Has anybody here got themselves an actual Arcade machine at home?

I could get a pinball machine AND a stand up cabinet game, i spose?

How resilient are they? I'm guessing very.

From the local arcade shop (in which I spend far too much time):

http://www.arcadeheaven.co.uk/supergun.html

They're pretty amazing, and if you've got a pair of arcade sticks they can wire them up to it for you. Quite pricey, but still cheaper/more convenient than a cabinet.

xposts

i'm sure i've seen someone on slashdot who did something similar with a pc and mame and could play pretty much anything on it via emulation.

There's been some articles about this in RetroGamer, where they were getting people to scour the UK for arcades that still had cool or obscure old machines (rather than a dozen Daytonas and a bunch of fruit machines or wtf you call those things). Apparently when arcade owners realised their worth they up and sold them on ebay to private collectors, GAH.

However, I did see one of the greatest fines: Joust cocktail table!

http://www.thenewgamer.com/img/screens/cal_extreme_2004/joust_cocktail.jpg

the game has since be relocated, unfortunately.

I'm not a huge fan of those type of consoles. I mean, except for taking a written exam, there's not one other activity that humans perform naturally in that postition. It is convienent to set your beer on, though.

The tables gone now, but yeah I don't really like playing in that position either. I'm not sure which game I'm looking for, Joust would be nice but Bubble Bobble would be perfect (tho I expect a lot more expensive and rare)

i have an arcade machine (JAMMA) and 2 shmups - Mars Matrix and Gigawing. both of them are pretty great games - Gigawing is one of the few shmups i've played that seems to be reasonably beatable on 1 quarter , while Mars Matrix walks a nice line between being fairly difficult yet still really fun. I've played hundreds of games of Mars Matrix and i still haven't perfected the cube chain on level 1, while the first couple levels of Gigawing are sort of a chore to get through.

my buddy is trying to convince me to build a MAME arcade machine, which i will do as soon as i can find room in my house for it...

man, i SO want a mame arcade cabinet.

How much do they run now? Could you order one for under a grand?
The only problem I have with a MAME cabinet is that it strikes me as the "I got a real job!" equivalent of leaving dioramas of action figures around the house. You really gotta be married or something.

i doubt you can get a MAME cabinet for under a grand, but w/ a little work you could build yourself a pretty great machine for that or less. there's a NEO GEO cabinet w/ a 29" screen up on ebay right now (and in my area) for $650....tempting! you can throw an older PC in there (2 ghz should be plenty), video card about $65, then another $100 or so on buttons/joysticks/wiring harnesses etc.

my cabinet resides in the kitchen right now and surprisingly, my wife has never complained about it.

My friend had a New Zealand Story arcade machine in his kitchen. It would have been cool but it was broken.

MAME cabinet wld be cool (I did not know those cld exist!) but for buying a regular machine, it would probably get tiresome to play only that game unless you were a Billy Mitchell type. Pinball seems a lot nicer to have around (altho I suck at it).

When I was five, I decided to raise some money by painting rocks and selling them for 10¢ each to people in our apartment complex. There was a house with two young men who had an arcade game in their OWN HOUSE (which, as a little girl, was my equivalent of seeing someone with a pony farm or something). Man, I thought they were so cool, just the coolest. Plus they bought a lot of rocks from me. A classic memory.

YOu guys ready to see something that will blow your mind?

Hold on a few seconds.

This URL goes out to my peeps in 77:

http://lunacityarcade.com/photos.htm

wow. i would go to play dragon's lair, but the dude has some pretty lame pinball machines

woah i like barely remember that star trek game

you can change the games out on regular machines, abbott. usually. some of the games are pretty expensive, tho - mars matrix cost me $200, gigawing was $100. on the plus side, i could easily re-sell them for what i paid

xp

i would love to get 8 ball deluxe pinball machine

all I cd think when looking at those pics was "ELECTRICITY BILL"

that luna guy is pretty dope. It's the carpet that sells me.

bahaha cozwn OTM

At least he didn't kill his property taxes too much by making it look like a chicken shack

The only problem I have with a MAME cabinet is that it strikes me as the "I got a real job!" equivalent of leaving dioramas of action figures around the house. You really gotta be married or something.

