No I’m not pulling your leg here – contrary to what has been reported (or better said, not reported) in some circles, the latest version of the Street Fighter series, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition isn’t just a name slapped onto the game as marketing gimmick – there actually is a bonafide coin-operated arcade version of the game that Capcom has produced before they decided to release the content to home consoles. Japanese arcades and a few who imported the kit into the US were able to enjoy the game back in December 2010 but in January there was an announcement that a new version of that same game would be released in the United States and Europe – the Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Versus kit. What made this different is that previously, all Arcade kits for SFIV or SSFIV had to be linked together for multiplayer sessions. That meant that if an arcade operator wanted to have a proper two player setup, they had to buy two separate PCBs and provide two cabinets to house the game in. It’s a cool setup but the problem is that it’s also a very expensive one as well. Often you are looking at an easy $10k+ investment to put it all together. The Versus kit changes that by offering 2 players on one PCB, thus saving the operator money on the overall investment. It also was translated into English by Taito, who is officially handling distribution of the game in the United States. After I discovered the versus kit, I got on-board with ordering one for my own arcade as soon as I found out that they would be available in March. I placed my order in January with a promise that I would actually get it earlier than that, in February. On top of that I also am paying much more for this kit (which is just the Taito Type X2 game board, artwork, wiring harness, I/O board, etc.) than you typically pay for these kind of things – $8600 is what I was looking at for this. To give you an idea, the typical fighting game kit in Japan such as King of Fighters XIII or BlazBlue Continuum Shift are around $2000-$3000 new. Well it’s now April and after a much longer and more frustrating wait than I had expected, only now have I finally got my hands on this.
But enough explanation, let’s see what’s inside the kit below!
BIG THANKS TO ANDY, WADE, LYDON AND THE UTAH STREET FIGHTERS FOR ALL OF THE EFFORT THEY PUT INTO HELPING ME GET THIS UP AND GOING!
Here’s the box. Nothing too impressive yet.
Opening…
Some of the artwork
The Type X2 board in the packaging
The I/O board
The Taito Type X2 board
Another…
Setup in the cabinet
The game running in the cab
I’ll add a better pic of it being played a little later and probably do a video. We’re still ironing out a few bugs as they didn’t provide a kick harness for the machine and the connector required is something quite different from other kick harnesses, which is quite frustrating.
Just to be clear, you’re not plugging this into a JAMMA cabinet right?
Nice! Glad you have the kit in your game. We have ours up and running now too.
Dude.. thats a full-fledged COMPUTER you got there, not a “Board”
Congrats for getting the game!!!
You could use a Sega JVS I/O instead (as used in Naomi cabinets), it’s cheap and you don’t need a kick harness.
You probably know this but a Capcom JAMMA/JVS I/O and Capcom kick harness is the easiest button solution. It’ll also amplify mono audio over JAMMA if the cab doesn’t have a stereo amp.
All we have available at the moment is either the I/O board provided with the TypeX2 (which requires some sort of kick harness I’ve not seen before – if anyone knows what it is, please let me know) or a NAOMI I/O. We couldn’t get the kicks working with the provided IO board since they didn’t provide the harness so we’re using the Sega I/O for the time being.
BTW – If anyone also has the working unlock codes, that would be nice. We tried a couple of codes found online but they didn’t work.
UTSF is much in debt to you Arcadehero. You’re a true hero.
Who is Lydon?
He is the Mountain Coin sales guy who did the panel design and has helped out on a couple of tech issues.
The buttons should be fixed today and Evil Ryu unlocked too 🙂
The I/O board in the photos looks like a Sega V1. It’s crap. Uses a 14-pin JST connector for the kick harness.
Get a Capcom I/O as Pang suggested.
Alleged unlock codes (enter them in order):
Evil Ryu: SBDU8YWE
Oni: S2K7MB4Q
Those didn’t work. We got another code that starts with an M which we will try today, will let you know if it works.
I can tell that the Sega V1 is crap. It’s infuriating that they would include a crappy I/O board without everything you need. I really wonder what Capcom is smoking these days.
Did your code work? What is it?
Like Superpang said, get a Capcom I/O which has a CPS-2 kickharness connection and you will be good to go. I’ve seen a couple on ebay around 160 to 200 bucks.
Still can’t get over the price. For the same price you could buy like 15 PS3s and two 60 inch top of the line 3-D T.V.s
Or like twelve full computer setups with 24 inch monitors and a pretty good video card in each.
Yeah I’ve gone through numbers like that a few times in my head. If anyone has to wonder one of the biggest challenges to this industry, it’s internal practices like releasing AAA titles at much too high prices.
The art work and movelists for SSF4 look like they are in english.
Would it be possible for you to make some HIGH resolution scans of them?
I know the people of the shoryuken.com Tech Talk forum would LOVE to have something like that in a HIGH resolution scan to use for custom arcade cabinets in similar things (myself included).
