so what got you into owning your own arcade game?

[vintagegamer]

Aside from watching "Silver Spoons" as a kid, I never imagined I would ever have any pins or arcade games of my own.  I lucked out in getting my Asteroids machine for $50 2 years ago, and it was all downhill from there..

What got everyone else started?

VINTAGEGAMER

[cowguy]

I was on a dreamcast emu forum, and I heard that someone was building a cab for their dreamcast.  I thought it was interesting and looked at it, never thought of building my own.  They directed to this site.  I didn't want to put a dreamcast in a cab so I went the mame way, which I already some experience with.

[ElfShotTheFood]

basically i got tired of playing tron with a mouse and keyboard.  ordered a bunch of stuff from ggg,  hooked it all up into a quickie cp, fired up tron, and with one hand on my turbotwist2 and the other on a happ super i said, "   I need a trigger stick!"

everything else plays great though,  its sooooo much better playing joust with real arcade buttons than on a gamepad. 

[SavannahLion]

Yeah, shows like Silver Spoons and movies like Tron always kept that desire in me. It wasn't until I moved to a new house (and some other changes) that I started actively looking for a cab (and finding one). I've collected consoles for years. But consoles can only go so far and the appeal has been waning for me since the Playstation generation. I kept buying the games, but finding they generally sucked ass. So I went into PC games, but upgrading $2,000 computers every nine months to keep up with the latest and greatest puts a crimp on the budget. Then Steam hit the market and it pretty much ruined PC gaming for me forever. So I decided that it was time to look elsewhere, an entire collection of games I've never really considered until recently.

I knew about emulators for years. My first was NESticle and Genecyst. Then I expanded my emulator library to include a host of other emulators such as MAME, Snes9x, etc.

A couple of things prevented me from getting an arcade cabinet for so long. Keeping up with changes in MAME and obtaining a reasonably compatible library is way too difficult in my opinion. I've never liked MAME's release cycle, ever. Nor do I like MAMEDevs habit of redumping IC's due to "bad dumps" or having partial dumps due to compatibility reasons. (I'm a strong believer in dumping it all, dumping it right, and dumping it once. If the dump is bad, the notation should be made in the file description, not within the emulator itself. Save myself the hassle of ---smurfing--- downloading it only to find it doesn't work.) There was also the perception I had that cabinets were expensive. When I was little and I would see ads for cabinets in the newspaper, they were always in the four digit range. Way beyond the budget of an under 15 year old. When I was browsing Craigslist one day, I popped in "arcade" on a whim and bam! There was my cab.

[RayB]

I'd have to talk to a shrink to figure out the truth.
 

[Crowquill]

Somewhere around 1991 a friend of mine lived next door to an auction house. He told me about an upcoming auction of games. I ended up with a non-working "Crazy Kong" ($12). With the few people I knew I couldn't find anyone who could fix it and couldn't afford to pay someone to come out and fix it. It sat there for years as I moved away to college. Probably around 1996 another friend started collecting arcade games. We hauled Crazy Kong over and with a $30 power supply it worked again (and we found out it had a Donkey KING Junior PCB). I had no space so it stayed there.

Around 2000 I discovered that emulators had become more than just a novelty and ran games at full speed including Shinobi. I discovered this site, I started building a stand-alone control panel, and figured a MAME cab would be easy since I already had the cabinet at my parents' house. Since MAME isn't capable of playing some games at full speed I bought a generic JAMMA cabinet to run PCBs in. Now I have a beat-up Ms Pac cocktail I'm fixing/MAME-ing and I picked up a Neo Geo 2-slot MVS cabinet last month. I think I'm officially out of room until the next game comes along. 

[spacies]

For me it was in 1982.

My sister had just finished school and my Mum had a chance to buy a store opposite our current store.

She asked us what we should put in there and we all said "AN ARCADE"

A couple of weeks later, we opened up shop. With my sister as the manager, we had 50 machines, 5 pinballs and a pool table.
I was 12 and we ran it for 5 years.
We also bought the store next door 2 years later and knocked a hole in the wall and built some skateboard and BMX ramps inside.

My brothers and I would organize midnight meetings with mates and we would play games and ride the ramps 'til the wee small hours. Oh what a time we had

So arcade machines are in my blood!

[Hawk Daddy]

Well I've always liked the classics.  I had always wanted to build a MAME machine, but never did it.  Then one day I stopped into a little thrift  store and there it was a working galaga for $50 I bought it, and then I went back and bought 2 more from the guy, and found a millipede for $40, and Now I've got a mame machine, a galaga, and I'm working on getting this millipede back working and then I think I'm going to just take it east and buy only what I want unless I can find them for really cheap like I have been doing.  At 19 years old I think I have the starts of a good collection.

Hawk

[rlemmon]

For me it was in 1982.

