Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Pandora's Box DX in your Street Fighter Arcade Cabinet - Is it Worth it?

RetroRalph·video·15m 15s·analyzed·Aug 11, 2021
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.020

TL;DR

Installing Pandora's Box emulation in Street Fighter arcade without modifying original cabinet.

Summary

RetroRalph demonstrates how to install a Pandora's Box DX emulation board into a Street Fighter arcade cabinet using a Chama-to-JAMMA adapter, allowing access to thousands of games while preserving the original cabinet hardware and controls. The video covers installation steps, resolution configuration for CRT monitors, interface features like save states and game search, and explains why this approach maintains arcade authenticity compared to heavily modified multi-cade cabinets.

Key Claims

  • Pandora's Box boards use Chinese JAMMA connectors (Chama), not standard JAMMA, requiring an adapter for compatibility with CPS-1/CPS-2 arcade systems

    high confidence · RetroRalph explains the technical difference between JAMMA and Chama pinouts and the need for Mike's Arcade adapter

  • Default Pandora's Box resolution is 1280x720, which won't work on CRT monitors; must hold rear button during power-up until yellow indicator appears to enable CRT compatibility

    high confidence · RetroRalph references Pandora's Box manual page 6 and demonstrates the resolution setting procedure

  • Street Fighter arcade cabinets with kick harnesses can maintain full six-button functionality when using Pandora's Box with Chama-to-JAMMA adapter

    high confidence · RetroRalph demonstrates the physical installation and confirms all buttons work with Street Fighter games

  • Pandora's Box includes save state functionality allowing players to pause mid-game and resume from that exact point later

    high confidence · RetroRalph demonstrates save and load state features accessed via player 1 start button

  • Street Fighter 2 had an official arcade release on Sega Megatech hardware (though the speaker initially misstates this, later clarifying it was Streets of Rage 2)

    medium confidence · RetroRalph mentions this tangentially while discussing console-to-arcade translations, then corrects himself

Notable Quotes

  • “I have become over time more of a purist and want to maintain the original look of the arcade games, the original feel of the arcade games, everything down to controls and buttons and all those things, the CRT monitor.”

    RetroRalph (Jon)@ 0:41 — Establishes the host's design philosophy favoring authenticity, providing context for why he finds this solution acceptable

  • “Because you're not altering the Street Fighter cabinet in any way. So you can easily return it right back to the original Street Fighter board.”

    RetroRalph (Jon)@ 6:37 — Core justification for supporting this approach—reversibility and non-destructive modification

  • “I'm not a big fan or a supporter of someone that just laughs or grins and throws their system together and makes it a multi-cade, you know, just hacking the control panel and putting, you know, trackballs and all sorts of nonsense like that.”

    RetroRalph (Jon)@ 10:16 — Contrasts purist preservation approach with heavily modified cabinets; clarifies standards for acceptable modification

  • “Not everything is going to work amazingly well on here. But it does give you access to a lot of games.”

    RetroRalph (Jon)@ 9:08 — Acknowledges emulation quality limitations while noting the practical benefit of game library access

  • “If you're going to do retro arcade gaming, you gotta do it on a CRT.”

    RetroRalph (Jon)@ 13:04 — Reiterates purist stance on authentic arcade experience via CRT technology

Entities

RetroRalphpersonPandora's BoxproductPandora's Box DXproductMike's ArcadecompanyStreet FightergameStreet Fighter Champion EditiongameCapcom CPS-1productCapcom CPS-2productThe Simpsonsgame

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Tension within arcade community between purists (original hardware/controls/CRT) and pragmatists (emulation, modification for space/access) regarding cabinet modification ethics

    high · RetroRalph explicitly addresses anticipated criticism, distinguishes between acceptable (non-destructive) and unacceptable (heavily modified multi-cade) modifications

  • $

    market_signal: Demand for reversible, non-destructive cabinet modifications suggests market segment with limited space seeking game library expansion without permanent alterations

    medium · RetroRalph specifically justifies this approach for space-constrained collectors; notes ability to quickly revert to original PCB

  • ?

    product_strategy: Save state and game search functionality on Pandora's Box address practical user needs (time constraints, game discovery) not present in original arcade experience

    high · RetroRalph demonstrates these features and emphasizes their value for casual players with limited play time

