At VGP we’ve been privileged to work with some rare and unusual hardware over the years. Recently we helped organise a repair and refurbishment of a Pioneer Laseractive system for a customer here in Ireland. 2026 wasn’t done with sending us rare and esoteric hardware however, as an e-mail came in shortly after requesting a digital video upgrade for a Toaplan 2 arcade board.
Making Toaplans
Toaplan 2 is an arcade platform from the early 1990s designed for colourful, highly detailed sprite based video games. Based around a 68000 CPU and with powerful custom graphics hardware, games running on the board were released throughout the 90s, even after Toaplan’s unfortunate demise in 1994.
To add digital video and audio output to this particular arcade board, we can use the excellent CPS2 digital upgrade. Created by Markus Hiienkari of OSSC fame, this hardware modification adds custom digital video output and low latency scaling to a number of arcade boards, including the Toapan 2.
Our best laid Toaplans go awry
Given the rarity of Toaplan 2 hardware and the complexity of installing the upgrade, it’s fair to say that there haven’t been a lot of installations performed since the modification came out. The first stumbling block was immediately obvious when the board arrived with our service partners, BetaGamma Computing. Rather than resemble the Toaplan 2 board documented on the projects Github, the hardware that was received looked completely different. This lead us to believe for a moment that it was, in fact, a Toaplan 1 board instead, however that could not be possible since the game on the board was Truxton 2, clearly a Toaplan 2 only release.
Unfortunately for us, it seems that the Toaplan 2 hardware went through a number of revisions in its lifetime. The hook up points for the digital upgrade, as identified by Markus originally, simply didn’t exist on this board. A search for schematics yielded nothing. Fortunately, both Markus and Bas at BetaGamma were able to work together to figure out new hook up points and make this upgrade a reality. This installation will also be fully documented on the Github for the wider retrogaming community.
When a Toaplan comes together
Here we have the finished article, running the extremely challenging Truxton 2.
Truxton 2 is a game which runs in tate or portrait mode. The digital video upgrade itself cannot rotate the image, however the impressive new Morph 4K beta firmware can, with aplomb. What’s most impressive about this new functionality is that it can rotate any signal from 240p up to 720p. If you need 480p output from the board for recording, but still want to rotate the signal for your monitor, the Morph 4K can do that no problem. This is significantly better than the RetroTINK 4K Pro, which can only rotate 240p signals, despite being more than twice the price of the ‘humble’ Morph. If you need a scaler with rotation, definitely consider picking up the Morph 4K when it is back in stock.
Unfortunately for us, the new screenshot function on the Morph 4K didn’t exist while we were in possession of the board, so a few phone camera photos will have to suffice, even if they don’t quite do it justice.
Enough with the Toa-puns already!
Another exciting retro project comes to an end. We asked the customer for some words on how they intended to use this new hardware, and they very kindly told us the following.
I plan to play it at home (using a Supergun) rather than at an arcade. This game is extremely difficult, so I often record my gameplay to review it later—and I want to ensure the highest possible video and audio quality for those recordings.
Of course, I realise that *Truxton II* (*Tatsujin Oh*) can now be played via emulators or on home platforms (such as Steam) with an experience comparable to the original hardware. However, I specifically want to play it on the actual arcade hardware and record that gameplay.
Naturally, we wish our customer all the best of luck chasing those high scores and world records on this very challenging game! If you need a retro hardware repair or upgrade job of your own, you can trust BetaGamma Computing to perform the work to the very highest standards. Reach out to us today to discuss your requirements, you can find the contact form here.
