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 (economics), industry. Through collabor ...

headquartered in Tokyo. JAMMA is run by representatives from various arcade video game manufacturers, including

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Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...

Taito is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, Toy, toys, arcade cabinets, and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, Vending machine, vending machines, and Juk ...

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 video game developer and publisher Koei Tecmo ...

Capcom is a Japanese video game company. It has created a number of critically acclaimed and List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil'', ''Monster ...

, and

Konami , commonly known as Konami, , is a Japanese multinational entertainment company and video game developer and video game publisher, publisher headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo. The company also produces and distributes trading card ...

among others.

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

was also a member of the organization until its departure on February 28, 1989.

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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 show, also known as trade fair, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific Industry (economics), industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest Product (business), products and se ...

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 Tokyo ...

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 Tokyo ...

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 ...

for

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily game of skill, games of skill and in ...

s. An

arcade cabinet An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...

wired to JAMMA's specification can accept a

motherboard A motherboard, also called a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see #Nomenclature, "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It ho ...

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 * P ...

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 signal trace, traces leading to the edge of the board that are intended to plug into a matching jack (connector), socket. The edge connector is a money-saving devic ...

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 in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer/editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby, the team first appeared in Uncanny X-Men, ''The X-Men'' #1 (September 1963). Although initial ...

'' (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 variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics (computer science), sem ...

based on

RS-485 RS-485, also known as TIA-485(-A) or EIA-485, is a standard, originally introduced in 1983, defining the electrical characteristics of drivers and receivers for use in serial communications systems. Electrical signaling is balanced, and Telecomm ...

and physical interfaces for

peripheral A peripheral device, or simply peripheral, is an auxiliary hardware device that a computer uses to transfer information externally. A peripheral is a hardware component that is accessible to and controlled by a computer but is not a core compo ...

devices using commonly-available

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

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 a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows ...

connects to the I/O board via a

Type-A to USB Type-B interface cable, and

s 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 ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

and

Shift-JIS Shift JIS (also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by the Japanese company ASCII Corporation in conjunction with Microsoft and standardized as JIS ...

output;

device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

s 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, computer mice, scanne ...

s; a device driver for a

mahjong Mahjong (English pronunciation: ; also transliterated as mah jongg, mah-jongg, and mahjongg) is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. It is played ...

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 c ...

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.

References

External links