FRICTION Unboxing

Back in 2008 we broke a story about a new light-gun game in the works by newcomer Friction Game Studios. We’ve had chances to play the game at trade shows but now, I got my hands on a kit for my own arcade where I will be installing the game into a Tsunami Tsumo cabinet I’ve had occupying my back room for well over a year now since it broke down. the kit was released last month by Coast To Coast Entertainment for under $2000 and it’s already proven to be a versatile kit, going into just about any old CRT cabinet. I ordered mine last Friday and it arrived this morning. It’s always neat for me to add a game to my store that I’ve talked about on the site here for sometime – here is the unboxing of the Friction kit, where I’ll also show it going into the cabinet, hit the break for pics and details. you can also read many of our previous stories about this game here.

The box, just waiting to be opened

Packing materials and manuals. I have to say that I was impressed with this kits offerings in lieu of the Super Street fighter IV Arcade Edition kit I received earlier this week. Friction comes with everything you could possibly need, which is quite nice since you then don’t have to worry about ordering something else online or from a local store just to get the game working. That’s opposed to my SSFIVAE kit, which didn’t include a kick harness while requiring a not-so-common Sega kick harness and no restore CD.

The marquee

The PCB. The nice thing about the design here is they intend on allowing the operator to replace their parts for cheap if need be, without adding specialized BIOSes to the mix like some arcade companies do, which often forces the operator to spend several hundred dollars on a part that would otherwise cost ~$50.

One gun plus I/O board

Wire harnesses, restore DVD, I/O board. The DVD also includes other resources like artwork which you can have printed out for the right size of cabinet that you are using, which is a nice touch.

PC in the cabinet – not quite complete in how it is set as I added the I/O board afterwards but since I didn’t have any straps to organize the wires, I’ll have to post a pic of that later when it looks decent. For you tech junkies out there here are this PCs specs: Dual Core Intel CPU; 2GB of DDR3 RAM; nVidia GT210 video card w/ DDR3 512MB RAM for constant 60 FPS. There also are no special BIOSes in place so any comparable off-the-shelf PC component will work in the future, which will save a ton on repairs.

After this I spent some time drilling all of the necessary holes for the gun harnesses and holsters to fit into as well as the start button holes which weren’t included in this cabinet in the first place. The start buttons were made all the more difficult by the fact that I didn’t have the proper drill bit for it but eventually I managed it and it looks nice too. But with all the work I put into that I didn’t take pictures during the process. Then came moving the cabinet, which wasn’t too bad since it has wheels on the bottom but because it’s slightly large I had to remove the door from the storage room to move it out onto the floor and we had to move my broken 1942 cabinet from it’s place into the storage room.

The game’s current resting place, I placed it in a corner next to House of the Dead 4 and Strikers 1945 II(yes I know, that’s a 1942 marquee but it works for now). I guess I could plaster some artwork on the walls back there for good measure.

The cabinet. The sound on this game is incredible – at 15% of max it’s plenty loud for my place, we cranked it up to just 35% and couldn’t believe it how it pumped it out.

My brother giving the game a go for the first time