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pandora's Box emulation boards represent alternative to original arcade PCBs; increasing adoption in collector/operator spaces despite emulation quality concerns

    medium · RetroRalph acknowledges this is a growing trend requiring explanation and defense, suggesting market awareness

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.046

0:00
Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. So we have talked about the Pandora's Box before. Actually, one of my first videos ever on the channel was about the Pandora's Box. Now, the Pandora's Box comes in a lot of forms. They have sort of the tabletop one. It's two players. They have these boards which you can put in arcade cabinets. And they have like Pandora's Box bar tops. They have a lot of them and they come preloaded with a lot of games. And basically, this is an emulation box that you can hook up and it really you just power it on and it's plug and play for the most part. Once you wire it up and you have access to a bunch of games and then the underlying technology just runs emulators under the cover. So it is an emulation device. Now, there's a lot of controversy about should you put one of these in an arcade cabinet? Now, I have become over time more of a purist and want to maintain the original look of the arcade games, the original feel of the arcade games, everything down to controls and buttons and all those things, the CRT monitor. But if you did have something like a fighting game laying around like a Street Fighter, would it maybe make sense to do this? And could you put this in there without truly modifying the cabinet, meaning I'm not changing any of the buttons and controls or anything like that, just sort of giving myself access to more games? I don't know. Let's find out. Oh my gosh, I forgot to mention this episode is sponsored by Sonic the Hedgehog Energy Drink. Wait, what? This has 300 milligrams of caffeine? I'm going to be totally tripping balls after this episode.
1:44
Okay, so before we go down the path of doing this, you have to understand something. Typical JAMA edge connectors look like this, except these Pandora's boxes are not JAMA. They're actually Chinese JAMA, sometimes referred to as Chama. The pinouts are actually different, so in order to stick a Pandora's box just into like some sort of Capcom CPS-1 or CPS-2 running arcade system, you're gonna need this adapter from Mike's Arcade. This is a Chama to JAMA adapter, And the reason why this is awesome is because most of the Street Fighter games, if you're working with CPS 1 and 2, had kick harnesses. Well, the kick harness can plug in right here. So all six of your buttons on your arcade cabinet can map to this device now because they do a completely different pinout. So if you're going to do it net new, you could just run a JAMMA harness and wire it all yourself. But I'm not really condoning you to do that. Does that even make sense? I'm not supporting you doing that whatever all I'm saying is if you're gonna put it in a running machine And you want to put it alongside let's say your Street Fighter PCB to get access to more games You're gonna need this adapter, and then you can literally just plug and play so I'm gonna show you how to do that right now Okay, so inside the cabinet you can find your JAMA board And you'll see you've got your JAMA harness connected to it and then down here That's where your kick harness connects so what we need to do is obviously power down your arcade cabinet Then you're gonna disconnect the jama edge connector. Okay. Now you've got that right there in your hand and then we're gonna remove this Kick harness sometimes this takes a little bit of effort. All right, there it is. The kick harnesses is out So what we're gonna do now is I'm gonna get the Pandora's box We need that and keep in mind. There are several of these. There's only a certain certain ones that will support a standard resolution arcade monitor So I'm gonna put a link in the description to the ones that do, because some of these have JAMA edge connectors, but they do not actually output the right video signal for your monitor Okay so let me go grab the Chama to JAMA connector and then we hook this thing up Okay so I got the edge connector We going to put this you going to see there a component side or a part side and a solder side. You're going to put the component side in like this because the component side for the Pandora's box is this top side with the logo. So we're going to just squeeze it on right there and there it is. Then we're going to get the kick harness. So the kick harness has this little lip right here. This lip sits under that lip on that side. So it's just going to simply go on like this. So you're going to see, I'll do it from that angle so you can see it. It's going to go on like this. Oops, I can get it on. It goes on like this and then you'll see it'll actually close in on that lip right there. Now on this side, you're going to put the part side facing up here. And these JAMA connectors are keyed so you can't really get it wrong. And there you go. So now I'm going to put this just right here for now since we're not going to permanently mount this as a solution. But like I said, you could have sort of your primary PCB mounted there and you could just switch back and forth if you wanted to. Now there are JAMA switchers you can buy too.
X-Men
game
Streets of Ragegame
Rastangame
Sega Megatechproduct
4:58
