[coin-operated jazz tunes play] [keyboard typing]
[computer buzzes, beeps]
Greetings folks, and today on LGR let’s check out this enormous example of excellence.
Yeah I got a new arcade machine!
One of my absolute top-three favorite arcade games: Raiden II.
Or RYE-den II, actually, but we always called it Raiden growing up
and old habits die hard, but yeah.
Raiden 2 from 1993 by Seibu Kaihatsu, one of my all-time favorite shooters, and an arcade
cabinet I’ve dreamed of owning ever since I was about 8 years old.
Yeah this is one of those cabinets where I always told myself if I ever got the chance
to get one in half-decent shape at an acceptable price, then it would be mine.
And several months ago, after I knew I was moving to a bigger space, I began looking
for a suitable cabinet for shmups like Raiden 2, either an original one or one I could convert.
And this is what I ended up with, which is actually a classic cabinet on its own:
a Dynamo HS-5.
From what I gather, these were manufactured for around a decade,
from the end of the 80s towards the end of the 90s.
And Dynamo sold them either as a standalone cabinet,
where you could put any game you want in there.
Or they also took video game publishing contracts where they’d produce a specific cabinet
using the HS-9 design.
With one of the most well-known examples being Street Fighter II Champion Edition, which
was often built into a Dynamo HS-5, at least for a while.
Street Fighter II was installed into many other cabs over the years, both by Capcom
and by arcade operators themselves.
But the cut-corner Dynamo is iconic, so much so that I’ve actually got
a 1/6 scale replica right here.
Yeah this is one of those nifty Replicades by New Wave Toys, they actually sent me this
one a while back and I’ve gone on to buy the uh...
entire rest of the range, I’m addicted to these things.
Anyway, I love that they went with a Dynamo HS-5 design since, hey!
Now that I’ve got a real one you can see how close
it “replicades” a full-size cabinet.
But yeah, the real one is my current project and I am psyched to get this thing fixed up
over the coming weeks, months.
However long it takes for me to get all the parts, repairs, and upgrades that I want.
So I won’t be doing it all today since I simply haven’t sourced everything yet.
But I wanted to go over what I have fixed up, what I plan to do later, and show you
the ins and outs of the machine itself.
Cuz this thing is awesome, and I’m extremely excited to have it.
I’m also doing this because uh, well!
My house currently looks like this as I’m recording this voiceover, since my old 1970s
popcorn ceilings are being removed and walls are being repainted and all kinds of stuff.
It’s a right mess.
It’ll all be done soon I hope, but for now one of the areas I *do* have access to
is my arcade wall.
And yep, I still have the Missile Command cabaret from 1980 too here as well.
Still working great, check out my videos on the customization and upgrades I did
on that thing if you’re curious.
Although now it looks absolutely tiny compared to the HS-5.
Annnnd now I wish I had a full-sized Missile Command instead, but I digress.
The Dynamo HS-5 machine here, yeah, it’s a beast.
It stands nearly two meters tall at 6 foot 2 inches, with its leveling feet installed,
and weighs roughly 380 pounds.
Which, yeah, this was not an easy thing to get inside,
and thank goodness I had some solid help.
My Missile Command I can just about handle with a dolly on my own,
but the HS-5, no way man!
Like getting it off the truck and through the front door was doable enough, but then
we had to get it upstairs.
And I don’t have many stairs thankfully, but the cramped entryway and stairway made
it a huge pain to maneuver in since the machine’s almost exactly as wide as the stairs.
Eventually we made it up though and plopped it right down in the corner, where it’s
pretty much taken up permanent residence.
I did add some furniture sliders on bottom so I can swish it back and forth and rotate
it to work on things, but yeah, I’ve no desire to move it farther anytime soon.
My plan is to have three, maybe four arcade machines lining this wall eventually, since
I have a bunch of arcade game PCBs I wanna swap out and play in different setups.
Like sure, I can play them on their own using a supergun, which I do, I’ve done a video
on that before if you’re interested.
But I really want a dedicated cabinet for both horizontal
and vertical-oriented arcade games.
And the latter is where this Raiden-configured Dynamo HS-5 comes in.
Now, you can rotate the Wells Gardner CRT assembly
over to horizontal from tate mode here.
It’s purpose-built to do that without much hassle, but I’d rather have a dedicated
machine for each orientation.
Heck I’d be happy with another HS-5 if I can find one, because these things are fantastic,
better than I even thought!
Like look how easy this is to get into, you simply reach up through the coin door, pull
a latch to pop open the control panel, and now you have access to the inputs
and main monitor adjustments.
