Main > Main Forum

A few newb questions

(1/4) > >>

NotSoSuperMario:
My apologies in advance if I just didn't read far enough to find the answers in the faq.

I'm doing the preliminary work to open a coffee shop with some arcade machines in the next year or so, and one of my friends recommended building my own cabinets as a cheaper alternative, and pointed me here. So basically my questions are thus:

Can I legally set up my own coin-op arcade machines? Do I just need to buy the cartridge for the cabinet to be allowed to run it on a PC? Do I need the genuine hardware to play it? Is there any sort of special licensing I need to investigate?

How practical is making a coin-op DIY cabinet? Is it worth the effort at all? Is there any way I can get a coin slot to accept both quarters and tokens? (Give out a free token with each drink as a promo.)

Is this worthwhile? Should I just buy arcade machines instead? I know I'll have to buy Virtual-On and DDR. Where's a good place to buy the deluxe-machines, anyway? I found one Virtual-On 2 already, but all the DDRs I can find are Supernova and my partner has expressed her distaste for that one.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask.

Edited 'cause I can't spell.

Zebidee:
You'd get yourself in a whole heap of legal trouble.  Adding coin mechs wouldn't be good for the emulation community, as it could raise legal questions about what we do for reasons of fun and historical preservation.

Easier for you to talk to your local arcade games operator about some legal coin-op machines for your coffee shop.  Ask about 48-in-1 and 400-in-1 systems in a Cocktail cabinet.

Stobe:
Also, check to see if there are any auctions coming nearby.  You could arguably get a handful of games at auction cheaper than you could build them.

And yes, you can have token/quarter mechs.  I got some from ArcadeNerd here, and they work great.

-Stobe

Joystick Jerk:
Yeah, for a coffee shop, you'd be better off just buying some used units. If we say that it takes about $1500 to build a decent MAME cab, you could probably buy ten used cabs if you go to an auction. Get some Street Fighter 2's, maybe a Lethal Enforcers, and perhaps a few old-school cocktails with Pac-Man and Galaga.

Now, to be devils advocate for a minute, is this going to be a coffee shop for gamers and people into retro nostalgia stuff like gaming, or the general public at large? If it's the latter, game cabs don't really fit in with the atmosphere of a modern, trendy coffeeshop. People come to relax and chat, in a quiet atmosphere. Arcade cabs booping and beeping in the background will drive a lot of people away except the hardcore.

Now if it is a coffeeshop for the gamer crowd, well then GAME ON! I only wish we had something like this where I live. The only arcade I even know of in the area is at a mall a fair distance away, and it's filled with mostly DDR and other rhythm games from japan I've never heard of. Bleah, no thanks.

Tiger-Heli:
I don't have all the legal answers and most of it has been covered by others.

--- Quote from: NotSoSuperMario on May 08, 2007, 01:56:43 am ---Can I legally set up my own coin-op arcade machines?  Do I need the genuine hardware to play it? Is there any sort of special licensing I need to investigate?
--- End quote ---
Legally set up own coin-op arcade machines - probably, you need to look into business license restrictions, etc.  Also, the machines usually have tax stickers on them, so you need to look into that, not sure how that works out.


--- Quote ---Do I just need to buy the cartridge for the cabinet to be allowed to run it on a PC?  How practical is making a coin-op DIY cabinet? Is it worth the effort at all?
--- End quote ---

We need to define some terms here . . .

Running the game in your own cabinet on a PC requires an emulator and the rom image on the PC's hard-drive.  It does not require any kind of cartridge.  Charging to play the machine is a violation of the MAME software license.  Having the machine in a commercial environment on free-play, would be considered an incentive to the business and thus a violation of the MAME software license.  Non-MAME emulators are less restrictive, but having the rom image on the machine is a violation of the original arcade manufacturer's (Midway, Gottlieb, Sega, etc.) copyright (IMHO, whether or not you also own the PCB).  Currently, the arcade manufacturer's are for the most part looking the other way on private usage of ROM images, and we would like this to continue.  Commercial PC cabs could end this.

48-in-1 and 400-in-1 arcade boards in your own cabinet are a gray area.  I think the boards use some portion of MAME code and roms, but they are made overseas, so enforcing US copyright code is harder, and they are sold commercially, so they are more legal than setting up a PC in the cabinet.  (Well, not more legal, but you personally are probably safer from direct prosecution).

Putting a dedicated board (say Pac-Man) in your scratch-built cabinet should be legal, but arcade games often sell at auction for $150-$500, and it will likely cost you almost that much for the wood, before you figure in the controls, monitor, marquee, etc.

Buying genuine games is likely your best option.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

Go to full version