Help identifying an awesome sounding machine.

[Santoro]

A guy I work with has a friend with too much money.  He bought a machine that was described to me by a non-mamimg geek type like this:

It was a Neo Geo cabinet, profesional looking. {edit: The guts were neo geo  The cabinet may or may not have been.)
30" LCD (!!) screen, and no not Plasma, LCD.  {edit: It was angled back}
Plays XBOX Games, and the look extremely hi-res, almost HD.
Had a trackball

I am intruigued. My first guess is that it is a hacked import cabinet.

Anyone seen such a beast before?  What about without XBOX?  30" LCDs are very rare from what I hear.

 

[ani]

I saw a similar thing on MTV cribs once (seriously). So it does exist, but the guy who had it said there were only a few of them. It looked like it was a legit item the microsoft had used at E3 or something.

[patrickl]

There are plent 30" TV's available. Every self respecting TV-brand has one. I think these are usually HDTV's so that might explain the high res. Dunno if Xbox can do High Res on HDTV though.

Anyway, it sure sounds like a pretty cool cab. I'd assume the rest of the specs are beefed up too.

[crashwg]

http://www.xbox.com/en-us/hardware/highdefinitionavpack.htm

[ani]

Yea, I actually have one of the hi-def packs. It's kinda lame because even the games that do support it aren't programmed appropriately to take advantage of it.

[CitznFish]

There is a $20,000.oo pinball out there that has a plasma virtual playfield. Wish I knew that damn URL....

[patrickl]

Google turns up several pinball machines with a plasma playingfield. Couldn;t find one that actually looked nice though.

[rohan]

Retroblast has this one newly listed:
http://www.homearcadeclassics.com/Plasma_Pinball/

[Mario]

Retroblast has this one newly listed:
http://www.homearcadeclassics.com/Plasma_Pinball/

[AlanS17]

Either way, you've gotta give em credit for doing something really cool. I can't speak for the quality, but from a technical standpoint it's pretty clever.

[ChadTower]

Erm... it's not clever, it's a pinball program on a pretty monitor.  Nothing clever about it.

[AlanS17]

Does something have to be difficult to be clever? I think the wheel was a pretty clever idea, too. And how difficult was that?

I'd rather not argue, but I always feel the need to defend my points. Can't we just leave it where it is?

[ChadTower]

Does something have to be difficult to be clever? I think the wheel was a pretty clever idea, too. And how difficult was that?

I'd rather not argue, but I always feel the need to defend my points. Can't we just leave it where it is?

The wheel was innovative and cut manual work exponentially.  This is a computer with a monitor.  I don't see the analogy.

Basically, this is a digital emulation of a game that is mostly about physics and objects.  It's like breaking up with your woman to spend more time with a videotape of her.

[RayB]

HEH I love that analogy!
But the thing is, you can put a video tape away after you're done watching it.

[Chris]

Retroblast has this one newly listed:
http://www.homearcadeclassics.com/Plasma_Pinball/