?
***** The monitors we use remain in the state they were in if power cuts off...so if we turn them on and then the unit is unplugged, they will turn back on by themselves!
what brand lcd is it you used?
***** Dell!
dude you got a dell!!!
Can Donkey Kong be hooked up to a lcd with this same converter?
Donkey Konh has a color inversion issue...the old monitor had the parts built into it already...it may be hard.
A classic arcade game on a new fresh LCD screen. How cool is that! Arcade games in a new dimension. Todd, can you tell me if a Arcade video cabinet with LCD can be converted to 220V? and... Do you ship to the Netherlands? Actually I'm searching for a Arcade with many memory's for me: The Donkey Kong.
+Marco V Its simple to convert any game to 220 volts...we install on bottom a power converter...so it then will plug into 220, 230 or 240 volts! Todd
When was this monitor produced?
NicholasAE35 I do not know...this was filmed almost 2 years ago.
Did you manage to hack some sort of scanlines on it? Or is that not possible
The picture tube, when adjusted right, will not show scan lines either!!! :-)
Ah Ok thnx I didn't know that
I think it's great that you put your old hardware out for people to recycle. Plus, you don't have to pay for the dump charge.
yes...everyone is happy...I thought of course, to just fill a truck up with stuff as we gather it and do it ourselves...but this way we keep the place less cluttered!
It actually plays a lot like Galaxian
The PCB / Logic board is the same as a Galaxian but with larger ROMs for the game and graphics.
The game has identicle sound hardware.
how much does a conversion like this cost
+jay stanley We charged $400 for this!
Can you put an LCD in an Asteroids
Not that I am aware of....but, it would really defeat the whole purpose---as half the beauty of a vector game is the incredibly bright sharp picture that ONLY a vector monitor can produce!
TNT Amusements Inc Vector monitors have incredibly sharp pictures, but does the color ever fade on a vector monitor, like Gyruss, or does the white ever fade on an Asteroids?
Could you blind test game boards and gase what games they belong to?
The older game boards have completely different pinouts for the most part....so we wait until we have that game in our shop and then test all the spare boards we have of that particular game!
i have same dell mointor i got it for free from cousins boyfriend who upgraded to led back lit benq lcd monitor
I almost went to jail because of Moon Cresta ;) interesting story :)
You have us in suspense now...tell us!
TNT Amusements Inc
Back in early 80's I lived in Greece and there was an enforced law that basically said if a cabinet has a lever (joystick), buttons and accepted money it was considered a gambling machine. So it was illegal to play arcade games if you were a minor (I was 12) Ofcourse arcade shops and restaurants took the risk of being fined vs allowing kids to play their games for the profits. We had to be very carefull when playing games nervously watching our backs for police officers doing an age check. So as kids we had a system, we all would take turns keeping watch, sacrificing our game time :). So one day I was playing Moon Cresta at another location where I was not familiar with the kids, and was really engrossed in the game and was doing awesome, I had high Score, I had all 3 ships stacked and was untouchable. I get a tap on the shoulder and this man asks me to step outside, so I look around and noticed the place has been cleared no kids nobody. I look back at the man notice its a police officer...my heart sank...now I'm in trouble. So I was escorted outside in a line up of around 30-35 kids, at this point you can imagine was sweating bricks and could only imagine the kind of trouble I was going to get from my parents. So in the midst of the chaos and police officers collecting information from the kids as to where they lived etc... I used it as my opportunity and snack in a back ally and got away. I never went back to that arcade or any other. So you can imagine my amazement when we moved to North America and the ability to play Arcade games and not worry about being arrested.
Believe it or not, this law was still in place and was only recently (5 years ago or so) removed from the law books. I would hope it was not being enforced in the 90's.
AnalogX64 Unbelievable! But your love of video games was certainly there--willing to risk everything to play Moon Cresta!!! What a great story!
It is like a galaxian. It used galaxian hardware
yes...same board almost
You can recycle the monitors or you can have a little fun and drop it glass down from the roof of your building. Takes anger out of everything.
Ka----B O O M !
Ya. That would be awesome.
*****
Hey, I never said you couldn't recycle it after pushing it off a roof. ;)
RCHobbyReviews
know plenty of AR-15 folks who'd love to blow one up. alas they'll have to settle for HP Printers :D
now, now, now!