This is beyond awesome, but I would never have one in the house: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/tardis/

Dude put the Doctor autograph on the inside of his tardis where it can't be seen to protect it from "dust and grime"!

that luna guy is pretty dope. It's the carpet that sells me.

No Kidding. Can't wait until the kid gets a little older.

http://www.wickedretarded.com/~crapmame/

ha! ^ SA-ish commentary gets old but some real gems in there

ya the writing is superdouche - I AM FURIOUS ABOUT MAMES!!!!!

a friend of mine had an arcade machine with two control points and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles side-scrolling beat 'em up on it. Think he left it in a shed and it got destroyed because of damp. I would have totally taken it off him if I knew he was going to fail so bad with its storage.

http://www.juliensauctions.com/auctions/2009/michael-jackson/icatalog4.html

This URL goes out to my peeps in 77:

http://lunacityarcade.com/photos.htm

― •--• --- --- •--• (Pleasant Plains), Thursday, February 19, 2009 2:05 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pay phone nice touch

I want want of these http://www.zax.com.au/egret2.html pretty bad (not going to happen though)

oh god yes... they're not that expensive by all accounts ($300 or am I dreaming?) but getting hold of one will be a pain

I might be dreaming w/that figure. I know the taito viewlix cabs are an unholy price (about $20k each and you have to buy 4 at a time), but they're HD and current and all that jazz

http://www.coinopexpress.com/products/machines/cabinets_only/Egret_2__Taito_JAMMA_cabinet_658.html

I looked at that site yesterday, but the freight...
"freight costs for 1 unit only normally costs approx $600-1200usd per cabinet"

It seems you can get some deals, via group buys and stuff people organize on a couple of forums a year, but it does seem like a pain...

jonesing for a cab? I don't have the space (or the money tbh) for one at the moment; but I'd love one I could switch 3S and ST on

both run fine in MAME :)

yeah, but it's not the same is it :P and I expect I'd hook up MAME (if possible) were I to get an egret

But the apartment had been on the market for months now, and Kooluris hadn’t gotten a single offer. His real estate agent begged him to lower the price, but now he had a better idea: Keep it and turn the bedroom into an arcade. That way, he reasoned, he could enjoy married life while still having a place to be surrounded by his prized possessions

In March, Kooluris’ fiancée gave him back the engagement ring. He hid it somewhere in the arcade; he won’t tell me exactly where. He moved out of her Brooklyn place and back to his old bachelor pad—only, of course, he’d sold the bed and turned the bedroom into an arcade. “This is not where I wanted to end up, just living in an arcade,” he says. One day when his ex came over to see the finished project, he showed her that he was sleeping on a convertible sofa bed with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bedspread. “Well, at least I don’t need to worry that this room will ever get another woman wet,” is how he recalls her reaction. (Kooluris’ ex-fiancée declined to participate in this story.)

oof depressing

fuckin' manchildren. especially ones w/money.

i can kinda relate - i've had strife in my marriage before bc i got too invested in a particular video game or video game community. but a) we worked out a veto so my wife can nix a particular video game any time she thinks i've gotten too obsessed. thank goodness she wields that power pretty sparingly. also b) even playing WoW for hours and hours didn't ring up close to a similar bill as this dude.

life as heavy-handed metaphor

I can relate extremely well to this guy; there but for growing up middle class go I. I spent countless hours at that Nathan's arcade in Yonkers too, but I settled for the SNES versions of the game years later, never considering to actually buy a cabinet. This story is a little sad, but I wouldn't find it completely depressing - at least he has something he loves, and clearly the financial security to change his life or find someone who will ride with it.

Two months rent in Manhattan is $32K?

http://eil.com/images/main/Herbie+Hancock+-+Man-Child+-+LP+RECORD-507642.jpg

A brand new Ms. Pac-Man—‘really, just for the ladies,” he says.

