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My review of www.dreamhomearcades.com ...
Rick:
--- Quote from: Jasonmm on July 24, 2010, 01:01:36 pm ---....
--- End quote ---
Did you die? What happened? Where's the review?
BobA:
Maybe he was put off by the post made just before his last post.
Jasonmm:
Okay , here goes ...
I bought a mame cabinet from www.dreamhomearcades.com , owner David Lewis.
I am buying this cabinet for my little brother, Aaron, age 32, who has Autism.
Aaron breathes, sleeps, dreams video games. I enjoy them also but mostly it’s for him.
Let me say, I am not rich; I am not a pimp, a drug dealer or even a felon. This was a big big big purchase for our family. Members of my family currently drive cars that cost less than this cabinet. In fact, David took pity on me and gave me a discount and set me up on payments.
On a sad note, we recently lost our dad to cancer in OCT. '09. So I wanted a gift for Aaron’s birthday, that was so over the top, so awesome, something with that WOW FACTOR. Something that can make a guy forget his troubles, even for just a while.
Why did I go with www.dreamhomearcade.com ?
1. For Aaron, it need to be a arcade machine ... While Aaron knows his way around a PC , we didn’t want a keyboard , a mouse , a cd player , we wanted a arcade machine. It had to have that feel, look, and balance. Also everything needed to work perfectly on arrival. I didn’t want to load any ROMs, find any .chd files, configure any front-end or game. At the time, I didn’t have the knowledge, time or desire to learn.
2. Believe it or not, I needed to know, that 2 games in particular were included in the unit. Aaron HAD to have game X and Y or the whole thing would of been considered a failure. Other cabinet builders hinted about games, or said how I could load them. At www.dreamhomearcade.com he had a list on his web page, the 2 games I needed were on that list. He said they were tested and worked perfectly. Something so simple was really the difference between sale or no sale.
Aaron already had a full size Wrestlefest cabinet in his room, so its only after I figured I could convert that into a mame cabinet that I even thought about mame, ROMs, fronted or this forum. And I am glad I did.
While I have seen a bunch of beautiful stuff on this forum , 2 cabinets really rocked my world ... Knievel's Neon cabinet and Knievel's Flyercade. Combine both cabinets with Aarons other passion The Detriot Pistons, this was my theme. The neon and portholes of the Neon Cabinet, with the team colors theme and feel of the Flyercade.
www.dreamhomearcades.com will make you any cabinet you want ... Sence my brother and I are pretty big guys we went with the "Stealth" cabinet. The extra leg room was too hard to pass up.
Here is there basic "Stealth" cabinet.
We decided to add the oversize 48" control panel. Like this.
Wheres the candy you ask ?
While we did away with the neon we did add lighting effects..
We made the side art light up like the marquee. We added 'spot' lights to kickplate and center court logo, kinda like this ...
We added a VGA video out ... like this ...
We added a light gun and removable driving wheel.
We added leaf switches to the buttons.
We added 3 buttons to the trackball.
We requested a rectangular cut, ‘basketball court’ style to the control panel.
We requested a relaxed fit to the 2 player CP. ( plently of room between player 1 and 2 )
And he use offical Detroit Pistons team color paint for the cabinet.
I am very excited and we should recieve this cabinet early Aug. I will be back with pics ...
Jasonmm:
Here are some more pics ....
Here is a video
So visually it cameout awesome ....
Jasonmm:
The bad ....
a.This cabinet cost me $4000 to the door. No matter what you say or think , thats alot of cheese ...
b.For what ever reason .... David and I never did really comunicated well , I admit , my build grew as time went on. And I am sure he grew frustrated with me.
I got the feeling , he really didnt want me to design the cabinet , just be happy with what he could make ... And I am sure for most people that works well ...
Some people are phone people , some are email people , its really really hard to communicate well via email. I am a email person , he is a phone person.
He has a +2000 ebay rating with tuns of nice comments about his communication skills , so maybe its just me.
c. ( Did you know , when you review someones account on ebay , for like the last 90 days you can see the exact item they bought and sold , and for what amount ... ? )
I want to complain about the hardware used , but the machine runs so damm well, ... but the motherboard , ram , cpu and hard drive all looked refurished from ebay ... But hey , he warrenties.
He also sold me a refurished logitech driving wheel for $150 he got on ebay for $69. He sold me the a light gun for $150 , he paid $90 for. I mean for $4000 , you would think , he wouldnt do things like this.
The good ...
The machine runs awesome ... so smooth ... so nice ... Has a custom hyperspin menu ... looks and runs awesome ...
The monitor , a brand new shinney 29" arcade monitor that totally rocks ...
The warrenty ... I had a problem with my machine , that was probably totally my fault ... David took care of it .. had a new motherboard in my hand , fast...
Aslo I have no doubt that , if there ever was a problem , David would take care of it.
More later ...
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