My sister had just finished school and my Mum had a chance to buy a store opposite our current store.

She asked us what we should put in there and we all said "AN ARCADE"

A couple of weeks later, we opened up shop. With my sister as the manager, we had 50 machines, 5 pinballs and a pool table.
I was 12 and we ran it for 5 years.
We also bought the store next door 2 years later and knocked a hole in the wall and built some skateboard and BMX ramps inside.

My brothers and I would organize midnight meetings with mates and we would play games and ride the ramps 'til the wee small hours. Oh what a time we had

So arcade machines are in my blood!

You Lucky bastard

What happend to the arcade did you have to close it or did you sell it ?

I started buy building a lusid arcade cab with a playstation 2 and x arcade control panel. It was ugly as hell but it sure was lots of fun to play. I used to play the namco museum disc allnight long. Once i discovered Mame it took a good while for me to figure out how to run it. 

When I finally did I built a replica robocop cab with a pc and Mame 32 along with a magstick and ipac. It is honestly my favorite toy i own. I love trying to find  old games that i have never played, Then playing through the night.

[jace055]

My Dad was a district manager for a gas station chain in the early 80's.  So, my brother and I always had pinball and arcade machines growing up.  I actually found BYOAC looking for a solution to fix my mappy cocktail cabinet a few years ago.  I decided that building a cabinet was going to be my next hobby.

[deadkenndys1105]

Well it started with when someone showed me mame on this one emulation forum.  Then I was looking into mame and found this.  Then I build a mame cabinet.  Now I own a millipede and am looking into buying a robotron and a defender.

[Apollo]

I was reading  a magazine (not gaming related) and there was an article about MAME and retro gaming. As an arcade addict from way back I did a little research, found this forum and well you know the rest.

[Anubis_au]

I discovered MAME years ago, but didn't do anything with it. Then, in 2003, a mate of mine chanced upon an arcade cab (generic Aussie lowboy) at a garage sale, bought it, and converted it. I helped him do it, and promptly went and bought my own cab to convert. Sold it last year before travelling around the world.

Now that I am back home, I want to have a cab again. But this time, fully custom everything. And then I found BYOAC, and I was home

[danny_galaga]

a friend showed me mame on his laptop. two years late it dawned on me how cool it was!

[Malenko]

I wanted an arcade machine since the first time I ever played one. My dad made me an "arcade" stick out of my controller for commodore 64  and I played pacman endlessly (got up to the 5th key stage!)


Ive done 2 MAME cabs, one before I knew what I was doing. It was a ghastly job, a HUGE playstation 2 player arcade stick with 2 PSX2USB adapter and some tacky white marble shelf paper covering the whole thing, had a 25" TV a PC and a playstation (2?) in there. I still have a pic, just need to scan it, I warn you , its hideous and cheap looking. It worked, and I used it alot but it never felt like an arcade game and the thing kept breaking.


About 6 months after that I snagged a Track n Field style cab that had been mutilated into a marine game or something, it was awful.  I really put some elbow grease into it, fixed the messed up wood and made a new control panel and converted it into Street Fighter II : Championship edition and gave it to my friend as a birthday gift.


Now that I actually have some skills, Im converting a Pengo Cabinet into my MAME cab, since both my X-arcade and hot rod are broke (X-arcade broke being shipped back from my old house in Texas, the hotrod was like 7 years old and the controller board died) I'll be using an Ipac2 and doing my own CPO.  Once I get it all up and running I'll submit the project to Saint


I already have the coin mechs lit up, lol this is when the HotRod was the CPO, its still a work in progress

[vintagegamer]

Holy crap!  He said Commodore 64!!!  I was running a TRS-80 at that point   

[vintagegamer]

Here is a SILVER SPOONS clip- it's so so so 80s, but look at the games in the back...  I see Asteroids on the far left, and I think Dragon's Lair 2 over from it?  Would love to see if anyone else can ID the others!



You can also see a pin in the intro theme here:




Oh and you can see Erin Gray in the clip too..  Joy. 

[TOK]

I was an arcade rat in the 80's, but never thought about a game being within my reach. I discovered MAME at version .37 doing a search for info on Donkey Kong. Whats the word for that? Epiphany? 

Whats funny is that at that time, I was already thinking about building a cockpit cabinet, but it wasn't for MAME, it was for what I was really into at that time -MechWarrior 2 and flight sims. I had been putting it off due to lack of space. When I finally got a house, a cabinet was already on the drawing board, but by that time I'd lost interest in MechWarrior (thanks for ruining yet another good thing, Microsoft) leaving either a flight sim cockpit or a standup arcade machine. I went with the latter, and now have 3 machines.

Its funny, but I've had a couple buddies comment how incredible it would have been to have something like a MAME cab during the height of our arcade mania. We got by with crappy 2600 and ColecoVision ports.

