Multicade cabinet from Arcadeshop -- any good?

[TapperP]

Hey everyone,

Newbie here. Hope you guys can help me out with a decision. I was on vacation and saw this multicade cabinet that seemed pretty nice, and am thinking of buying one for my home. Even the wife liked it. :-)

After some research, I think it may have originated from a company called Arcadeshop (see here: http://arcadeshop.com/cabinets/cabinets.htm ). It looked like this one:



Is Arcadeshop safe to buy a cabinet from, and has anyone recently bought one from them?

I would be putting an ArcadeSD board into it ( http://www.phoenixarcade.com/ArcadeSD.htm ).

Thank you.

[BobA]

Don't pay their prices.  Make your own fully tricked out cab for 1/4 the cost or less.  This is the BYOAC forum.

[TapperP]

I wish I could. But I don't have the time, skills, or resources to do it.

I'm amazed by the stuff people here build. It's very inspiring, but it's beyond my circumstances to do it myself. So I'm willing to pay good money for something done right.

Please feel free to offer suggestions for good alternative sources to check out. Thanks.

[Peja]

I once saw one of these in a bar and decided it would be fun to play some Pacman.  I'm not sure if it was just a bad joystick or a cheap game board but I am almost 100% sure it was a an 8 way stick in there.  I didn't look through all 60 games in the list but when I tried playing Ms. Pacman it was about useless.  I don't even think I finished the game. Turning a corner was almost impossible unless you were moving it exactly up down left or right.  Otherwise you would miss your turn all together. 

I'm not sure if this is standard with these cabinets or I just played a bad one but I would definitely be aware of what joystick and games come with the unit.

Good Luck.

[TapperP]

I once saw one of these in a bar and decided it would be fun to play some Pacman.  I'm not sure if it was just a bad joystick or a cheap game board but I am almost 100% sure it was a an 8 way stick in there.  I didn't look through all 60 games in the list but when I tried playing Pacman it was about useless.  I don't even think I finished the game. Turning a corner was almost impossible unless you were moving it exactly up down left or right.  Otherwise you would miss your turn all together. 

I'm not sure if this is standard with these cabinets or I just played a bad one but I would definitely be aware of what joystick and games come with the unit.

Good Luck.

Absolutely.

In fact, the reason I'm interested in this machine is because I just got back from a little vacation with my wife, and we saw THREE of these Multicades at different locations. Each one was slightly different, and one had an 8 way while the others had a 4 way. The 4way ones had old versions of the Arcadeshop programmable board installed, and the smaller cabaret one had that Chinese 60-in-1 had an 8way. They all controlled pretty well (the 8way was great for 8way games of course), but the 4way was amazing for Pacman, Galaga etc. I was also impressed with Missile Command and Moon Patrol running on the Vertical monitor -- the Arcadeshop board really does a great job with that. So the joysticks seem to be an option, and I would choose the 4way so the majority of classics control properly. Maybe get an additional 8way panel made eventually for other games. We'll see.

Anyway, I emailed Arcadeshop.com yesterday, so I'll find out everything.

Even though I would not be building the cabinet myself, eventually I do want to make some mods, so this forum will be invaluable down the road.

[paigeoliver]

As for that physical cabinet, it is fine. Arcadeshop is a legitimate company and it is put together decently, I have seen a few of them pop up at the auctions.

As for multicades in general....

Most of the people who build the multigames slap 8 way joysticks in there because they are largely putting together a "surprise, you just bought crap" product. Most multicade builds suffer the exact same problems that most Chinese products in general do, they are designed to look impressive and have impressive specs, but corners are cut so ridiculously in their construction that the resulting product is junk, even though spending 10 percent more would have made a great product.

The 60 in 1 board powering most of the multicades is a great example of what I am talking about. The games on it require 4 separate kinds of controllers, but almost every one I ever see for sale has a single one, an 8-way joystick 90 percent of the time, since that is cheaper than the Namco Reunion 4-way that should be installed in it instead.

If you build a PCB powered multicade project you need to stop listening to the tiny voice in your head that insists that more is always better. Every one I ever see for sale has all 60 games turned on, which guarantees that the people who play it will spend a significant amount of time playing things that don't control right or have distorted sound.

I myself turn off every game that is for the wrong kind of control or has distorted sound or other problems. When people play a multicade I built they are never stuck playing crap.

I have been out to quite a few houses to repair problems with various 60 in 1 machines (and the precursors to those boards) because the people who put them together seem to only care about extracting money from their customer and could care less if the customer enjoys the end product. Problems I have came out to fix include all the following.

Lots of games impossible to play because the cabinet only has one button (roughly half the games on the board require multiple buttons). I still see this on lots of them on craigslist.
Ms. Pac-Man impossible to control. 8-way joystick, combined with speedy pac and a high latency cheapo lcd tv made the one game this person bought the machine for unplayable.
Cocktail cabinet that didn't flip the game for player 2. This one is extra ridiculous as it was a turn-key premade cocktail cabinet that was sold with the 39 in 1 board already installed (a cheapo plexiglass copy of the midway cocktail with plastic control panels cranked out by a few different amusement companies). In fact, most of the times I have provided assistance with these machines is because the installer stuck the board in the cabinet and didn't configure anything (like cocktail mode or turning the volume to a decent level, or turning off the horrid looping attract music, or setting the speedy versions of the pac games to actually be the speedy versions (in another example of craptastic chinese factory quality control the speedy versions of the Pac games are set to slow by default).

[TapperP]

I would not use the 60-in-1. It's pretty bad, I played one. I will use an ArcadeSD board.

As for controls, I plan to have a 4way stick, trakball and 3 buttons, plus Player 1 and 2 Start of course. I may have a separate panel made as well with an 8way stick and buttons. We'll see. As for games, yeah, I get what you're saying. But I don't intend to use that crappy Chinese board.