Supergun

From GamerWiki

What is a Supergun?

A Supergun, (sometimes referred to as a JAMMA test rig) allows you to run a wide selection of arcade PCB's with the aid of a SCART enabled television and a couple of gamepads or joysticks in the comfort of your own home.

The main uses of a Supergun is that it allows you to test out your arcade boards before you lock them away at the back of your arcade cabinet, but as it's on average only the same size as your standard run-of-the-mill games console it takes up a darn sight less room than a full-size cabinet!

Can I Run ALL Arcade Games on a Supergun?

The Supergun enables you to play any boards conforming to the JAMMA (Japanese Arcade Machine Manufacturers Association) standard, or any board capable of being converted to JAMMA by means of an adapter loom. This covers you for a good 70% of all available games.

Examples of JAMMA boards include Rastan, Newzealand Story and Street Fighter 2. Boards that can be easily converted to the JAMMA standard include Galaga, Phoenix and Bombjack.

Of course, there are some boards that cannot be converted to JAMMA easily. Games like Defender and Pacman require extra circuitry to perform sync, video conversion, or modification to the PCB (Pacman needs this for power supply). It's not impossible, but this is definitely NOT recommended for beginners.

Lastly, there are VECTOR games that run on a different type of monitor to the normal games you're used to. These include Battlezone, Asteroids and Tempest. It is impossible to convert these to JAMMA due to the monitor requirements.

As JAMMA is pretty much the defacto standard nowadays, you can be sure that any decent PCB stockist will have an excellent selection of JAMMA board's for sale. Many collectors (and some dealers) offer a JAMMA adaptor-building service to enable boards like Galaga and Phoenix to be run on a JAMMA rig.