[RayB]

I made my first arcade controls in 1988. Wico sent me FREE leafswitch buttons, and a FREE plug cable from a Command Control joystick, along with a catalog. I think they thought I was a dealer or operator looking for product samples.

So anyways, I built myself a Track N Field controller with those parts.

What's really interesting is one of the buttons they sent me had a square bezel to it (round button, square surrounding part). I have NEVER to this day ever seen that button on a cabinet.

[vintagegamer]

Here is a SILVER SPOONS clip- it's so so so 80s, but look at the games in the back...  I see Asteroids on the far left, and I think Dragon's Lair 2 over from it?  Would love to see if anyone else can ID the others!



You can also see a pin in the intro theme here:




Oh and you can see Erin Gray in the clip too..  Joy. 

Anyone able to identify the games in the back?

[Chris2]

Reading about Mame and discovering the huge range of awesome computer games out there.

[RayB]

Anyone able to identify the games in the back?

Asteroids, Gorf, Dragon's Lair, Tempest.

In the intro of the second video, there's an unidentified machine that we just see a part of (I think it could have been a customized one for the show). And later you see the dad playing a Pac Man caberet.

And WOW! cyber chatting! (2nd vid) :-D

[vintagegamer]

Actually I didn't know the others- my level of cabinet recognition is still in its infancy stages   

Anyone recognize the pin from the side art?

[RayB]

The Pac caberet is in this episode:

and you can see the set designers didn't like the plain black fronts of a couple of the cabinets. They painted weird white stripes all over Tempest and Asteroids.

[vintagegamer]

I think MAME actually had an impact on me getting cabs too- I remember showing my wife the games on the PC, both arcade and Atari, and her response being: "yeah it's cool but it's not like playing the REAL thing.."  So any time she gives me crap about looking at a cab, I remind her of her opinion- works every time 

[Jeff AMN]

Well, I'm a bit younger than a lot of guys here, but not so young that I don't remember the arcade glory days. I really got into the arcade scene with stuff like Street Fighter II, the Konami 4-player games, After Burner, etc. I loved heading out to local arcades and dropping all the money I had saved up since my last trip on getting through TMNT one more time or trying to knock off the local Street Fighter champ. Ever since the early '90s, I've wanted a cabinet of my own. Once my parents bought us a Simpsons pinball machine, I knew I'd have them in my own home one day.

It wasn't until my wife and I finally got out of renting and into a home that I realized I could get my own arcade cabinet. This was about two years ago. I picked up a free cabinet from a local distributor that was in great condition, but was lacking a monitor and game board. Instead of using it as a generic JAMMA cab, I decided to gut it and MAME it. During the build process I came to fall in love with the old classics again, and I began searching out cabs.

Since that time I have picked up a Street Fighter II cabinet, a Bubble Bobble cabinet, and a Donkey Kong. I'm trying my hardest to track down a Ms. Pac-Man, but it's been tough.

My wife is fully supportive of this new addiction and is helpful when we're cab hunting. We're looking for a new home, and part of the search includes finding a home with a suitable game room for at least 8 or 9 cabs and a couple of pins.

[vintagegamer]

When I was a kid, we had a shuffleboard table, ping pong, bumper pool, and air hockey all in the basement.  We were very lucky, but sadly during bday parties and related events, noone ever seemed to go down and play the games.

I had my Asteroids machine running for my daughter's bday last year, and there was actually a LINE of people waiting for their turn to play!  It was AWESOME!  Then again, my stuff is out in the garage too, so it's a little easier access for everyone from house and outside.  This year I have Ms Pac ready to go and also the SORCERER pin, so I'm really looking forward to the response.

I don't know what the deal was at our house when I was a kid, that other relatives really didn't play the games my dad had.  I actually felt bad for him.  Is it b/c those games require some thought?  Or is it b/c they don't have blinking lights and sounds? 

[knave]

Ah, I love telling this story.  Grandma got my oldest daughter a Gameboy for her birthday.  One of the games she packed with it was the namco collection...I loved it.  After her bedtime I played Ms. Pac, Galaga and digdug for hours.

I had known about mame for years but had never been interested. (because I never tried it)  So Interest rekindled, I Dl'd mame v111 plugged in som roms and then spent hours playing Ms. Pac, Galaga and Digdug...and then moved on to contra, frogger, and many more.  

Right around that time I stumbled on this site by looking at some desktop CP projects. Then I kept reading until I learned about Jamma, and KLOV and pretty soon I was checking craigslist.  I also thought cabs were just really expensive, but learned they don't have to be. I bought my first cab for $125 as an early birthday present from my mom. (thanks mom!) Now I have 4, Carrier Airwing, Galaxian, Neo Geo 4 slot(With about 7 carts) and a Ms. Pac project cab. (crap that reminds me I still need to take picts.)

