First off I would like to say hello to everyone and I am so sorry that this is so long. I love the show How I met your mother and I decided to tell you’ll about myself and the story that brought me to these boards. I have played video games since I can remember and I have owned every major system at some point. However around the age of 21 I wasn’t interested anymore. I tried to rejuvenate my gaming by trying all types of systems.
I already owned a PS2, Xbox, and a Gamecube. So I went out to buy a N64 and a Gameboy Advance, but they did nothing for me. I happen to go home one leave, I’m in the military, and a friend introduced me to emulators and roms. They were exactly what I was looking for. Pacman, all the Mario games, Zelda, Streets of Rage, the original Street Fighter II; I was on top of the world.
So over the next 7 years I bought a PS3, Wii, 360, Dreamcast and a Saturn trying to fill this empty void in my life. I kept playing the emulators/roms also however something was missing whenever I played the MAME games. It wasn’t until I went home on leave once again and saw one of my friends building an arcade.
I instantly wanted one!!! You see there was a huge problem though. Over the past 7 years I fell in love, got married, and have a wonderful daughter. So I can no longer go out and buy what I want to buy without getting permission. So I sat on the idea for 2-3 years because I don’t know anything about carpentry, building electronics, wiring and so on. I just know how to hit the power button, and play the games.
One day we find out that my wife has an assignment to Korea…without me or our daughter. I decided that I needed to do something to keep myself sane. I googled arcades and I was just going to buy one. Once I saw the prices, I was like OMG 1.5K for one game not including shipping. After that I said to myself that I should see if someone sells MAME cabinets. I wasn’t impressed that a MAME cabinet costs 3.5K. I should have known that considering one game costs 1.5K.
Now stumped and don’t know what I should do. I decided to try my luck at building one. My wife is going to be gone for a year, even if I destroy it. At least I could keep myself busy for a year. So I tried to contact places to buy a build a kit. I was going to buy a prebuilt control panel because that seemed like the hardest thing to do. Everything else seems fairly easy. Arcades R Fun gave me the best deal for what I wanted. Once everything was said and done though. My wife shoot everything down. If you are on the boards, I’m really sorry about that. I know your probably think that I gave you the run around.
Left with very few options I decided to buy an old nonworking arcade and MAME it. So I tried ebay very few people would actually ship the arcade because it is so expensive. Just about giving up, I decided to check out craigslist.
On craigslist there is only one person who has arcades for sale. I contacted him and he gave me his info. His name is Frizzle Fried. He told me every game that he had and I was instantly interested in the MAME and the Capcom cabinets. I tried to buy his horizontal MAME cabinet however the deal fell through. So I decided to pick up the Capcom cabinet and his Verticade cabinet. He told me to come by his house to check it out before I buy anything. He wouldn’t me to regret my purchase. I thought that was awesome business practice by the way.
Everything went great. I thought I had a cabinet for sure. He told me that he would double check everything to make sure that it works perfectly before he sold it to me. I could tell customer satisfaction was very important to him. However e sent me an e-mail telling me that the Capcom cabinet was working 100% and he didn’t want to sell it to me like that. I was bombed, but we came up with a solution.
He would MAME it for me, I just had to buy/provide and or supply the parts. I was like AWESOME!!!!!!! If you have made it this far into my story, you know everything never goes well for me. The week I was supposed to pick it up, the monitor messes up. A week later I went to pick up the cabinets. We had lunch he bestowed some of his knowledge upon me. That included this site, many more and places to avoid like Ram Controls.
What took the cake though was the fact that once I arrived home and I found some things wrong. He was willing to drive to my house to fix any and everything. Now I know some of you are like what’s the big deal. He leaves in a nice city that is 1 ½ hours away from me. I live in a small town in the middle of a desert. With the way gas prices are, I don’t know many people who would do that. I told him that it wasn’t necessary and that if he could somehow walk me through everything. It would be greatly appreciated. He has already talked me through fixing the Vertical MAME twice because I’m a noob and I like to mess with stuff.
In conclusion, I now have two awesome MAME cabinets for an amazing price. I managed to get them both for a little more than the price it would have taken me to build one by myself. I met an awesome guy that I hope I can one day call friend a friend. I joined a new community and I think I turned my daughter into a gamer.
If you read all of this thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed my story. Grammar police please don’t arrest me, I know Grammar isn’t my strong point.
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Topic: Nostalgia, Arcades and a guy named Frizzle Fried (Read 2414 times)