RONG

I mean, there's your problem right there.

yeah, seriously, Ms. Pac-Man is clearly the better game, and that's why you'd want it

A vice president at Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s leading PR firms, Kooluris has been in the marketing and promotion business for 12 years. One of the highlights of his career involved his second love after gaming: Guns N’ Roses. He is an unabashed GNR fanatic, and he credits himself with getting Axl Rose to finally release the album Chinese Democracy. In early 2008, he persuaded his then-client Dr. Pepper to offer everyone in the US a coupon for a free soda if Rose released the long-delayed record. “Total guerrilla marketing,” he says.

This seems as good a thread as any for this: I have finally got round to starting (well, so far just buying bits for) building a MAME cabinet. I was hit with redundancy from my work, and figured I'd have loads of time on my hands for a project like this, then I managed to get another job that starts right after I finish here! BUT, I'm already too far in with the buying to back out now, so it looks like it'll be a weekend/evening job.

So, with my shady DIY skills, I'm anticipating building one of the crappy looking attempts linked way up thread, but it might work out looking good, right? Can't decide if this is a terrible idea or not, but it's something I've been talking about for over 3 years. I have all my joystick components, and have made sure I have all my drill bits and such ready to go - now I just need to buy some MDF to get started on the actual build.

In my head I'm thinking it's a great idea (ignoring my lack of DIY prowess) to make the joystick section fairly removable/interchangeable, as I'm going with 2 players at first, but if it goes well I'd like to build a 4-stick+button controller for Turtles, Gauntlet, Simpsons, etc...

BTW, all the little things sure start to add up, and I'm genuinely surprised at the cost! It was about £130 for the joystick components, and I've spent another £80 on drill bits, rulers, t-squares, etc. Reckon the wood/plexiglass/etc for the cabinet frame is going to run about another £130, and that's before the cost of a PC + monitor, speakers, paint/vinyl artwork. Fortunately I already have a old-but-new-ish desktop PC and 23" monitor I can use in it.

Not sure if there'll be any interest in this, but I'll try and post wee updates as I achieve anything anyway...

I'm also hoping once I build this and my wife is accepting of it, I can then buy a pinball table to go next to it.

it just occurred to me that i haven't been in an arcade for several years. do they still have video game-style arcade machines in there, or has the home gaming market completely overtaken this industry now?

Around here there's a few 'amusements' places, which are mostly filled with gambling machines, but have a few arcade machines. I feel like every single one is an 'environment' (for want of a better word) kind of game - i.e. it's racing games where you sit in a bucket seat and have a steering wheel, or it's light gun games, etc. Don't know if anyone actually still does 'joystick+buttons' arcade machines these days.

yeah i figured those kinds of machines would be the only way to do this. when i was a gamer, arcade machines were still considered slightly more advanced than home games, so there was a reason kids would invest in playing them. i guess the majority of video games these days are played over days and weeks alone or over the net rather than just half-hour sessions with a mate.

anyway, your project sounds interesting. good luck with it!

Amazing, and I'm genuinely interested, keep the updates coming.

sounds like a great project. Jealous!

Day-trip to Margate over Christmas - my fiancee intended it as a healthy improving family trip (cold cold sea air + turner contemporary gallery) but I dodged aside (with step-son) to wander round the arcades a bit. Mostly, yeah, fruities, coin shovers, and a few big race and shoot games. But really enjoyed 'Dreamland' - it's basically a shabby undecorated concrete space with a load of 50s-70s pinball tables & other amusements.

I don't remember the last time I saw a pinball machine in the wild...

Margate is one of the weirdest towns I've ever visited. Didn't go into an arcade though as there were Thanet EDL members hanging around outside.

I have an idle dream (one among many) of using my rudimentary craftsman and electronics skills to build/refurbish a Paperboy cabinet for my girlfriend someday. No idea where we'd actually put it if I did, but it seems like a fun project with enough of a unique interface to make it worth the effort.

My friend has a Neo Geo multi-cart cabinet in his basement that he got years ago, before he was married. We start it up occasionally and screw around for a while. I think the color is starting to get messed up.

Turner Contemporary is excellent! And some great 2nd hand furniture places in Margate, and one place that did an ace hamburger.

oh yeah. i liked the abandoned rollercoaster and the mods and rockers exhibition we visited. cool to see grown-up rocker families just strolling around the place.

