The (formerly the , abbreviated JAMMA) is a Japanese
trade association
A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association, sector association or industry body, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry. An industry trade association partic ...
headquartered in Tokyo.
JAMMA is run by representatives from various arcade video game manufacturers, including
Bandai Namco
also known as the Bandai Namco Group and generally Bandai Namco, is a Japanese multinational holding company, production enterprise and entertainment conglomerate headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, formed from the merger of Bandai and Namco on S ...
,
Sega,
Taito
is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, vending machines and jukeboxes into Japan. I ...
,
Koei Tecmo
is a Japanese video game, amusement and anime holding company created in 2009 by the merger of Koei and Tecmo. Koei Tecmo Holdings owns several companies, the biggest one of those being its flagship game developer and publisher Koei Tecmo Games ...
,
Capcom, and
Konami
, is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machines, slot machines, and arcade cabinets. Konami has casino ...
among others.
Nintendo was also a member of the organization until its departure on February 28, 1989.
Nihon Bussan
was a Japanese video game developer and publisher headquartered in Kita, Osaka. In the past they had also manufactured and sold yachts.
The main video game brand of the company was Nichibutsu (日物、ニチブツ), with adult video games (ma ...
left in 1992 over content issues in their mahjong games.
[ 雀ゲームの審査に不満を示した日本物産の退会で議論」, ''Game Machine'' issue 420 (1992), p. 3 (Japanese)/ref>
The corporation was renamed on 1 April 2012 after they merged with the Nihon Shopping Center Amusement Park Operator's Association (NSA) and the Japan Amusement Park Equipment Association (JAPEA).
Before 2012, JAMMA had been organizing an annual ]trade fair
A trade fair, also known as trade show, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and ...
called the Amusement Machine Show
The Japan Amusement Expo (JAEPO) is an annual trade fair for amusement arcade products, such as arcade games, redemption games, amusement rides, vending machines, and change machines. The event is hosted one weekend per year in the Greater ...
for many years. In 2013, they began collaborating with the Amusement Machine Operators' Union (AOU), who had their own trade show, to promote a new event: the Japan Amusement Expo
The Japan Amusement Expo (JAEPO) is an annual trade fair for amusement arcade products, such as arcade games, redemption games, amusement rides, vending machines, and change machines. The event is hosted one weekend per year in the Greater To ...
.
Arcade machine standards
Controllers
JAMMA is the namesake of a widely used wiring standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object th ...
for arcade games. An arcade cabinet wired to JAMMA's specification can accept a motherboard for any JAMMA-compatible game. JAMMA introduced the standard in 1985; by the 1990s, most new arcade games were built to JAMMA specifications. As the majority of arcade games were designed in Japan at this time, JAMMA became the de facto standard internationally.
Before the JAMMA standard, most arcade PCB
PCB may refer to:
Science and technology
* Polychlorinated biphenyl, an organic chlorine compound, now recognized as an environmental toxin and classified as a persistent organic pollutant
* Printed circuit board, a board used in electronics
* ...
s, wiring harnesses, and power supplies were custom-built. When an old game became unprofitable, many arcade operators would rewire the cabinet and update the artwork in order to put different games in the cabinets. Reusing old cabinets made a lot of sense, and it was realized that the cabinets were a different market from the games themselves. The JAMMA standard allowed plug-and-play cabinets to be created (reducing the cost to arcade operators) where an unprofitable game could be replaced with another game by a simple swap of the game's PCB. This resulted in most arcade games in Japan (outside racing and gun shooting games that required deluxe cabinets) to be sold as conversion kits consisting of nothing more than a PCB, play instructions and an operator's manual.
The JAMMA standard uses a 56-pin edge connector
An edge connector is the portion of a printed circuit board (PCB) consisting of traces leading to the edge of the board that are intended to plug into a matching socket. The edge connector is a money-saving device because it only requires a sin ...
on the board with inputs and outputs common to most video games. These include power inputs (5 volts for the game and 12 volts for sound); inputs for two joysticks, each with three action buttons and one start button; analog RGB video output with negative composite sync; single-speaker sound output; and inputs for coin, service, test, and tilt.
