Recommended Cabinets to Minimize Input & Display Lag

For arcades looking to purchase Japanese LCD cabinets to maximize their customers’ experience with exA-Arcadia, please continue reading for our recommendations for an optimal experience that will keep your customer base coming back again and again.

Understanding Where Latency (Lag) Comes From

Unlike CRT cabinets, which have a naturally fast response time, modern IO boards and LCD monitors have introduced lag into what your customer feels when they play a game. As an arcade operator, you need to optimize for this so customers feel satisfied when playing intense games, otherwise, they may return to your location.

What is Monitor (Display) Lag ?

LCD monitors are very slow to display a video signal, so when a player presses a button or the joystick, the action appears onscreen later than what a player may be expecting; this is Monitor (Display) Lag. This slow response time is especially common with early LCD monitors and large size HD monitors.

Each LCD monitor has a native resolution, such as 720p or 1080p, but when an incoming video signal is not the same resolution, this will also cause the video signal to display even slower since the signal is being converted to the monitor’s resolution. Japanese LCD cabinets come equipped with monitors from when LCD technology was still new and have generally slower response times, as well as an odd native resolution of 768p.

exA-Arcadia solves this problem by requiring all of our games to support all common monitor resolutions – 480p, 720p, 768p, 1080p using a digital connection (DVI-D or HDMI) only.

What is Input Lag ?

Modern arcade boards are generally PC based machines that convert joystick and button input into a USB signal that needs to be decoded by the hardware’s JVS IO board. The amount of time this takes varies and is the cause for Input Lag. If a player presses a button and feels like the game is not responsive, they are unlikely to play this game again. Older JVS IO boards are unable to process commands quickly in succession. A modern compliant JVS IO board is highly recommended. 

exA-Arcadia has optimized for this by pushing the JVS standard to its limits so that players cannot humanly perceive any difference. JVS itself is an older standard that looks like USB but is not and does not perform the same as the USB standard.

A Look at Japanese LCD Cabinets

For Vertical games, only Taito’s Vewlix cabinets can officially rotate into a Vertical screen orientation. An unofficial monitor rotation kit is available in Asia for Noirs and Linberghs. All vertical exA-Arcadia games have been developed from the start to support both Vertical and Horizontal orientations.

Note that if you buy a used cabinet, some unscrupulous sellers may have changed the monitor out. BUYER BEWARE!

Fastest (For Hardcore Customers)

Vewlix Refurbished with Full HD Taito Tech 2020 Monitor (1080p)

Faster (For Hardcore Customers)

APM3 (1080p)

GRIGIO (1080p)

Lindbergh Universal Refurbished by Sega Service (1080p)

Noir Full HD (Blue) (1080p)

Vewlix Diamond Black (1080p)

OK (Not Recommended for Hardcore Customers)

Noir (Red) (768p)

Vewlix C (768p)

Vewlix F (768p)

Vewlix VS (768p)

Slower (Not Recommended)

Lindbergh Universal (768p)

Slowest (Not Recommended)

Vewlix L aka AMI (768p)

Vewlix Diamond (768p)

Not Compatible without an adapter

Delta 32 (Analog only)

*Vewlix cabinets are produced by TAITO

*Lindbergh Universal and APM3 cabinets are produced by SEGA

*Noir and GRIGIO cabinets are produced by namco

*Delta cabinets are produced by River Service