<3 margate so much i go every summer -- amazing waffles w/ ice cream :P

I always visit this place whenever I'm in Las Vegas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Hall_of_Fame

Couple of jobs back, the big boss had a MAME cabinet in his house. Thought it was great and would love to have one of my own. Please update!

are people talking about margate england or margate nj with lucy the elephant and my father's childhood

It looks like:
3/4 (me, stevie, dl) = england
1/4 (mordy) = nj

you're missing out on a hell of an elephant

def the english one though i bet margate nj is good times too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kzpHzUJCd4

Ha, my dad grew up in Atlantic City and I, too, went through a moment of hope that there was still a really awesome arcade down there.

So... making an arcade cabinet takes a long time when you're doing it in tiny bits in between work and looking after a baby. My achievement in the last 10 days is to get my control panel measured up, and all the button holes/joystick holes cut out. I did a wee test-fit of all my buttons just to see that I've cut them the right size, etc, which you can check out here. If you use your crazy hacking skills you will find my never-viewed blog where I'm documenting what the heck I'm up to.

Btw, if you do look at the pic, the holes for the joysticks are deliberately that size - there are microswitch connectors that stick out in all 4 directions, so it needs a lot of space. The plan is to top that sheet of MDF with two layers of clear 2mm acrylic, betwixt which will be sandwiched some vinyl or something to make it look prettier. So, once that's done, it'll hide the joystick cavities, and my many pencil marks. Hoping I can get time to cut the acrylic this weekend, so I can start on wiring it up!

Then there's just the small matter of building the entire rest of the cabinet.

So I finished the joystick panel. The black look is just temporary - eventually I'll replace it with a vinyl graphic, but this it looks decent as a gloss black panel (though you can see the metal of the joystick mount at the moment, too). http://imgur.com/hOz4nxr

Cutting the plexiglass layers was a total ball ache.

shiny!

that is lovely

Cool!

not seeing the pic

Doesn't seem to show up in the App, weirdly. I'll try just the URL rather than IMG tags:
http://imgur.com/hOz4nxr

oh wow that's so cool.

optimized for SF = dope in my book

That looks great!

So much respect for ppl who build their own stuff

It's been slow going, as I had to take a bit of a break to strip out and re-decorate a room that will be its resting place, but I'm just about done with my arcade cabinet. The next step is designing some graphics which I'll get printed on vinyl to cover the sides, kickplate, marquee and around the plexiglass (that will eventually be going) over the screen.

http://imgur.com/UjUaQ1D

Progress now is really patchy, as it's fully functional, so every time I go down to work on something I do at most half an hour of work then find myself playing games for ages instead. Oh, and my cost estimates upthread were pretty laughable, in hindsight.

I also found a wordpress site that has loads of articles on building your own pinball machine (not sure my wife would be ok with that though - she plans on having a sofa and such in the room, instead of just my video games/projects):
https://howtobuildapinballmachine.wordpress.com/

that looks rad! How much are you ending up paying?

Excluding the cost of tools I had to buy, I think I'm close to £450. Including tools (including the actual power tools and any drill bits, etc) it's more like £650. I have a detailed spreadsheet that I've stopped looking at/updating, but will revisit at the end...

I reckon printing the vinyl stickers will run me anywhere from £60-£100 on top of that, but that's the last purchase I have to make now (I think). That cost also hides the fact I got a free monitor from someone, my brother bought me a Raspberry Pi2 which is actually running the emulators, and there were things I already had like a keyboard/mouse, decent speaker wire, etc. Those obviously would have bumped the cost a fair bit.

nice work!

Ha, 5 months ago I was 'nearly finished'... Welp, here it is basically finished:
https://amanplayszelda.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/2016-01-31-13-26-14.jpg?w=800

Opted for Space Invaders art work. Not super happy with the text being cut off, but that's bad planning for you! I'll likely revisit it later and either replace it or patch it to remove the partial text, if I can be bothered...

Glorious! (the wide, flat screen looks more incongruous than the scoop out of the lettering imo)

congrats!