As evidenced by numerous post on the forum, lots of folks here have some serious arcade hardware and setups. I thought this thread could be a place to share knowledge, ask questions and generally bask in the phosphorescent glow of arcade gaming.
I personally have a dedicated **Centipede** cab, a pieced together **Capcom Bowling** cab, a Taito **Ice Cold Beer** machine (more of a mechanical amusement but it fits here I think) and a Windy City supergun. For boards I have a **CPS1 SFII The World Warrior, CPS1 Pang 3, Tekken, Tekken 3, Soul Blade** and a non-working **Strikers 1945**.
Does anyone here have experience with repairing arcade boards? The Strikers 1945 board popped something a while back and I'm useless when it comes to things like that.
@tomjonjon I always wanted an arcade machine, and I still might get one eventually, but my thinking about it has changed from a decade ago when I was desperate to one day have one, but had to constantly pass up good deals because I didn’t have the space for it. These days I’m just not even sure what game I would want, despite having much more space for one. I’m also wary of the ever climbing price of some of my favourites in the collector’s market, and the declining average condition of said favourites.
That said, there are a few I would jump at in the unlikely event that I found them— I would eagerly buy a Forgotten Worlds cabinet, of a NeoGeo cabinet, or a Pac Man/Pac Man Plus cocktail!
Mostly I enjoy living vicariously through everyone’s cool home setups they post here! In some other universe I’d have a bunch of late 70’s or early 80’s machines in my garage!
I bought it from my old boss with an MVS, an STV and a bunch of games, for $500. Those were the days, eh?
In addition to those I now have an F3, a zn-2, and a few games for each. I've got a bunch of random boards including a Spanish pc engine->jamma conversion, Mr driller, Gals panic S, and just a bunch of nonsense. I wish I had an F2 motherboard since I do have a Growl b board.
I guess my favorite thing is my F3 and I wish I could afford more games for it, but they're just way out there in the zone now. I got most of my collection either through friends, or when stuff was dirt cheap in Japan (got the F3 motherboard for 20 bucks and elevator action returns for what was a lot of money at the time... 60 bucks...). That means my collection has kind of stagnated for many years!
One thing I‘ve done recently is buy “junk” stuff on ebay and ask @milo to repair it, which sometimes he can. So if you’re wondering who here can fix stuff, there's your answer! But even that has gone up in price. I wanted to buy p-47 (jaleco), but a junk board just went for $300. The junk board of outfoxies I was eyeing went for $420 (lol). OH WELL.
Anyhoo, arcade games are fun but expensive, and if I had a bunch more money I'd turn this one into a tate cab and get something Naomi compatible for my yoko games. But I gotta get rich first!
When I was in my early teenage years I saved up my money and my mom drove me to an arcade vendor I found in the yellow pages and I bought a 1 slot MVS board and some carts. I wired up a very rudimentary supergun inside of one of those big plastic pencil cases (lol!) using a jamma harness, a small PC power supply, some DB15 connectors to plug two neo geo sticks into, and a video encoder that output both composite and S-Video. The board itself had stereo out that I could plug directly into the tv. I think the encoder was called “j-roc”? This would have been around 2001-2002. The carts I remember having were Samurai Shodown 3, Zupapa!, and Shock Troopers 2. I may have had a couple of others. I remember the picture being awesome over S-Video. I played a ton of Samurai Shodown 3, it’s my favorite in the series to this day. The hard slash is brutal I love it. My older brother and his friends would come by really stoned sometimes and play video games with me. They would be so amused seeing this weird setup with wires going everywhere and arcade games on the TV it was fun! When I boot up neo geo games on my MiSTer I always think about how stoked my younger self would have been to have something like that.
I‘d love a Puck-Man arcade cabinet. I like the look of the Pac-Mania 1up machine, but I tested it at the store and didn’t like the controls or wifi-requirements.
I would always check local listings for an mvs cab as a pipe dream, but I live in an NYC apartment so that's all it ever was. At least now with the MiSTer and a couple fightsticks I feel like I essentially have the next best thing.
Would not mind a FunHouse table and a candy cab if I ever win the lottery though.
I had always dreamed of owning my own “Metal Slug Machine” as kid. My friends and I would envision how we might turn different rooms in our houses into our own personal arcade.
I started collecting my own cabinets around 2017. An Outrun machine popped up on the local craigslist and I said, hey that'd be a fun novelty to have, so we went for it and it sat in the dining room. Then a couple weeks later, the same guy was selling a big red Neo Geo MVS. I said, well... I guess I need that and bought it too. A child hood dream was fulfilled, I had my Metal Slug Machine. I told the wife and the roommates, okay that's it, I swear... but that was not the case. We kept on collecting and collecting until the dining room filled up... then the garage at the mother in law's house.
And finally... we took the plunge and opened up our own arcade here in town. I've been doing repairs on game stuff for a long time and the business side of that was growing, so I needed a shop anyway and all the games were just sitting there for us to enjoy so we figured we'd put a whole place together. We've been "soft open" for about a month now and so far it's been a blast. We're very excited for the future.
