Namco 246/256 games

[robbyrobot]

I bought a arcade machine a couple years ago with Tekken 5 on it. At the time i was a bit bummed because I wasn't able to fit it into my basement with the rest of my collection. So it has sat in storage for a while. The other day I fired it up and decided to take a look inside and found it had a disk drive and what looks like a PS2 memory card inside.

After some research it looks like it is a Namco 256 drive which im pretty excited to learn more about. I have looked everywhere online but can't seem to find a reliable place to buy dongles and CDs for it. So I am curious, is there a good place where i can buy the games/dongles?

If there is no longer a place to buy these dongles and games can you use a ps2 memory card to essentially clone a dongle?

I'd appreciate any help thanks!

 

[corey]

hey robbyrobot and welcome!

first yes you can buy games for the system 256 buit not new you have to buy them from other people. keep an eye on the for sale section here.
You can also get them from sites like ebay and Yahoo Auction Japan(YAJ). We have a great write up around here about buying things from YAJ.

the dongle is the key part to the system and you can actually use DVDRs for disk.
so if you have a dongle and no disk MAME is your friend.

As for cloning the dongles its possible but not easy for normal folks. needs expensive rom reader and decent soldering skills.

 

[robbyrobot]

Thanks fast response! I have a lot of expiernce modding systems / soldering / other nerdy tech things. You have me super curious because i haven't found any info through google on the subject. Do you have a link for this?

As for the games, yeah it looks like I can get the image files for just about every game online but I only have the dongle for tekken 5, will that work with other games?

 

[PascalP]

A dongle is unique for every game, so you would need to convert it.

I know Darksoft can do it if you're in Europe and Mitsu can co it if you're in the States.

Dongle conversion

Namco System 246/256 Dongle Conversions (FULLY REVERSIBLE)

Best thing to do is to buy some cheap Gundam games and convert these

 

[robbyrobot]

i just saw a gundam game go up on ebay for about $30, man wish i knew. Thanks!

 

[PascalP]

I have a Gundam game for sale as well, but shipping might be a bit expensive, will check for you if you want.

 

[robbyrobot]

Yeah let me know.