Buying an arcade

[EnterTheHatrix]

Build one... It's significantly cheaper than buying one.. Trust me!

You could build an entire MAME cabinate with built in screen and joypad for around $300, complete with acrylic header cathode backlight, and vinyl prints for authenticity.

yeah you forgot about the computer price. if you didnt please link me to where you get stuff so cheap

Seriously, with computer..

I can pick up a PC with a 15" LCD that will run MAME for £100.
Big MDF / ply boards for £20 a piece (might need 3 or 4 depending on the size), vinyl for £1 a meter, Plexi for £10 which is more than enough for what you need. and black spray paint for £5 a can. 2x 6 button arcade pads for pennies, depending on what you want.

And I live in rip off England... USA should be a lot cheaper.

Total cost for me should be around £200, tops.

If I had the room and money I'd build one to prove a point.

[dudex77]

Build one... It's significantly cheaper than buying one.. Trust me!

You could build an entire MAME cabinate with built in screen and joypad for around $300, complete with acrylic header cathode backlight, and vinyl prints for authenticity.

yeah you forgot about the computer price. if you didnt please link me to where you get stuff so cheap

Seriously, with computer..

I can pick up a PC with a 15" LCD that will run MAME for £100.
Big MDF / ply boards for £20 a piece (might need 3 or 4 depending on the size), vinyl for £1 a meter, Plexi for £10 which is more than enough for what you need. and black spray paint for £5 a can. 2x 6 button arcade pads for pennies, depending on what you want.

And I live in rip off England... USA should be a lot cheaper.

Total cost for me should be around £200, tops.

If I had the room and money I'd build one to prove a point.

crap. please prove it with links and how good of a pc are we talking and where do you get arcade controls so cheap if you can show me ill umm.. worship you?

[EnterTheHatrix]

crap. please prove it with links and how good of a pc are we talking and where do you get arcade controls so cheap if you can show me ill umm.. worship you?

links of what? wood? Go to any hardware store or builders yard and you can get it dirt cheap...

The PC is powerful enough to run a MAME, 40gb HDD, 64mb graphics, 512MB SD RAM, 1.6ghz AMD processor..

Whilst a crap PC, it's enough for MAME.

My local Gamestation has arcade pads for £15 each..

[Metroid fan]

I bought an old Playchoice 10 for 40$ and it's worth 400 to 500 dollers

[Bibin]

Eew, LCD for an arcade game?

[atari2600a]

I agree, ew. LCD's are the SuXX0rZ for emulation. CRT FTW!!!

[EnterTheHatrix]

I agree, ew. LCD's are the SuXX0rZ for emulation. CRT FTW!!!

I was thinking more weight issue when I said LCD, but CRT is even cheaper...

[dudex77]

yeah i suppose you got me there, well what i decided im going to do is make 2 arcade machines a table top dreamcast one (way simple nothing like i originally planned, basically a dreamcast a crt vga moniter and some joysticks in a nice case) and a stand up xbox one (ill just mod my xbox and run mame on it but i would also use the cabinet to house all my other consoles) they would both look nice because the xbox would use a pal screen with scart connector(closest you can get to authentic arcade without being authentic) and the dreamcast would use vga ( i like using parentheses)

[atari2600a]

I might be wrong here, but I *think* the original Xbox can output VGA too. Once again, I haven't looked too much into the Xbox enough to be sure. Someone check me on this.

[dudex77]

I might be wrong here, but I *think* the original Xbox can output VGA too. Once again, I haven't looked too much into the Xbox enough to be sure. Someone check me on this.

as far as i know it cant plus i dont really care because for a large vga screen id totally be paying up the ass where ass just a 25 inch or whatever tv i can get at the market for maybe 50 euros

[atari2600a]

Ah, right! Sorry, I'm just so used to CRT's being in extreme surplus. (over here, I have probably like 8-10 12-18" CRT's just lying around, & plus you can get them very easily for free off Craigslist)

[dudex77]

Ah, right! Sorry, I'm just so used to CRT's being in extreme surplus. (over here, I have probably like 8-10 12-18" CRT's just lying around, & plus you can get them very easily for free off Craigslist)

well i need bigger than 18 i have a perfectly good 17 inch but beside the fact its being used for the dc its too small i prefer a nice big arcade size screen rather than a midget screen with better resolution

[arfink]

Well, if you want to go all authentic, you could get a very nice rebuilt arcade monitor, 25 inches, at the standard resolution and 15kthz refresh and with a nice mounting bracket for under $200. Add a power supply and you have real honest arcade experience right there. Of course, the best bet would be to get a used Jamma cab and fix it up. As for me, being in college makes it hard to have an arcade cab. My dorm room is a little small for something that big. so I built a supergun and keep some Jamma boards around. Have you seen those wooden racks with all the slots for storing the old LP records? All the disks would stand up perpendicular to the floor and would stack next to each other in little compartments. Well, jamma boards store very nice in one of those... hehe! I've got more arcade games in my little dorm room that the average arcade in my town!

I have a bed which can be made to be about 3-4 feet off the floor, and the record, I mean PCB holder fits underneath very nicely. Some day I want to deck the thing out with anti-static slots instead of just wood, but it works good for me. It is also a good place to stack things like dishes on, so it's like a combination end table/pcb storage.

[Bibin]

Ah, right! Sorry, I'm just so used to CRT's being in extreme surplus. (over here, I have probably like 8-10 12-18" CRT's just lying around, & plus you can get them very easily for free off Craigslist)

well i need bigger than 18 i have a perfectly good 17 inch but beside the fact its being used for the dc its too small i prefer a nice big arcade size screen rather than a midget screen with better resolution

Midget screen? Nearly all vertically-oriented arcade machines use a 19" screen. That's not small at all.

[arfink]

Well, old school vert machines would use 19" monitors, but just about everything now uses 25" CRT units. Unless it's a conversion or a cocktail, just about every new machine is going to have at least a 25" if not considerably bigger. Plus, to be honest, a refurbished 25" is only maybe $20 to $40 more expensive than a 19" one, and the shipping will probably go from $50 to maybe $65. If you want the arcade experience you need to get a real monitor. A refurbished 25" costs under $200, a brand new one might run you $250. Heck, if you want to get crazy you can drop $450 and get one of the multi-synch arcade monitors which can run real VGA modes up to 800x600.

I will be perfectly blunt with you now: the cheap road to a home arcade is no longer MAME. You can go to the local arcade shop or on Ebay and pick up Jamma game boards for pennies on the dollar plus the cost of shipping, arcade CRT's are dirt cheap and very high quality, Jamma is a very easy standard to learn and use, and you don't need to be putting in tons of money for all the fancy control panel doodads. Plus, it's PERFECTLY LEGAL! You don't need to steal Roms from the companies because it's actually CHEAPER to use the real hardware than to attempt to build your own equipment powered by MAME.

This is, of course, assuming you want an authentic arcade experience. A lame MAME machine could use a cheap VGA monitor and run a pirate version Windows 98 as the front end, and use a very cheap computer and it could be less expensive than real arcade hardware, but just barely. And it wouldn't be that good anyhow.

Edit: and just so this rant stays on topic, I will say that yes, $600 dollars is a lot compared to a cup of coffee but is a very very nice price for a rare Pac Man machine, and that MAME is LAME, so don't even bother.