So if you wanted to get something like a JAMA switcher, you could certainly do that. Then you could just switch back and forth usually with some keystrokes or something. I can't remember I haven't played with those jama switchers in a while it's like you hold player one or player two at the same time for a couple seconds I think Mike's Arcade sells those too I'll have a link in the description to a jama switcher if you want to try to do a solution like that but yeah so we've just installed it that's all we have to do now we can go power it on and we should be greeted with the Pandora's box DX welcome screen okay if we did this right when I powered on it should have the Pandora's box DX splash screen now because I put the Pandora's box in the volume control it will go over the jama edge connector for your speakers but there's a little potentiometer knob on the Pandora's box which will adjust the volume and there we go so the thing I have noticed though depending on your monitor settings sometimes I have to fix the vertical and horizontal positioning like it's this is pretty good it's almost like the horizontal position needs to come down a tiny bit I've noticed that on a couple monitors when I put these in you just have to lower the horizontal position You can do that on the back of most monitors, just as usually a horizontal position pot. You just adjust it, and then you'll get this down to where you can see the whole thing. The board in general will be coin-operated, but you can just go into the settings and set it to free play. I would suggest you do that because then you don't have to insert coins. My Street Fighter is actually still set up to accept coins. I haven't actually put it on free play. But anyway, so yeah, at this point, let's dive into this interface, and I'll show you what you're going to get with this. Okay, before we dive in, I just want to say, why am I kind of okay or supportive of this type of a solution? Because you're not altering the Street Fighter cabinet in any way. So you can easily return it right back to the original Street Fighter board, but I can totally see where someone that has limited space and they just have a single game system may want access to more games. And why I love this is that you're not, like I said, I know I'm repeating myself, but you're not altering the original cabinet at all. You can use it just the way you would before, and your button configurations and everything else are going to stay the same. Now, this is the control panel I need to fix. So, yes, I know everyone's going to beat me up on the colors being wrong and reversed. I haven't fixed it yet, but I'm going to. This actually is an arcade I picked up on Arcade Pickers Episode 1. So I've been enjoying it the way it is, but it needs some minor restoration work. So once you install this, what does it gain you? Well, you get thousands of arcade games. You get fighters. You get shmups. you get side scrolling beat-em-ups, you get a whole bunch of different things. So there's a whole bunch of different games here, and the other thing you get access to is with this many games you probably wondering well how do I even find anything So you can just press the player 1 start button and go to search and you can actually search for a specific game So if I wanted Simpsons for instance I can type in SIM
7:45
Yeah, so I'm going to hit OK, and you can see it brought me to The Simpsons. So I can quickly launch that, and like I said, this is all emulation-based, so it's just going to launch the emulator, and you're going to start playing that game. So it's pretty cool. And the other thing that's really neat is, let's say I start playing, I love this feature because me being someone that has a lot going on, and just like everyone else that watches the channel, with kids and everything, and a family, and things you need to take care of on a regular basis, sometimes you can't play all the time. So let's say I'm in the middle of a game. Hit and hold player one start, and then I can actually save my state. So I can have save state so I can come back to it later. So if I want to go back to it later, I can hold player one start again, and then go to load state, and it's going to load right back where I was before. So pretty cool. Like, I don't know, I just think that's a pretty neat feature to have. So you have search functionality, you have save state functionality, and if you want to get back to the menu to choose a different game, you just, again, hit player one start, hit exit, and you can go right back to the menu. Again, you have the search function, so you can go here. They do have categories, so they have, like, your action games, your fighting games, your sports games, puzzle games. Like, puzzle, they'll have things like Pac-Man or Tetris and stuff like that. There's some 3D, they have a title called 3D Games, which is like polygonal games. So if there's any kind of fighters based on polygonal graphics. Some of them work well, some of them don't. It's hit or miss. Not everything is going to work amazingly well on here. But it does give you access to a lot of games. So for instance, if you look at my recently played games, I was playing The Simpsons. I was playing Track and Field. Believe it or not, Track and Field works. Smash TV, you can play Smash TV. Some of the control layouts are not going to be perfect. it has Streets of Rage and you guys know I love that you can play Donkey Kong, you can play X-Men, Bucky O'Hare so I was kind of going through and just playing some of the games I wanted to play I was having fun with playing some Rastan Golden Axe, Sunset Riders is a popular one Final Fight is one that I often play quite a bit so you have access to all these games and because it's on free play when you access the game you just pretty much hit start and you start playing the game it supports one and two players right off the bat. You don't have to do anything, and because the kick harness is there, it's going to support all six of your