Astro City 9-Pin Kick Harness Quick Connect Guide

A headspinning number of wire colour conversions needed to make my Kick Harness Quick Connector.

My Astro City cabinet was factory wired for 2-Player, 6-Button each fun, which is great, but it was using a Sega proprietary connector. Also, someone had already butchered it to install a CPS2 harness before I bought it. Then I did some research, and found some inspiration online (which is a good guide in itself) in making a custom 9-Pin quick connector for my Astro. Why not wire it so I can change games really easily!

Because a wiring guide wasn’t readily availible for the stock standard Sega harness, I basically reverse looked it up using the already installed CPS2 harness.

Using this CPS2 wiring guide from JAMMA Nation (PDF), I figured out what Sega Astro JAMMA kick harness wire did what. Well guess what – I’ve already done all the work for you and put it in a pretty spreadsheet that has Mortal Kombat/CPS1/CPS2 and Sega Controller (that’s if you want to use their connectors if you have spares like I did – I wouldn’t recommend it, it’s a bit of a pain in the ass. Just buy new connectors, damn.)

This is merely an excerpt of the spreadsheet. Grab the full sheet with everything explained!

This is the Sega Factory wiring colour coding you need:

Pl 1	1	White/Red
	2	White/Blue
	3	White/Yellow
Pl 2	4	White/Orange
	5	White/Black
	6	White/Grey
Common	Gnd	White/Green
	Gnd	White/Purple

I have the Grounds on mine connected together. Works fine.

I used a 9-Pin connector I found in my computer spare parts box that had an (extremely convinient) ribbon cable attached to it. If you follow my map in the spreadsheet, I show how each pin is connected easily. I used Sega Mega Drive controller ends because, well, they fit, and I had a box full of broken controllers (for some reason). The wiring in those is actually quite thin and annoying to work with and I honestly would recommend just buying some new connectors so you can solder your own wires to them.

There’s also no reason why you can’t solder ground wires into the pins on that connector, but I ultimately just decided that I would twist the grounds on CPS1/2 harnesses into Common Ground. It’s just as easy.

In the future I’ll post about how I created a UMK3 and CPS1 harness using floppy drive cables (probably also easier just to eBay these, but if you have spare gear and feel like harder work splitting a few wires, you can do that too). At least if you buy the harnesses off eBay you can solder the cable colours directly into the correct pins using my map and not muck around with a Multimeter checking yourself all the time.

So basically, follow my wiring spreadsheet and make yourself a really easy Kick Harness swapping system (with basic soldering). All you have to do is make sure you’re competent with a soldering iron and electrical tape wrapping your new connections.