Plus this drawer unlocks and slides out, revealing a big old tray for PCBs, so it’s extremely
easy to adjust settings and swap arcade boards since the JAMMA harness connects right here.
Not only that, but the steel control panel is ready to drop in all manner of joysticks
and buttons, with up to 6 inputs per player, plus two start buttons,
all pre-drilled into the panel.
Only thing needed is to cut the vinyl on top
and reconfigure your buttons as desired, it’s awesome.
And that’s only scratching the surface, there are so many nice touches here that make
this thing a pleasure to work on, troubleshoot, upgrade, and generally fart around with and
have fun learning the ins and outs of early 90s arcade machines.
And practically everything in here is a standard part that’s either still made today or it’s
common enough that you can still find new old stock or lightly used parts without much
hassle, it’s just a solid base to work off of.
[Raiden II gameplay plays ]
And on that note – yes, this was originally based on and configured as
a Viper Phase 1 machine.
Which you can tell from this nifty little paper around back indicating how it was first
put together back in 1995.
But the whole idea of the HS-5, and the rest of Dynamo’s “Benchmark Series” from
the late 80s and into the 90s, is that they were highly customizable platforms ready to
accept just about any arcade game whatsoever.
Vertical shooter, horizontal beat-em-ups, light gun shooters, upright racing games,
trackball games, spinner games, whatever man.
It’s basically a beefy wooden box with a monitor, speakers, and a power supply, and
it’s up to you to customize the control panel and artwork, and supply an arcade board.
So whether you were a game company like Capcom or an independent arcade owner named Craig,
you could commission a cabinet from Dynamo and have it configured just how you like,
or order a barebones cab and put it together yourself.
So really, that’s kinda how I’m treating this one, and why I don’t feel too bad undoing
its original Viper Phase 1 setup.
Cuz yeah, that is a great game too that I will absolutely be playing in here, but any
modifications that I do to this are really reversible and surface-level, and aren’t
ruining an original custom machine.
Yeah I’d consider it a sin to gut like, an original 1980s cabinet that had its own
unique design, control panel, and illustrations.
That’d be like defacing a piece of art.
Whereas in my mind, this is more like taking someone’s old PC from the 90s and swapping
some of the parts to make it more to my own liking while keeping the original intent intact.
The biggest reason I bought this is in particular is because it’s really more of an all-around
Fabtek machine, the company responsible for distributing many of Seibu Kaihatsu’s arcade
titles in the US back in the day, including Viper Phase 1, Raiden 2, and many others.
And it’s exactly the type of machine that I remember playing and first fell in love
with back in the 90s as a kid, with a Fabtek-emblazoned Raiden 2 machine very much like this
at the local skating rink.
I don’t recall if it was an HS-5, or if it was one of these kinds of cabinets perhaps.
Or something else entirely, who knows.
Raiden 2 was very often sold as a kit and just installed in whatever the heck the arcade
owner had lying around not making money.
Then you could easily convert an older arcade game to a newer game with much less investment
than buying an all-new cabinet.
And since these use a standard JAMMA harness and connection inside, it really is as easy
as unplugging one game, and plugging in another one.
With few exceptions, that one edge connector handles it all, from power, to video, to sound,
to controls, to coin slots and so on.
Meaning that with this one cabinet I can now easily swap out and play a whole slew of vertical
arcade games, from the entire Raiden series and its spin-offs, to classics like 1942 and
Finalizer using a JAMMA converter, to shady Chinese bootlegs,
all-in-one boards, and Pandora’s boxes and stuff.
I also wanna dive into more modern options like the MisterCade, ArcadeSD, Ultimarc J-PAC,
and various Pi-Cade options.
But that’s all way off into the future. My core goal here really is just Raiden 2.
Seriously, that’s it!
I simply want a solid Fabtek Raiden 2 cabinet like I remember from childhood.
And luckily I was like, 70% there just as it came!
Viper Phase 1 already had the Fabtek artwork, and being that it was a Seibu shooter that’s
a Raiden spin-off, the control panel layout was already correct.
With a quick swap of the marquee up top, that basically did the trick
in terms of making it look legit.
There’s also this control overlay that goes on the monitor bezel somewhere,
usually below the screen.
But it doesn’t really make sense on the Dynamo HS-5 since it has this lip that covers
up almost half of it.
And in the original Viper Phase 1 kit, the controls were printed
directly onto the surrounding bezel, so.
Yeah.
What I plan on doing is getting another bezel entirely that looks the same just without
the Viper controls printed on it, or maybe go with a generic Fabtek bezel instead.
And then I can just plop the appropriate control sheet on there wherever,
and swap it out with other games as needed.
