NFG Games + GameSX

This is based on the hard work of GamingDoyle over on Arcade Projects. The hard work detailed on that page has been revised and the project complexity reduced significantly:

• Four harnesses have been combined into one, with two switches in place to change the wiring for different games.
• Two button panels have been combined into one
• The number of connectors is reduced to six, down from fourteen

(At time of writing this is a WIP, and it's assumed this will all work with the reduced parts.)

The games that benefit from this setup are:

• Crazy Taxi
• Jambo Safari
• Initial D 1/2/3
• Outrun2/Outrun2SP
• Club Kart
• Faster than speed
• Maximum speed
• King of Route 66
• 18 Wheeler

Sega liked to re-arrange the pinouts for every game. Even when two games share the same controls (Crazy Taxi & Jambo Safari) they swapped two inputs. This results in a Naomi system in cabinet with the same panel but a new wiring harness for every game.

This page details the creation of a two small wiring harnesses: one that runs to the new button panel, and the other that routes all the digital controls to the appropriate place.

A simpler second interconnect harness is used for the button panel, running all 12 wires from under the control panel to the button panel.

Most of the games require either no buttons, or one button (to change the view, or for boost). 18 Wheeler and Route 66 use two and four buttons respectively. For the purposes of this project, the games can be lumped into three categories:

• Crazy Taxi, Maximum Speed, Faster Than Speed
• Jambo Safari
• Everything Else

These three categories can be selected by changing one or two switches. The red switch in the diagram above is a 2P2T (two pole, two throw) switch that swaps the up and down inputs, as required by Jambo Safari. The other switch hooks Player 1 down to its normal place, or to the button required by the two truck driving games.

The analogue controls (pedals and steering) are outside the scope of this document. They're the same for every game, so no modifications are required. If you're creating controllers from scratch, the analogue signals used for all Naomi racing games are on the *City Pinouts Page

Four normally unused pins on the 60-pin JVS board are used to light up three switches for the games that use them. One supplies 12V (you can source 5V from somewhere else if that's what your buttons require) and the other three activate the lights.

The pinout for the 60-pin connector can be found on the JVS Encoder Board Connectors page.

Most of the wiring is similar to any controller wiring in a JVS cabinet. The 12- and 8-pin connectors are AMP/TE Universal Power, and the 60-pin JVS connector is a JST RA series.

Several new connectors are introduced here, and both use the same connectors as already exist in the cabinet. There is no reason to stick to these, you can use whatever connectors you have handy, if you prefer.

There's a 12 pin connector (11 pins used) for the new buttons panel. Most of these are only for the truck driving games, so if you are planning to skip these games you can use a 4-pin connector instead.

An 8 pin connector (6 pins used) is used as an intermediate connector, between the system and the new button panel. If you don't need to support the driving games, a 2-pin connector can be used instead.

Four pins are added to the existing 60-pin JVS connector.

Naomi and other Sega JVS-based cabs use a common set of connectors. For this project the only cabinet connectors used are the 12-pin player 1 & player 2 sockets.

Parts List & Part Numbers