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Arcade Section

War: Final Assault Mods

Gauntlet Legends 2 War: Final Assault Conversion

Gaming Play Score: 9.6

War: Final Assault is just a great game and had the potential to be one of the best shooter games ever in the arcade scene, but unfortunately, the game did not get the attention and respect it should have deserved. Playing the game in single player mode is really cool and make lots of fun, but the real power of that machine will be unleashed when connecting 2 or up to 4 machines together to have on one hand great death match games and on the other hand playing together through all missions. Sounds great but there is surely a catch: Space ! Space is always a very precious commodity and everybody has to think about placing the same machine again into his room or maybe taking another one. We also were facing that question and found a nice solution: Since Gauntlet Dark Legacy is using the same hardware, we simply created a reversible conversion so that we can easily convert our Gauntlet Legends to War: Final Assault and back again, so we "killed several birds with one stone" as you can see in our presentation video.

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Here is another video demonstrating the conversion in action:

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The Gauntlet Legends 2 War: Final Assault conversion consists of the following components:

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1x CF Card with War: Final Assault

2x Eproms

2x Control Panel adapters

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Installation time: ca. 10 minutes

André Banderas

How to record Videos

These 3 components make a Vegas 777 board set and is used by many games. The first trap here is that we have to use a Vegas 777 CPU board because when using the Durango CPU board, we only get crap on our TV. Actually, we have no explanation for that but this is simply a fact which must be taken into account. Also be sure that you have set the DIP switch number 2 on the U12 DIP board to ON so that the board sends out a full VGA signal.

The next step is to get an HDMI upscaler which is responsible to receive our VGA signal and converts it to HDMI for a much better video quality. Looking at our tool box, we already had the HDMI Upscaler from XCM, which we are using for Segas Dreamcast. Since we had really great results with this device, we decided to give it a chance and what should I say: It´s perfect for our scenario, so let´s continue with the next step.

There are many game capture devices on the market and after lots of research, we have decided to take the AGPtek® Game Capture HD because it has the best price/performance ratio and we are pretty satisfied with the result. It is easy to use and you simply have to push the record button on the box to record. When finished, just press the record button again and you are done.

We wanted to have the sound directly from the Vegas I/O board and not taking in a complicated way the sound from the JAMMA port. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no documentation about the Vegas I/O board about the pins so we had to check the signal with our oscilloscope and finally found the pins which provides the music. Dominiks part was to create an audio cable with the proper plug which we then used to send the audio information directly into the HDMI blaster, but hey: no solution without a catch: The audio signal is VERY weak since it is not going through the amplifier, so after finish recording the video, we had to use Audacity to amplify the signal to a volume which can be used for a proper game play video.

A VGA-compatible monitor is a must to get the best video signal from the board. By default, there is only a medium-resolution monitor installed in the cabinet, so we removed this one and replaced it with a TV which has a VGA port. In our War cabs, we are using the Grundig Xentia MF 72-490 which produces a fantastic image and has a size of 29" in contrast to the original one, which only has 25". The conversion was really tricky because we had to modify the original spacer frame since the spaces of the wholes for the bigger monitor were on different positions, but Dominik also handled this challenge brilliantly. Please keep in mind, as described above, to set DIP switch number 2 on the U12 board to ON so that the board really sends out a VGA signal.

We need the VGA signal 2 times: One time for the HDMI blaster and one time for the monitor to see the actual game play. Also here are lots of different VGA splitters on the market and we decided to give this one a chance because it also had the most positive feedback from amazon customers.

War: Final Assault High Resolution Mod

Gaming Play Score:   9.9

By default, the War:Final Assault arcade machine is equipped with a 25 inch medium resolution monitor. Having a bigger and better monitor is always a cool thing, especially for this 3D battle machine, so we did a research for a monitor which could satisfy our high standards and finally found the Grundig Xentia 72-490 television. This TV has the following advantages:

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  1. Screen size of 29 inch

  2. Flat screen from outside and curved display inside which produces a pseudo 3D cinematic effect

  3. High Resolution of 640x480

  4. 100 Hz technology

  5. Full control over the complete monitor via remote control

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But just replacing the old monitor with the new one was a very big challenge and one of our toughest projects we ever realized because:

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  1. Monitor bracket

    We couldn´t use the original ones because they were simply not capable of taking the new weight of our new monitor, so Dominik created 4 new brackets.
     

  2. Monitor frame

    Since we are using a normal television which has nothing to do with arcade, Dominik created a new frame which fits perfectly for the new monitor.
     

  3. Bezel

    The original bezel couldn´t be used without any modification since it would hide parts of our bigger monitor, so Dominik cut the bezel in such a perfect way that its hard to say that it has been cut and we now see the full image.
     

  4. Bracket for the remote control receiver

    Finding the best place for the receiver and creating a suitable bracket for it was also not easy
     

 

The complete project took about 3 months and we can only highly recommend to do the same modification if:

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  1. You have this standard midway cabinet
     

  2. You have a game which is able to send a VGA signal to the monitor. In our case, we are using the Vegas 777 I/O board which we set via a DIP setting to VGA
     

  3. You have a good understanding of what you have to do to realize that project.

André Banderas

War: Final Assault Compendium

Gaming Play Score:   -.-

OK, I have to admit: I LOVE that game and nearly every day, we are having some nice death matches in our party room. To be honest, at the beginning I was really not sure if I should buy these cabs because I thought that they get very fast boring...the game in mission mode only take around 40 minutes and you are done. Then taking 2 same cabinets and wasting place for a new one ? But Dominik convinced me to take them and at the end, he was completely right. I never had so much fun with an arcade machine, especially when playing with up to 3 persons in a death match.

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OK, this game "catched" me and I wanted to get all kinds of information about it and started a research on the internet, but got a little bit disappointed since there is not a lot of information available. Then I got this crazy idea: "Why not just writing the former development team and conduct an interview with them ?"....the idea was born and got in contact with the most important persons. Fortunately, they didn´t kick my ass and after some e-mail traffic where I explained my idea and sending a video about us, our party room and of our 4 linked cabinets in the garage, they were convinced and answered all my questions.

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With the answers in hand, I started to work on a layout for the compendium and after 6 months of hard work, its finally finishend and the "War: Final Assault Compendium - Version 1.0" saw the light on earth !" :-) Actually, I am already working on version 1.2 where I am creating an addition section with all the levels and more pictures of the enemies and final bosses, so keep tuned ! :-)

 

André Banderas

Since we have 4 War:Final Assault arcade cabinets, we wanted to create a very nice game play video for demonstration purposes and to show the power and the potential of the game. Recording the game play is not an easy task and we had to do some preparation steps to realize that project. In this article, I would like to explain how we realized the recording so that everybody should be able to do the same thing. Please keep in mind that there are maybe other ways to do that but in this article, I will always reference to our test environment, which consists of the following components:

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1x Vegas Board Set
 

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1x HDMI Upscaler with VGA Input

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1x Game Capture Device

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1x Home-Made Audio Cable

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1x VGA monitor

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1x VGA splitter

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Cables

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Last but not least we need:

 

  • 2 VGA cables: One to connect the VGA splitter with the monitor and one to connect the VGA splitter with the HDMI Upscaler

  • Minimum one HDMI cable to connect the HDMI Upscaler with the Game Recording Device. If you would like to mirror the video to another TV, e.g. so that other people in the room can see the game event, then you need another HDMI cable to connect the Game Recording Device to the TV. 

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Hey, that´s it and we have created our game recording test environment ! :-)

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André Banderas

Gaming Play Score:   -.-
War - How to record videos
War - High Resolution Mod
War Compendium
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