need advice..should i get rid of a cabinet?

[severdhed]

hey guys, i need some advice.  i had 1 mame cabinet for a while now, it has gone through many changes over the last year or so, mainly in the control panel area.  it has been everything from a standard street fighter layout, then adding a 4way, spinner and trackball, then ditching teh spinner and trackball and just having sticks again.  a few months ago, i decided that i wanted another cabinet, i picked up an empty cabinet, not knowing what i was going to do with it.  i ended up using a 25" tv that i had lying around, and set up the cabinet with a playstation 2 as a gun cabinet.  then i got to thinking that i would really like a cabinet with a vertical monitor, and just a 4way, spinner, and trackball, and have my other cabinet with the street fighter layout and a horizontal monitor...

so now i have 3 cabinets in my basement...none of which are finished.  the gun cabinet is working, but needs monitor glass, bezel, new marqee, and things cleaned up a bit on the inside.

the horizontal cabinet is working, but needs a bezel, new marquee, and new control panel overlay...and another hole drilled in the metal panel.

the vertical cabinet is essentially empty at this point.  i have all of the controls, and the pc ready to go, but it needs a monitor, bezel, glass, and new control panel. 

no big deal, those are fun projects to work on.  however my wife and i decided that we are going to buy a house, instead of paying rent every month for the one we live in now.  we put in an offer on one the other day and are in the process of doing paperwork adn waiting for a termite inspection. anyway, if we get this house, the basement is not really suited for finishing....the ceilings are only a little over 6 feet, and there isn't alot of big open area down there.  there is a family room on the main floor where my stuff will go.  the room is 11' by 24'.  this is also my theater room, so i will need to put a couch in there for watchign movies on my projector.  my PC will probably also go into this room, and i'd like to have a space for my dartboard.  as it is right now, that room is about the same size as my basement is now, so everything will fit.  i'm just concerned that 3 arcade machines might be a bit too much.  and since owning a home isn't exactly cheap, it could be a while until i have any money to put into fixing up these cabinets.  so my question is this...

should i move the 3 cabinets into the room and have them sit there in their various states of completion, possibly for a long time until i can afford to fix them?

should i move the stuff around so that i have one good working mame cabinet and a frankenpanel, so that i can play most of the games, and still have room for other items in the room.  if so, should i try to get rid of the other cabinets before i move?  or should i take them with me and store them in the basement of the new place until i have the time and money to get this fixed up and working?


3 cabinets in my basement doesnt seem that ridiculous, however 3 cabinet in the family room on the main floor of my house seems like it might be overkill.    the gun cabinet is cool, but since it is a playstation, there are no coins/tokens, and therefore doesn't have that same arcade feel.  and the vertical monitor classics cabinet would be awesome, but it seems like such a waste of space for only a handfull of games. 

had i known that we were going to look at houses, i wouldn't have picked up the other two cabinets, but i jsut don't see how i will have the money to put into these for a long time.  the house we are looking at is nice on the inside, and we fell in love with it. however the roof is pretty old, i'd say it has a few years left in it, so we will need money for that, it doesn't currently have central air conditioning, so we will definitely need money for that, and it has wood siding, which i would like to replace with vinyl siding eventually, so that too costs money.  then you factor in repairs you are not counting on, it could be a long time before i have the money to spend on cabinets...especially a few hundred dollars that it would take to get a monitor and artwork and such.



i was leaning towards just having one workign cabinet again, but the problem is i named the cabinet after my son, which was cool, but now my wife is pregnant and she doesn't want me to have  cabient named after one, and not the other, and i don't really want to change the name of the cabinet. (zak-man is just too perfect)


what would you guys do?

[leapinlew]

Name your next kid Q-bert.

Everything else will fall in line.

[BASS!]

Rename one to the "familycade"  Make a new marquee with family photos and paint it up. Just have one be your Kiddycade as it were. Or just add a machine every time you have a kid, how many are you planning on, you could have a huge game room if your not careful.

*edit - WOOT POST 300!!*

[TOK]

My suggestion is to hold out until you find a house that has everything you want.

I bought about 6 years ago when the market was on fire. I literally had a house I was looking at sell out from under me, and someone tried to overbid to buy the house I got AFTER I had a contract.
The thing is, I wanted a two car garage and a basement but I ended up getting a one car garage and no basement. Its a very nice house, but I'm already feeling limited by it.

I have great neighbors and don't want to move at this point, but I still wish I'd held out for exactly what I wanted. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, you don't see that.