There are a few websites that sell arcade machines specifically, or you can go to arcade enthusiast forums and try and pick up one that someone is offloading. Typically you wouldn't buy a complete arcade machine - you buy the cabinet (the case, usually with some internal gubbins like joysticks and the monitor) and then you buy the game(s) separately and hook them in. Where it's best for you to look for cabinets is massively determined by where you live, because shipping arcade cabs overseas can be more than the price of the cabinet itself. A supergun is basically the control interface for an arcade machine, without the whole cabinet. If you buy an arcade game, what you actually get is just a PCB. The PCB doesn't have USB or HDMI ports - instead it has one arcade connector to a standard like JAMMA or JVS. A supergun is something that plugs into the PCB and connects to this, to then split out the control inputs to joysticks, and also to provide a standard TV video connection like SCART or component video so that you can actually plug in a TV without hard-wiring everything. It basically turns your arcade PCB into something that functions a bit more like a games console that can be unplugged and tidied away rather than having to put it inside a whole cabinet.
Yeah, as far as buying a cabinet goes, one way is to keep an eye on forums like Arcade Otaku or Shmups Forum. These places have a marketplace section where people will sell/trade things like arcade cabinets or game boards. Also, occasionally someone will set up a thread for a group buy to get new cabinets from Japan and split the cost of a shipping container. Arcades will also sometimes sell off some of their cabinets. (The machine Kevin is playing on right now was purchased from eSpot, I believe.) Similarly, some areas have really good auctions where arcade owners will offload some of their stock. Depending on where you are located, there may also be arcade distribution companies in the area.
Oh so the supergun is pretty much the actual connector part of a JAMMA (or JVS) Harness? Also, is there a standard for what arcade monitors use for video input or does it vary?
It's essentially a JAMMA wiring harness with a power supply and connections for controllers, video, and audio. It can be as purely functional as a box with a JAMMA loom coming off of it or something a bit more polished. The majority of JAMMA games take 15khz RGB video signal from the JAMMA connector. (If you wire things up for it, this signal can be used directly with RGB monitors/TVs like a Sony PVM, old Commodore computer monitors, European TVs with SCART connection, etc.. Most superguns for use in NTSC regions have a video encoder to convert to composite or s-video.) Some games use "medium res" 24khz monitors. JVS games and PC-based hardware will use a VGA/DVI cable to carry video, but you still need to keep 15khz "low res" vs. 31khz "high res" in mind. For example, TGM3 has a VGA port that outputs 15khz/480i for low res arcade monitors or old RGB monitors/TVs, as well as a DVI port that outputs 31khz/480p that you could put directly to a current computer monitor.
As far as my understanding goes, it's essentially an organized JAMMA harness to make it easy to play at home. What exactly would I be losing if I didn't have one? Also, don't I have to still wire the supergun to joysticks and buttons making the supergun kinda meaningless? This also applies to games that uses a kick harness. TGM3 has to use a kick harness to accommodate the fourth button, correct? In simple terms, how does wiring work with a supergun? I am familiar with just using a JAMMA harness to wire directly to the controllers and monitor (if I had an arcade machine that is), but I I'm seeing various other plugs and whatnot. It's making my head boggle. Well this is new. Can I use the VGA from a TGM3 board into any computer monitor that supports VGA or is it just not that simple? Also, does TGM3 ONLY output in VGA/DVI? No RGB? But does it even matter when plugged into a supergun which can output the video to composite/s-video? And if I do ever get an arcade monitor, how can I tell it's resolution? If I had a medium res monitor would that work for TGM3 and most other games of the pre-2005 era? Does low-res only games work on med res monitors?... Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh... so many questions!!!! As you may tell, this is some new territory I'm trekking here.
Will caveat this with the fact that I don't own a supergun and have never built one myself, but as far as I know there's really not much difference between a supergun and everything being wired direct. The difference (as far as I know), is if everything is wired directly, moving things around is a huge hassle. This is not a problem if you've got it all built into an arcade cabinet, but if you don't then being able to unplug the joysticks, CRT, PSU, speakers and PCB from each other is basically essential. A supergun doesn't do anything massively clever, it just forms a box where things are bundled into sensible connections that can be plug-and-play rather than everything needing to be soldered and hard-wired together.
As Rosti said, it's just about making things convenient so you can still swap out controllers and so on. If you want to be super minimalist, it could just be wires coming out of a controller and connections for power etc. (like Muf's temporary setup for TGM3). TGM3 can also take the fourth button "Neo-Geo MVS style." There are two unused pins after P1/P2 button 3 in the JAMMA standard which Neo-Geo uses for P1/P2 button 4 -- see pins 25 and c. A lot of people use a Neo-Geo AES style pin-out as a sort of semi-standard wiring for controllers. (The image I linked has buttons 5 and 6 replacing what used to be unused pins, but I'm not sure how common that is and I don't have any games with kick harnesses, heh. You could definitely rely on it for your own stuff though, or if you buy one that says it supports those pins.) You'd want to use a DVI -> VGA adapter to use the 31khz signal. The 15khz signal on the VGA port would generally only work with arcade monitors, old computer monitors, TVs with RGB, etc.. VGA is used for RGB signal. If you're using TGM3 with a JAMMA cabinet or supergun, you would probably connect it to the Video In on the JVS-JAMMA I/O. I think usually if you have an old monitor it's going to be 15khz. If you have a new monitor, it would probably be a tri-sync and have settings for 15/24/31khz on it. 15khz "low res" wouldn't work with a strictly 24khz "medium res" monitor but I don't think you'll run into that issue -- I think it was a rarer thing. You definitely won't have to worry about it for any TGM series games, they're all regular low res (or with TGM3 you can spring for high res if your monitor supports it). No worries, it can be daunting. Hopefully this helps you get started in the right direction.
One more question. I heard that some monitors are both 15/24K. Do games (or the monitor) automatically change itself for the games to be properly displayed or is there a separate switch?
A super gun does the following. 1) power the arcade board. this could be done by wiring the power supply direct to the jamma loom. 2) provides a convenient interface between the controls and the arcade board (and often comes with the controls). You could wire to the jamma loom. 3) converts the native rgb output along the jamma edge to something suitable for outputing to your TV. this is the tricky bit. You need an encoder and a means to power it. this is all included in the supergun.
Modern tri-sync monitors (15/24/31 KHz) are auto syncing. Older tri-syncs and dual syncs will have one or more switches for switching the resolution and switching the input (high impedance AMP connector or low impedance VGA connector).
Surely you could just use an external encoder? If you're planning on playing on a HDTV eventually, you might as well get an XRGB or similar upscaler, which would also work with all your other classic console gear. A regular supergun just outputs the pure RGB signal with a bit of resistance (or potmeters) on the color signals, since that works just fine with any relatively modern (~1990+) European TV standard. That's how all the superguns I have work, and they are fairly simple. I also have an RGB to component encoder that I don't need any more, I could probably sell if anyone's interested.
