IGS Launches PGM3 Hardware

Among fans of unique arcade-specific hardware, some despair over the trend where most game companies these days find it easier and more economical to use PC machine builds tied to some sort of specialized I/O board. But there are still a few companies that builds something completely different from the ground up, one of those few would be IGS which is based out of Taiwan. They have been behind some games we have seen recently such as Speed Driver 4 or Power Truck. A few years back they released their PGM2 hardware which was used for a small number of 2D games the company made, one of them I decided to get for my own arcade, Oriental Legend 2. I had hoped that more content was going to find its way to the board but it certainly was not the second coming of the NeoGeo MVS by any means. Still, it wasn’t bad hardware and the 2D games released for it looked good even though they were not HD games by how that is defined. It is too bad really that the PGM2 didn’t catch fire but whatever becomes the next MVS will most likely be some sort of online download system, like NESiCA or ALL.NET+ Multi. Or who knows, perhaps this will get more support:

This is IGS’ new PGM3 hardware that has just recently come to the market. So far it appears that they only have one game for it, Knights of Valour 3 HD, KOV3 being a beat ’em up title in the vein that IGS likes to do(a BrawleRPG or BRPG). As hinted at by the game name, the PGM3 is meant to push HD in some fashion and there are pictures to be found on the Arcade Otaku Forum that shows some close up pics of the board, where it includes outputs for either VGA or DVI. While the hardware has been designed with LCDs in mind, it also has connectors for JAMMA and even ports for JVS I/O. I also find the LAN port interesting as perhaps there could be an online component with it as well (or it could just be for local connections as its name suggests). The white connector on the left looks to be the same as I have seen inside of NAOMI cabinets.

Excellent Arcade Online Shop has these for sale with KOV3HD at $990 currently (Chinese language software however), we will have to wait and see if IGS will support it with more software than they did with PGM2. Since it has been designed for the LCD cabinets out there I would say that is more likely, although I’m sure releases will be localized to various Asian territories as opposed to Western ones but at the very least those who like to import have something to look forward to.

[Via Arcade Otaku]

Update: This is supposed to be a video of KOV3HD running on PGM3. Not the best example I suppose but better than nothing. The game is very much like Oriental Legend 2 from what I see here, better graphics of course and I’m sure there are a few other features that set it apart in its own way.