I dunno, I haven’t decided yet.
One thing I *have* decided is to re-do every one of the inputs.
This thing saw countless hours of use and abuse in a midwest arcade from 1995 to 2011
or so, resulting in a tired, worn-out machine all over.
I knew from the seller before I bought it that the joysticks barely worked, and yeah,
it was all awful.
A friend and I tested it out when I first got it home, finding that not only were the
joysticks awful, but every one of the buttons were sticky, mismatched, and unreliable.
Which is fine, since I already had a pile of parts from a previous arcade build that
I’d planned on making into a video years ago but never finished.
Anyway, my first inclination was to use these Sanwa sticks since I love the way they feel
and I like the option of restrictor gates.
But the size and connection isn’t perfectly suited to this HS-5 cabinet,
not without some modding.
So instead I went with some of these that I had on-hand, these classic Happ Competition-style
sticks and buttons that the HS-5 was designed to use.
I know there’s a mixture of Industrias Lorenzo and Suzo Happ parts in here, I don’t recall
what’s what since it’s been so long since I bought most of this.
And I do know I’ll be using these 75 gram Cherry microswitches for all the buttons.
Nice and clicky.
[click click clickety click]
And yeah, if you’ve never done this, it really isn’t as complicated as it may appear.
Every switch has a connection for input and ground, so it’s simply a matter of unscrewing
the old crap and plugging in the new crap in same spots and hooking it back up.
I did label the wires to make a quicker job of keeping track of everything, but that’s
just for convenience of not having to look it up later.
Also, while I was at it I went ahead and removed all the bolts from the plexiglass overlay,
which was super nasty when I got it and either needed replacing or removing entirely.
I’ve opted to just leave it off for now,
as I’m not the biggest fan of plexi on my control panels.
The vinyl Fabtek overlay itself may be something I’ll replace in the future if I can find
one that looks correct with the right darker gray logos on it.
Though I really don’t mind the worn out patina here, in fact I kinda like it.
Oh and I’m also mounting the joystick dust covers under the panel instead of on top.
It still does it job of keeping crap out, just it’s underneath instead of up above.
Simply an aesthetic choice, I dunno, it’s easy to change later if I don’t like it.
And there we go!
A quick I/O test reveals everything is hooked up properly and working great.
Ahh man, this really does feel like a new machine.
At least to the hands.
To the eyes, eh not so much, that CRT in there is just as worn and tired as the rest of it.
Impressively no burn-in and the image is actually rather sharp, but the brightness and contrast
are low and the color is iffy, with the red in particular being the most off.
Getting inside to adjust the RGB and sharpness pots is easy enough, simply unscrew this wood
panel and everything is revealed.
Inside is a 25-inch monitor, I believe a K7000 if what I’ve looked up is correct.
But yeah, while adjustment helped a bit, no matter what things are simply a little off
in terms of color, brightness and so on.
A recap of the logic board and a new flyback would no doubt help, but I really would not
mind either a CRT rejuvenation or an all-new tube entirely.
None of which I have the option of doing at this exact moment in time, but it’s something
I fully plan on tackling in the future.
Still, even as it is in its well-loved state, this is an honest-to-goodness dream come true.
A real life Fabtek arcade cabinet running Raiden 2 in my house, ahh!
Yeah it’s just neat.
I still have a lot more I’ll be doing to fix this up, like the aforementioned monitor
and control panel work.
But also things like the coin door, I really love having that functional, and if nothing
else I want it lit up with new bulbs.
And the side panels, they’re kind of ugly, almost like they’ve been spray painted or
at the very least got worn down in random spots.
I’m not aware of Raiden 2 ever officially having side art, but I’ve seen some online
that might look nice, or maybe I’ll design my own Fabtek art, who knows.
All I know for sure is I cannot truly express
just how excited and childishly happy this thing makes me.
And I’m having a lot of fun just messing around with it as it is!
And like I’ve said a few times now, Raiden II is just
one of my favorite all-time arcade games.
Favorite shooters, favorites of many different things.
Yeah I’ve put off reviewing this game simply because I wanted to either get access to a
machine or get one myself, so I could show the arcade original compared to ports like
the PC version and stuff like that.
But now that I finally have one, or I’m getting close to having one that’s complete,
I can do that stuff and just, ah man.
There’s a journey ahead and I hope that you stay tuned, because I do plan on doing
a follow-up to this once I get more things fixed up.
And if nothing else, yeah I hope that you enjoyed seeing what we’ve got going so far.
But yeah stick around for more videos, there’s always more stuff in the works at some point
here on LGR.
And as always, thank you for watching!