I thought I would post my impression of the Game Elf 621 Horizontal multi board. It was installed in a cabinet I recently purchased and after playing around with it for a week or so and trying various games I have some thoughts on it. Keep in mind some of my information is based on my relatively short experience with it and I don't actually have a lot of knowledge on arcade cabinets, so I appologise if I have got something completely wrong.
Pros:
1. Does not need to be shut down, you can just switch the unit off.
2. Controls and buttons are all configured for every game even for games that have unusual controllers like Midnight Resistance and Missile Command.
3. Designed to work with minimal modification to an arcade cabinet. Just plug it in to the Jamma connector and no need to add a credit button, it uses the start buttons for credits as well. It can actually be installed for public use, but I doubt anyone would do that in countries with half decent copyright laws.
4. The controls feel instant, which I suppose is dependent on which monitor you used, but even on my 22 inch Dell monitor there was pretty much no input lag.
Cons:
1. Non-alphabetical game list. This is not a good idea at all.
2. Not all games are running at the full frame rate of the original arcade. This is noticeable with games where sprites are flashing to show as semi-transparent, but instead in some games your player will just disappear for a while. Bubble Bobble is clearly running at a much lower frame rate than the original hardware, which I assume was 60 FPS. One upside is that the game speed is not usually affected, just the frame rate.
3. Some games suffer from running slower than normal like Fantasy Zone, with the music and sounds also being slow.
4. Does not save high scores.
5. Only works at a couple of resolutions. 1024x768 for VGA and 640x480 for CGA. If you did use this with an arcade CRT monitor at 640x480 it would look terrible, it scales the image up by adding a pixel of the same colour every now and then so you end up with weird looking sprites. The scaling is not as noticeable on a VGA interface at 1024x768 but it's still there.
6. Has an annoying overlay showing that you inserted a coin which cannot be turned off. This might not be considered a con by some, but it annoyed me.
(edit) 7. Has screen tearing in a lot of games
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So in summary:
Pros:
- No shutdown necessary
- Fully configured controls
- Works with minimal modification to cabinet, public use
- Very responsive controls, almost no input lag
Cons:
- Non-alphabetical game list
- Some games runs at lower frame rate
- Fantasy Zone doesn't run at full speed
- Doesn't save high scores
- Resolutions options are bad
- Annoying credit overlay
- Screen tearing
In summary it's fun and easy to set up, but if you are after a better emulation and graphics I would go for something else.