The JAMMA connector has a .156" pin spacing edge connector (male on the game board) with other specifications based on number of pins.
20 pin, 36 pin, 44 pin, 56 pin and 72 pin connectors are available where the 56 pin JAMMA connector pinouts values are shown in the reference table and other game boards connectors may have different pinout values.
The connector circuitry of some later games, such as '' Street Fighter II: The World Warrior'' (1991) and ''X-Men
The X-Men are a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, first appearing in ''The X-Men'' #1 by artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby and writer/editor Stan Lee in 1963. Although initially cancelled in 1970 due to lo ...
'' (1992), implement extra buttons, different controller types, or support more players by adding extra connectors—or even by utilizing dormant JAMMA pins. Circuitry designs that overstep the JAMMA specification in this way are unofficially called ''JAMMA+''.
Video
The JAMMA Video Standard (JAMMA VIDEO規格, JVS) is a newer JAMMA connector standard. The standard specifies a communication protocol
A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniza ...
based on RS-485
RS-485, also known as TIA-485(-A) or EIA-485, is a standard defining the electrical characteristics of drivers and receivers for use in serial communications systems. Electrical signaling is balanced, and multipoint systems are supported. The s ...
and physical interfaces for peripheral devices using commonly-available USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
connectors and cables. JVS is incompatible with USB devices because it does not use the USB signaling standard and protocol.
Per the first edition of the JVS, published in 1996, peripheral devices connect to a dedicated I/O board. The main board
A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...
connects to the I/O board via a USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
Type-A to USB Type-B interface cable, and peripherals connect to the I/O board via USB-A connectors.
JAMMA published the second edition of the JVS on 17 July 1997, and the third edition on 31 May 2000. The third edition adds support for ASCII
ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
and Shift-JIS output; device drivers for secondary and tertiary input device
In computing, an input device is a piece of equipment used to provide data and control signals to an information processing system, such as a computer or information appliance. Examples of input devices include keyboards, mouse, scanners, cameras ...
s; a device driver for a mahjong controller; and recommended values for SYNC-code timing.
Similar technologies
Other manufacturers use similar edge connectors such as Tektronix
Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment.
Originally an independent ...
for the TM50X, TM500X, 5000 and 7000 system mainframe equipment.
Connectors with similar designs have been used for different systems circuitry interfaces with 22 pins such as the Tektronix SC-503 extender, 26 pins 58900A Extender, 48 pins 5080-2843A Extender, 72 pins J-2306-01 Extender Board and others.
Some systems circuitry interfaces use special adapters that have been custom made using the JAMMA connectors such as with the Tektronix TM500/5000/7000 series extension cable adapters.
These different systems can be custom built based on user requirements where even basic guides have been created to assist users in the making of such adapters.
Amusement Machine Prize guideline
The Amusement Machine prize guideline () is a guide for the type of prize that should be provided by an arcade operator. The standard was enacted on 1 November 2004.
It specifies the retail value of a prize item cannot exceed 800 yen. In addition, following items cannot be manufactured, sold, or transferred to arcades as prizes:
*Tobacco and tobacco-themed items
*Alcohol and alcohol-themed items
*Drugs, or items containing material that causes high, dizziness, hallucination
*Medium containing contents that interferes with proper youth growth or good social order
*Items for sex, and items resembling sexual organs
*Underwear
*Coupon or similar items
*Item violating food safety laws
*Counterfeit brand or counterfeit character items, or items violating intellectual property
*Item causing physical or mental harm (e.g., weapons)
*Life forms violating the spirit of animal protection
See also
* Expansion card
In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus sl ...
* IEEE-488
IEEE 488 is a short-range digital communications 8-bit parallel multi-master interface bus specification developed by Hewlett-Packard as HP-IB (Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus). It subsequently became the subject of several standards, and is ...
(IEEE-488 GPIB or HPIB connectors)
* Micro ribbon connector
The micro ribbon or miniature ribbon connector is a common type of electrical connector for a variety of applications, such as in computer and telecommunications equipment having many contacts.
The connector contains two parallel rows of ...
* Registered jack 21 (RJ21 Telco 50)
References
External links
Japanese Official Site
Amusement Machine Show page
{{Authority control
Video game organizations
Video gaming in Japan