Owning arcades is really fun.  I will have to start getting some to sell or I will run out of room real fast.

[SavannahLion]

...sadly during bday parties and related events, noone ever seemed to go down and play the games.

Then again, my stuff is out in the garage too, so it's a little easier access for everyone from house and outside.

Is it b/c those games require some thought?  Or is it b/c they don't have blinking lights and sounds? 

You answered your own question right there. In any gathering, the basement is the place to get away from a party. By sticking your cabs in the garage, it gives visitors an opportunity to play the games and still be in the middle of the party.

My cabs are going to get relegated to the garage, simply because I have no room elsewhere... as soon as I get room in the garage.  I just discovered a treadmill that's going on Cragislist as soon as I figure out how to get it out of the garage 

[vintagegamer]

You know SL,

I think you're totally right-  our basement was always dark and gloomy as much as I hate to admit it, so even when it was all cleaned up noone ever seemed to venture down there- but the garage is right by the driveway where everyone is walking in and out to the event, it's linked right to the main house, and it's viewable by almost everyone.  What moron decided to keep CARS in a garage? 

[shardian]

You know SL,

I think you're totally right-  our basement was always dark and gloomy as much as I hate to admit it, so even when it was all cleaned up noone ever seemed to venture down there- but the garage is right by the driveway where everyone is walking in and out to the event, it's linked right to the main house, and it's viewable by almost everyone.  What moron decided to keep CARS in a garage? 

My wife is FIRMLY against storing a car in our attached garage (our bedroom is above the garage. Fine by me, because that gets me a green light for a gameroom.

Since I'm typing, I'll tell my story which I've told before on here.
I saw MAME when I went to a site that had a bunch of console/ old pc emulators. At first I thought MAME would be lame and an NES emulator would be soooo much cooler. A few years later, a friend I hadn't spoken to for a few years showed me his "MAME cabinet". That was one of those head smacking moments when I realized how impressive MAME could actually be. I got MAME, and eventually built a desktop CP. I wanted to build a project arcade based cab and was in the process of accumulating parts for it when I was introduced to a guy in Charleston that had a whole arcade in his basement. He sold me an empty Taito cab that had sat in his garage for a while. While deliberating how best to tackle my conversion project, I saw a guy on ebay selling two arcade machines for $50 each. I originally only wanted one of them but ended up with both. BTW, I asked the wife before purchasing, and she said YES! It feels much better to have the blessing of the misses before a purchase like this. My addiction does not end with arcade games. I love the act of inserting coins just as much, if not more than the games themselves. I am always on the lookout for anything coin operated that can go in my gameroom. My goal is to have EVERYTHING coin operated in the gameroom. If I can find it, I even want a coin operated bathroom stall just like the crappy amusement park in my area used to have (coin operated toilets are just plain wrong IMO. If you didn't have the dime and nickel, you had to use the doorless stall at the end )
So there you go, the origins of yet another arcade/coin-op addict.

[vintagegamer]

I actually am similar in respect to that- I love the fact that the quarter kicks it all off, and when I first got my Ms Pac, I was sure to line up quarters on the ridge between the control panel and the glass just like the old days..

My pin is missing the coin acceptors so I have to locate some to put back in it.  I hate having to open the coin door and hit the wire, and I don't want to set it to free!  Not looking to make money, just want to relive the history!

[Jeff AMN]

I actually am similar in respect to that- I love the fact that the quarter kicks it all off, and when I first got my Ms Pac, I was sure to line up quarters on the ridge between the control panel and the glass just like the old days..

My pin is missing the coin acceptors so I have to locate some to put back in it.  I hate having to open the coin door and hit the wire, and I don't want to set it to free!  Not looking to make money, just want to relive the history!

Heh, my Donkey Kong is the same way. The cabinet is still 100% original parts and accepting quarters. I won't change that either. I love dropping a quarter in, hearing the clink, and slapping the 1p button. It's a good way to save up some change too.

[shardian]

I actually am similar in respect to that- I love the fact that the quarter kicks it all off, and when I first got my Ms Pac, I was sure to line up quarters on the ridge between the control panel and the glass just like the old days..

My pin is missing the coin acceptors so I have to locate some to put back in it.  I hate having to open the coin door and hit the wire, and I don't want to set it to free!  Not looking to make money, just want to relive the history!

Heh, my Donkey Kong is the same way. The cabinet is still 100% original parts and accepting quarters. I won't change that either. I love dropping a quarter in, hearing the clink, and slapping the 1p button. It's a good way to save up some change too.

My machines will accept quarters and tokens. Quarters for my use, and tokens for parties and such. I'd like to think of it as the ultimate interactive bank.