action buttons. But yeah, it's a pretty cool solution. And like I'm saying, you're not going to get the best emulation in the world. Obviously, the original PCB is going to be your best bet, but with a solution like this, you now have access to a lot more games on your cabinet. Now, I'm not a big fan or a supporter of someone that just hacks their system and makes it a multi-cade, you know, by hacking the control panel and putting, you know, trackballs and all sorts of nonsense like that. But it could be cool for a system like this where you're not affecting the original control panel at all and you have access to a lot more games. Now to show you that the original Street Fighter games and things like that work and all the buttons work, I'll just go to my search functionality. I'll type in Street Fighter and there's a lot, you get a lot access to a lot of Street Fighters. You get EX, you get EX2, you get Zero. So you have a whole bunch of alpha 2 a bunch of games but because this this system was an original street fighter i'm going to go find the original street fighter champion edition they have rainbow and all the mod hacks all the rom hacks are in here too so that is also cool if you want to play all the street fighter games you can play them all from here now i don't have champion edition on this cabinet this is actually a world warrior cabinet so that allows me to play uh champion edition as well so pretty cool so you can see you have access to all the buttons on street fighter And that what most important and that kick harness is the key So if you get that little adapter that shama adapter you going to be all set So that an important piece of the puzzle because if you try to plug it in you not going to have access to all the buttons and you're not going to be able to play all the games that this Pandora's box has to offer. The other secret would be making sure that you... Oh, crap.
11:40
I do need to replace these buttons and sticks and that's not why I'm playing bad. I'm just playing bad because I'm playing bad. Oh my gosh, if I die here, that's so lame. Oh, come on, dude. Don't do me like this, E-Honda. Well, I'm a total bonehead and I forgot to tell everyone about this. So this is the Pandora's box DX manual and the default resolution for the Pandora's box is 1280 by 720. So that obviously won't work for the CRT. So what you'll have to do is there's a little button on the back of the Pandora's box. And what you'll do is you'll press and hold that and then power up the, your arcade. What you want to do is you might have to do it several times, but if you do it the first time and the light is green, you want to do it until, so power it back down, hold the button, power it back up. And when the light is yellow, then you've done it right. And then at that point, it will work on the CRT. So out of the box, if you plug it in and turn it all on, it won't work. You just have to make sure that yellow indicator's there. And all you have to really do is just go to page six of your Pandora's box DX manual. If this may change, but whatever, just go to the part of the manual that talks about the resolution and if you forgot or if that's not clear. It just says resolution settings and that's it. You should be good to go. So there you have it guys. It is a really simple solution and it gains you access to additional games. I love the save states. I like the search functionality and I love the fact that it supports CRTs because that's just the way to go. If you're going to do retro arcade gaming, you got to do it on a CRT. So it's a pretty plug and play solution. As you saw you do have to buy that additional um jama to chama chama to jama adapter but after you have that it's you're good to go so i enjoy it the save state thing is really cool because i've been playing certain games like rastan and i try to that's a hard game by the way if you ever played rastan it's a really hard game but once you get to a certain point rastan i'm like maybe i should save it because i'm trying to hone and get better at that game and sometimes it's hard so i just sort of because that game makes you go back to the beginning so it's kind of nice to progress through it so regardless of if you have quarters and and you can continue it brings you back to the beginning so it's kind of nice to start you know from a from a better spot there are some console games on here that translate well to arcade cabinets like street fighter 2 now believe it or not street fighter 2 did have and i've talked about this like a million times because i'm such a street fighter 2 guy but street fighter 2 did have an arcade release on the sega megatech software or hardware so just so you know it did so a lot of people will question me on that but It's Streets of Rage 2 that was released on it, not Streets of Rage 1. But anyway, I think that game translates really well to an arcade cabinet. So, I mean, really, it's the same kind of a game type as like an X-Men or a Simpsons or something like that, or even like Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. So it follows that same kind of genre. So why not play that on your arcade cabinet? It's pretty cool. So if you enjoyed this video, give me a thumbs up. Consider subscribing to the channel. Put your comments below. I know there's going to be some people that are going to freak out and lose their mind over this topic. but some people have limited space and it's a cool option and you're not destroying the cabinet. You're just putting it alongside your original PCB. You're leveraging all of your buttons and sticks. So nothing really changes outside of getting access to more games. All right, guys, that's it. And we will see you on the next one.
15:05
Thanks for watching!