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Thinking of opening an arcade...
saint:
You know, Chad brings up a good point I hadn't considered. One place where an arcade might thrive is at a tourist resort spot. Thinking of the arcades I've been to recently that were fun, they were in Downtown Disney / Pleasure Island in Orlando, and at tourist getaways like Myrtle Beach or Gatlinburg. Those places were always busy.
mvsfan:
--- Quote from: katuuuz on November 15, 2009, 10:40:02 am ---Hi everyone.
A friend and I are looking into opening a game room/arcade. I've been looking online for information, and have already printed out a license application. I figured this forum would be a great place to lay some groundwork in the brainstorming phase.
I have a few questions pertaining to how things work exactly...
1. I won't be renting arcade cabinets, I'll have outright bought them. Do I still need to give a percentage of my profits from the cabinets to the copyright owners? If so, is there any way to obtain copyrights or permission to use them and keep all the coinage?
2. I've built a MAME cabinet before, and it is still fully functional. For something like this, would I have to be granted permission by every game hosted on the machine to charge patrons to use it?
3. I was thinking of setting up kiosks for systems like the NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64. (Like the PS3 kiosk at Best Buy where users can play, but the system is under lock and key). I would like to put a PC in each kiosk cabinet and emulate these systems. Does the copyrights to these games hold true with the above?
What I'm basically trying to say is ; is this doable, and is it going to cost me a bagillion dollars?
Thanks in advance for anyone with knowledge on the subject.
dude if you open an arcade nowadays, you at least need a bowling alley with pool tables, food, and a Bar.
arcades just simply cant survive on their own anymore.
you couldnt run mame commercially because it is against the liscence.
you probably could run a 100 in 1 though, but you would have to have an original board of every game on the multi present somewhere in your bowling alley, in order to do so.
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mvsfan:
heres why and another point to consider.
I used to live within walking distance of one of the biggest arcades in florida. It was called funscape and it was about the size of wal mart, and it was 2 stories.
sometime, things got expensive for them to operate compared to the money they were taking in, so they started charging 50 cents for old games and 75 cents for the newest games, and the crowd that had always been there started to die down a bit.
so a couple years later, instead of raising games another quarter, they bought the old kmart next door and built a movie theater hoping that the movie money would offset the funscape tab. It didnt. the movie theater more than made enough money for itself, but funscape just kept on getting more and more expensive to operate compared to what it brought in. so then they went up to $.75, then $1.00, then 1.50 for all games.
shortly after it went to 1.50, they shut their doors forever. they had to. for the owners however, it was a labor of love to keep it open as long as possible.
the same people still own the movie theater, and they did manage to move a small chunk, about 20 or 30 of their machines into it. but at one point they had hundreds of machines.
SirPeale:
--- Quote from: ChadTower on November 20, 2009, 11:13:14 am ---Funspot is 4-5 hours north of me. I take my kids there a couple of times a year and we spend several hours. If it were half the distance we would go every couple of weeks. If it were inside an hour I'd probably have to open a monthly payment plan to them.
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4-5 HOURS? You live closer than I do, and it takes us about two hours!
Ummon:
--- Quote from: HarumaN on November 20, 2009, 08:55:07 am ---
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Dude, yer gonna kill me with those kitties! Love love love love love!
--- Quote from: Silas (son of Silas) on November 20, 2009, 09:24:35 am ---
Its that old 'lure them back to your pad on the false hope of a game of Double Dragon' ploy :o :o
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Oh no, it's the villianous tie you up and have to watch Double Dragon be played for days! Then let you go, on your wasted way.
Um, I think this has been mentioned before: couldn't you do a restaurant/whatever thingie (maybe that had some cover for alcohol or something, like a dollar or two), and have a bunch of MAME cabs with no coin mechs/money/credit machines. People could just play 'em. How much up-keep, then?
--- Quote from: ChadTower on November 20, 2009, 11:13:14 am ---
There is an arcade museum/private beach 45 minutes south of me. I take my kids there a couple of times a year and would more often if the beach part didn't make it a full day trip.
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?? What does the beach have to do with it? If anything, just don't go on it.