Being a proud new owner of a Sega Model 3 Arcade board with Virtua Fighter 3 (Revision C), I am looking for any and all information about this board, from its development to people's personal experience playing the games that ran on it. I must say from my rather limited experience (board was delivered on Saturday (03/14/2015)) with this hardware I am quite impressed in it's graphical capabilities. The characters and stages in Virtua Fighter 3 are quite impressive. It also is one of the louder arcade systems I own having the dual 12v fans on the inside of the case, as long as they keep the Model 3 cool thats fine though. Strangely enough, I have not seen it on any other Model 3 board pictures, but a VGA port is soldered to the filter board making it quite easy to feed the video directly into the GBS8200 without having to use the cable I Macgyvered for Sega Model 2. Another quick thing is, if you are like me and going from Model 2 to Model 3, you will need to add an extra wire to your control Harness for button 4 (dodge/escape) since the Model 2 harness is only wired up for 3 buttons. Anything anyone else can provide would be appreciated.
Here’s some general info on the Model 3. http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=717 This is the System 16 page for the Model 3 Step 1.0. There’s an inaccuracy on that page; the Step 1.0 uses a PowerPC 603e, not a 603 as that page says. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards#Sega_Model_3 Wikipedia page for the Model 3, has lots of info on the hardware. https://youtu.be/VIXXmWRLmJ4 This is a video I made a while ago about VF3. It has some footage of the game, and I talk about the Model 3 hardware and the way I have the system set up. Something you may want to consider: I'm not sure if all Model 3 boards are like this, but on mine you can change the region of the system in the test menu. If you set it to Japan, that gets rid of the "Winners don't use drugs" screen, and the part that shows you the score at the end of the game is in Japanese. There are no other differences that I'm aware of. I generally leave in on the Japan setting, mainly so I don't have to see the "Winners don't use drugs" screen. Also, I don't have the fans connected to anything currently, and it's never been a problem. I think I could probably get them working with my Sanwa PSU, but I've just been too lazy to do it. I probably should. I think there might be a problem with one of the fans, too. I also need to wire a second controller port to the Model 3.
Even though it's not direct feed, you can still tell just how much better Virtua Fighte 3 still looks when running on real Model 3 hardware compared to the Dreamcast conversion or emulated in the latest revison of Supermodel... Sega, Lockheed Martin and AM2 really were ahead of the curve, so why isn't hasn't a compilation of this board's (mostly) fantastic games seen the light of day yet? ...I know - another gush of praise for VF3 from yours truly!
I agree with what you said, and I think the answer to your question is that Sega doesn't care, or they think there isn't enough of an interest - or maybe they're still debating it. One thing I didn't like about the Dreamcast version was that they changed the beach stage to be at night. That was probably my favorite stage in the arcade version, in large part due to how bright and colorful it is. Changing it to night kind of destroyed that for me. I don't know why they decided to do that. Anyway, playing the arcade version is really the only way to fully appreciate it. It's too bad there's never been a good console version, but eventually Supermodel will probably improve enough to play VF3 with similar accuracy to the way it plays Scud Race and Daytona USA 2 right now. I've gotten a lot better at VF3 since I made that video.
The reason VF3 on the Dreamcast has those alternate* stage backgrounds by default is because it's actually based on the later TB revision, though you can still access the original variations as well - an option in the menu would have been welcome, but then again quite a lot of Genki's overall presentation left a lot to be desired, where I can imagine a full AM2 conversion being far more comprehensive... The original Japanese release had awful glitching shadows under the characters every time they ventured onto an uneven surface (which is frequent, considering the game featured "undulation terrain topography" as a key improvement over its predecessor) and didn't even have a dedicated Versus Mode, requiring a second player to press start in Normal Mode. They didn't even bother to give us the basic Arcade Mode that was expected of such a high profile game! *Yes, I'll agree with your comment they were inferior. I mean, you could even see where the island and desert level bitmaps joined. Couldn't the powers that be have just allowed Shenmue tp be delayed by a few months so Yu Suzuki and his team had the resources to do this instead? [/rant]
To be honest, I've absolutely no idea how you get the original VF3 backgrounds - I find that it only happens abut 50% of the time whenever I can be bothered to have a game on the Dreamcast version (hard as this may seem for some of you to believe, I don't actually spend every waking hour playing Virtua Fighter 3 when I'm not dreaming about it)!
The guy who sold me my board made the Model 3 to JVS adapter, the best part is it had the proper pins for the fans as well so it connects to all three filter board connections. I can honestly say I don't mind the "winners don't use drugs screen" Never really bothered me. Plus since I haven't played too much of the game yet (probably went through it like 6 or 7 times now) I do not know all of the ranking mode messages so I think English will be fine for now. The Model 2 displays a "Recycle, don't trash it" message when set to USA. If I had someone here to play two players I would get another controller (as I have two control interfaces for arcade games), but currently I have no need for it. I will be getting a Virtua Fighter 3 Team Battle conversion kit (8 rom swap) in a week or so, at that point I will be doing some comparison (side by side) with the dreamcast version.
Nice thread, I one day want a model 3 but mainly for Spike Out (they've come down in price a lot over the last 1-2 years).
I would love to get a Model 3 Step 2.1 board set for Spikeout. Its unfortunate that many of the good games all use different versions of the board so having many games requires many board sets. Atleast Star Wars Trilogy Arcade and Spikeout share the same board (step 2.1) so if I were to ever find them I could have one board for those two.
Fair enough. I'm just not a big fan of propaganda. I also like hearing the Japanese announcer guy at the end.
I'm not sure what he's saying. I think he's saying "san" something. I think he occasionally says something different, but I'm not sure. I'll listen carefully to what he says the next time I play it.
Unfortunately that requires a Sega Model 3 Step 1.5 board which is different from the Virtua Fighter 3 board which is Step 1.0. Two sellers on ebay have those boards for $345, but I wouldn't even start to guess how that is wired up. (Initial D on Naomi 2 was hard enough)
I've played Sega Super GT (which is what Scud Race was called in the US) in arcades quite a bit. When I was kid, there was a pizza place near me that had a big deluxe Sega Super GT cabinet. I thought it was amazing at the time. I would often go to the pizza place with my friends and eat pizza and then play Sega Super GT; it was pretty awesome. They also had one at my local arcade for a while, and I've played it at various other arcades around the country. I've played a lot of Model 3 games in the arcade, actually. Also, all Model 3 games are wired the same except for the controls. For some games you need an I/O board I think, and for Scud Race obviously you need a steering wheel.
Would it use all kinda of mini driver boards and amp board like Initial D does? (I believe those are only for rumble) I would imagine the 25 pin connector would be used for digital buttons but something more might be needed for the analog for the wheel and pedals (like my Sega JVS I/O type 1 for Initial D)
Just a small update, Installed my Virtua Fighter 3 Team Battle upgrade kit. Went pretty smoothly except for one small hitch which I fixed pretty easily. New intro and now Shun's drink number is displayed for the first time. (wasn't in VF2 or VF3 regular). Some stages changed time of day. I will probably have a video showing how to do the upgrade along with Virtua Fighter 2.1 in the next day or two since very few people have touched on how to upgrade your boards.