My favorites in my collection:
-Neo Geo MVS
-Aero City candy with a Sega Genesis loaded into it (pretty sure I've posted this one here before)
-Outrun
-Defender cocktail
And yeah @tomjonjon feel free to send me a note if you'd like to ask questions about your busted 1945 board!
Took my kid to a Chuck E. Cheese in Dayton and it was loaded with Eugene Jarvis‘s Raw Thrills arcade games. It’s like discovering a bunch of Xbox 360 games that are arcade only:
The Batman game is basically Burnout with shooting mechanics. Looked awesome (thats my son in the Mario costume btw - not my idea...). They also had a 4 player TMNT 2018 game based on the Nickelodeon 3D cartoon I forgot to take a picture of.
Didn't get to stay long or play anything because my kid is only 3, but I'll probably go back at some point. Awesome that Raw Thrills is keeping the classic Midway vibes alive. So I guess check out Chuck E. Cheese if you're looking for newish arcade games???
Big Bumping this thread to see if anyone has any Supergun recommendations? HAS and Axunworks obviously but the long wait times and low communication are less than ideal. A prebuilt Minigun would be ideal but I haven’t found any places to buy them.
I have no PCBs or even a CRT so I’m debating whether I’m crazy enough to start here or if I should just get a Saturn instead lol.
@Sun_Crypt saturn games have gotten expensive but arcade boards have gotten ridiculous so I dunno if you really want to go down that road. and emulation is not that bad!
I can say that as someone with an arcade machine and a bunch of boards even I'm wondering what to do, because getting more boards feels like... impossible or foolish or etc at this point because of both price and the space they occupy, which then makes me feel like what's the point of having any of them if this is the finite number I can interact with?
That said, superguns are cool, and @sklathill has a couple he likes, but I‘m not sure if he’s still looking around here!
@exodus oh I’m definitely familiar with emulation and MAME. I like the idea of collecting some MVS and IGS PGM carts and the like, but if my final goal is to play Arcade games on a CRT then there are definitely more reasonable routes to go down, and lots of ports to contemporary home consoles. I may like the idea of collecting arcade games, but in practice it may be excessive? It's sad to hear you feel doubts on your cool collection. Your candy cab is sweet!
@TracyDMcGrath yeah the mister is sitting there while I debate this being the more obvious choice. But I‘m not being entirely logical with any of this lol. I’d have to get a big SSD too
Like most things in this world, this stuff was way easier to get into and enjoy a couple decades ago … and got exponentially harder every year for the last 5-10 years. I have a garage full of arcade stuff, and it was all acquired during a time when it was all considered someone else‘s broken junk. Now it’s expensive junk that I'm too attached to for my own good.
It's a dangerously illogical sub-genre of game collecting. The edge that drops into a downhill slide of hoarding and madness is really, really close to the starting line. Especially if your brain takes an endorphin hit from fixing/restoring objects.
The sensible route is what Exodus is doing and have just one Candy Cab (preferably with a monitor rotation mechanism) to use for JAMMA games. From there you have options to use adapters and/or modular control panels for anything exotic. Then it's just boards and/or JAMMA Pi's/Misters/Whatevers. Hopefully contained in so far that things only take up a portion of a closet.
PS Writing this I realized I'm in a bit of a bad mood and I am being kind of a downer :P Just ... if you have a hoarding gene, you've been warned!
@sosadillatron Yeah, my ideal setup is two candy cabs, one horizontal, one vertical. Mine does rotate, but it takes like 30 minutes and I have never done it and don't want to do it ever (lol). I should probably try it once for one of my gals panic games or something.
Back when I started getting into it, and I think I‘ve told this story… somewhere, I bought a taito F3 game, and my friends @chazumaru were SCANDALIZED that I wasn’t getting the motherboard for free (it was like 3,000 yen). The last time they had come if you bought any F3 game you got a free board because they just had too many. Anyway during that time I decided there was a game I really liked, so I'd spend more than I wanted to - I really went back and forth on it, like do I spend this much money? I dunno, I do like the game… etc. That game was Elevator Action Returns and the “too expensive” price I paid was around 6,500 yen. At the time I think it was just over 50 bucks. Meanwhile, now:
It has just gotten ridiculous now!! I simultaneously wish I'd gotten more then, and also that I'd gotten none, ha ha.
I realized I had to stop when I was buying hoards of junk boards and sending them to @milo faster than he can fix them (and a lot of them are truly junk or only good for parts). So NOW I‘m done unless it’s like… I meet a friend who wants to trade, or whatever.
@exodus I don’t have a great memory about that kind of stuff but being scandalized about F3 mistreatment definitely sounds like my kind of European overreacting so I totally believe it.
@exodus Yeah! Prices are really dumb right now … or depending on perspective, the prices we were getting stuff for was stupid low! :P
Taito F3 is something I kept meaning to get into, but didn't. But Elevator Action Returns! You went with a good one! :)
I was really into the Capcom CPS systems for a while, and didn't realize how good I had it with $50-$80 CPS2 B-boards until those Multikits hit and the prices ballooned, which is the opposite of what I expected. I thought the Multikits would make the CPS libraries way more accessible and keep the boards cheap. I guess this is why I am not an economist!
