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NES in the Arcade |
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NES in the Arcade |
The NES was so popular in its prime, Nintendo decided to release several arcade systems, based on the NES hardware. There were three units released, that are known and identified anyway: Playchoice-10, Vs. Unisystem and Vs. Dualsystem. Many of us, including myself, have fond memories of playing these in arcades, bowling alleys, family fun centers, and so forth. The most common is the Playchoice-10, followed closely by the Vs. Unisystem. The Vs. Dualsystem was rather rare, I never saw one myself; like all video game rarity, however, it varies greatly by region. |
Playchoice/Playchoice-10 |
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 The Playchoice systems are, basically, a NES unit inside an
arcade cabinet. There is the Playchoice and the Playchoice-10, the first having one
available game, and the other having a choice of up to ten games. The Playchoice machines
come in two variants: one had a single monitor which displayed instructions for a game
then the game began, and one with two monitors, one on top of another, too display game
instructions continuously while the game was running (the former is a bit more common).
The Playchoice-10 machines only came in the two monior design I believe. Both worked the
same way: for each coin you put in, you got some much allotted time (the one I used to
play gave you 300 seconds per coin). On the Playchoice-10 units, you could select any game
and play it, and if you wanted, could end a game any time and select another, as long as
you had time left. On both units, you could insert a coin anytime to add more time, as
well. The time left to play had nothing to do with how well you were doing in the game, it
was based soley on how much money you put into the machine. These units were neat for
trying games you never played before. But the big drawback was the cost, if you liked a game a
lot you had to keep feeding the machine quarters to keep playing and it got expensive (I
went through ten bucks to play and complete 1942, don't ask me why I felt compelled to do
that). Both the upright model above and a small tabletop model were released (very similar
to those tabletop games you find in many bars here in the US). Playchoice games came on small circuit board cards you plugged into the Playchoice main board. The Playchoice-10 board had 10 "sockets" you  could plug games into. I assume assume single game Playchoice units had one
socket, and that games were interchangable. The cost of these games back in the heyday of
these machines is unknown (at least to me). They obviously cost more than their NES
cartridge counterparts. Playchoice games vary somewhat from their NES counterparts, though they are nearly identical. I assume they contain some necessary code to run on the custom Playchoice hardware. A few may differ in other ways;  Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! board has a battery backed up memory, which keeps a record of the best knockout times. The battery type it uses (as many probably need to be replaced by now), is unknown. Thanks to NES World, |tsr's NES Archive, toot, Shaun Olson and the MAME team for the scans and info |
Click on the links below to see a PCB scan of the game 1942
Option Switch
Settings Document (scan) |
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VS. System (Unisystem/Dualsystem) |
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| The Vs. System
arcade machines are single unit game machines, with a modified version of the NES game the
game being modified into a real arcade game. These games are different from their NES or
Playchoice counterparts, in that the games are ported over into real arcade games, and
they play just like any other arcade games. And unlike the Playchoice games, there is no
timer that decides how long you play, in these games you play effects how long you can
play etc. Therefore, these games differ a fair amount from the original NES games (though
are still roughly the same in terms of the game itself). Each Vs. System machine had a
unique marquee on top for the game being run on it. The hardware inside is virtually
identical to a real NES, except with the addition of necessary arcade game hardware for
the coining up. Another unusal thing about the VS System games is the custom palettes
many games use, unlike NES and Playchoice games which all use the game color palette. Why
this was done is unknown (can someone explain this?) Otherwise, most of the hardware is
the same (controls, CPU, PPU, etc). The difference between the Unisystem and Dualsystem is one is a single player, standalone unit, the Dualsystem is, essencially, two arcade machines in one, networked together for head-to-head play. Whether they share the same guts inside is unknowm, as is much about these units. It is still unknown (can someone please let me know?) if the VS System machines are released outside the US. I am almost certain they were released in Japan (the VS Mahjong game almost certainly came out only in Japan). Some of these games are unknown to me (such as TKO Boxing), were these gamed on Famicom games, and were these only released in Japan? If anyone can give me more info, please do so. Thanks to NES World, |tsr's NES Archive, Shaun Olsen, toot and the MAME team for the info |
Balloon Fight
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