Penora Arcade
Home | KLAX by Atari | Fooseball | Shuffle Champ by Bally | Crazy Shaman by Yamasa | English Mark Darts 4500 by Arachnid | Aztec by Williams | Arkanoid by Romstar | Fire! by Williams | Pepsi Machine | Mappy by Namco licensed by Bally/Midway | Time Pilot by Centuri | Continental Circus by Taito | Turbo by Sega | Stargate MAME Project | Mega Zone by Konami | The Simpson's Pinball Party








Continental Circus by Taito

I bought this machine broken and turned it into a TV for the arcade.

I found this machine on eBay. A third party was selling this non-working game for a client. I picked it up with the intension of turning it into a arcade themed TV. I brought it home and took out the monitor. I bought a TV, took that apart and put it in place of the monitor. I put a little hole in the cardboard monitor bezel so the remote sensor can see the remote.

This worked great as a TV but what was really bothering me was that the game appeared complete. When I first got the machine I fiddled with it to try to get it to work but to no avail. What was wrong with this?

Well my Arkanoid machine started freezing up on me so I opened her up to mess around. I took out the power supply and decided to try putting it into CC. I took the TV out (and put it into Stargate) put the monitor back in and fired her up. Holy crap, it's working! All that was needed was to adlust the monitor and gas pedal.

I admit I had never heard of this game before. I figured that if I got it running I could sell it to make room for some other game in my arcade. Once I started playing it I became addicted. The feature I enjoy most with this game is the random rain showers. You never know when they will come but when they do you better head for the pits!

From KLOV:

Manufacturer: Taito
Year: 1987
Class: Wide Release
Genre: Racing
Type: Videogame

Monitor:

  • Orientation: Horizontal
  • Type: Raster: Standard Resolution
  • CRT: Color
Conversion Class: unique
Number of Simultaneous Players: 1
Maximum number of Players: 1
Gameplay: Single
Control Panel Layout: Single Player
Controls:
  • Steering: Wheel
  • Shifter: 2-position (low, high)
  • Pedals: 1

Sound: Amplified Stereo (two channel)

 Continental Circuit - Cabinet Image


 


Description

Drive a race car throughout different countries.

Cabinet Information

This game comes in both upright or sit-down models. Some sit-down models may feature shutter-type 3-D glasses hanging above the player's head. To enable this unique feature, make sure you set the DIP switch setting is set to "3-D mode."

Game Introduction

A driving game with a High/Low shift and one pedal (no break).

Game Play

This is basically your beat-the-clock type of racing. However, if you get hit by a passing car or track barriers, your car will begin to smoke, meaning you'll have to stop at a nearby pitstop to have your car extinguished. Otherwise, the smoke will develop into fire, which will cause your car to explode, wasting precious time when you start up again. Your car will also explode if you get hit again, after getting hit once.

Trivia

The game's title screen reads Continental Circus. This is yet another classic example of a mistranslation from Japanese to English. According to Taito's Japanese game history page, the katakana pronunciation for this title is actually "Continental Circus", but since this racing game has absolutely nothing to do with a circus, the word "Circuit" makes much more sense. All the artwork on the US games were corrected to say "Circuit", yet the original Taito PCBs are labeled "Circus".

 

NOTE: Some simple research on the web has shown me that there was a traveling race called Continental Circus that toured Europe. Perhaps it's named for that?


  

Peaces inc.