Please email me if you can. I’d really appreciate any assistance you can give.
I’ve been looking for english scans for a while. I’ve only found japanese.
Thanks.
Yes everything for this kit is in English, I’ll see if I can get those scanned in sometime soon
That would be great.
Hopefully, you can help me out.
Any progress on possibly getting those scans of the artwork?
You don’t have to do it, but I’d like to know so I can try looking for another source.
I don’t want to come off as a nag either since I like your site.
Thanks.
No you are fine, I’ve been really busy but I will get to it this weekend 🙂
Cool.
That sounds awesome.
Im so excited. I’ve been looking around for something like that forever.
I’ve run into a little bit of trouble. The strips are too long for any scanner I have available. I am seeing about combining the images up.
WOW!! How long are they?
I use a 3 foot color high res scanner at my job. I don’t know what you have. Do you think a kinkos would allow you to do that? I don’t know how much that would cost. I’d be willing to pay for that. Be carefull, and make sure the scanner is clean so there are no streaks on the image and that you don’t get any streaks on your artwork. You spent alot as it is and I don’t know if you could get a replacement.
Let me know if you need anything? I might be able to help or give advice.
Hello arcadehero,
Did you ever get those art strips scanned? I actually have been looking for another resource but haven’t come up with anything. I tried reaching out to importers to see if they can sell just the artwork. It hasn’t worked yet. Do you think any of your contacts would have access to just the artwork? I’m asking because I know you are having difficulty scanning them. If only you had the scanner that I have here.
Let me know.
Thanks.
Steven R.
I have scanned them in as-is, I just need to combine the images together properly.
How badly disconnected are they? If anything I could probably put them together on my photoshop as a worst case scenario.
Thanks for helping me out. I appreciate it. I want to make sure to give you full credit for them if I get the file to be able to upload to shoryuken.com. A lot of people would love to have this file.
SAR
any way you could send me those scans i’ve been looking for good scans for awhile. thanks
Yeesh, $8600!? It’d be cheaper to wait until the Arcade Edition comes out on consoles and hack a 360 in there. And people wonder why arcades are either closing or not buying new titles, it’s because of the ridiculous pricing on these things! You’re looking at 17,200 plays just to make back an investment on this thing at 50c a pop and that’s 47 plays a day for a year… not too impossible for a busy location but places like around here where you’re lucky for a game to get 20 plays a day… ridiculous. Do these places realize that when they price the arcade kits so high, no arcade is going to be able to buy them!? Do they even care!? Either way, props for going for it for the players, even if it might take a while to pay for itself. I wish places within hours of here would do that for their customers… or at least get something that came out after 2001… -_-‘
I know what your saying. Ive been wanting to buy the ssf4ae english version for a while. I saw some things on arcade import sites but don’t know if I should trust them.
There is a certain feeling you get when you play on original hardware. It brings back nostalgia to the 80s and early 90s when you had the big buttons and joystick in front of you.
Even though ssfae isnt from the 80s its probably the best of both worlds in terms of getting that old school sf2 feeling with updated graphic.
If the price was closer to 6 grand or 5 grand i might have bit the bullet for just the kit. But, the economy isn’t getting any better.
If the price comes down in the near future I still might buy it.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I agree that nothing replicates the true arcade experience and I think the release looks great. I too love that “original feeling” which is why the ONLY version of Soul Calibur II I have is the arcade version, haha. I mainly mentioned the 360 because, if I recall, Chinatown or one of the other “big ones” in the biz did that, presumably because of the pricing. My only issue is that, for a game to be affordable for a collector or profitable for an OP, it has to be significantly less than what places like Capcom were charging. If I recall correctly, a full dedicated Donkey Kong machine cost $3000 back in the 80s, so with the way technology has cheapened and progressed, $8000 for a kit when the market, the economy and even the industry are at a low just seems to be hurting the market worse…
¡¡¡¡¡muy bueno!!!!! 🙂
hi i dont know if you could help me i recently purchased a full cab super street fighter 4
running on taitox2 just like urs everything is working perfectly but my problem is that its only working 1 player and not 2
i removed the taitox2 and put a neogeo mvs instead and the control r weird and working perfect for both player so is there a way to change
the setting in super street fighter 4 so it can play 2 player on one cab ??
thank you in advance
There are two versions of Super Street Fighter IV – the Japanese version which is 1 player per board or the “Versus” version which is two players for one cabinet. Sounds like you have the Japanese version. To get a second player, you need to get another board just like the one you have.
and i just noticed that my I/O board is bigger than urs and have a big volume switch in the corner
I just scored a system for $400. That depreciation.
Did you manage to find the kick pinout? We have the same i/o like in your pictures, its so hard to game without the kick buttons
Just hook up the kick harness and go into I/O test to determine what is what.