Written by Scott Moyer
Remember a time in your life when you felt like you were meant to be there. You truly embrace the moment. For me that was playing Video games at an arcade. Was it the lights the low bit rate audio, well whatever it was the arcades had me hooked. I always found myself saving up money to have it taking by space invader Pac-Man and so on.
Now in this world of Next gen gaming , which is great don’t get me wrong. Just does not feel the same. Time has move on from what I would call “the good old days”. I think we have lost the social place where gamers could come together. I know you can now play games with some kid haft way around the world that can kick your backside in C.O.D. But it not the same.
So on that thought I want to get back to the joy of gaming for me and I hope some of the younger generation that missing out on losing money for game lives could experience it for the first time.
So I present to you, Retro arcade at a cost!
Can’t find and Arcade why not buy the unit to make one. First off I want to start out and see how much it would be to buy some of my favorite games.
First up Space Invaders.
Space Invaders is an arcade video game created by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. I use to play this game thinking I was going to save the world from them UFO blowing it up. So I was on the hunt for a Bally system. I find that the cheapest place to find one is one EBay. So for a fully working system will only set you back $1800 USD and shipping was $500. So one game would cost $2300 USD. |
Next up Street Fighter II Champion Edition
Street Fighter II: Champion Edition is a competitive fighting game released for the arcades by Capcom in 1992. It was the first of several updated. The main changes were the addition of the Grand Masters (the final four computer-controlled opponents in the single-player mode) as playable characters and mirror matches (same character vs. matches). This is a game you would play with someone you did not even know and became friends after playing it. Again back on to eBay. What I found out that 1993 that start to make the Mother boards removable, like a big cartridge. This way you could just swap out the board and some signs and bam a new system. This made it hard to finding one that had never been touch! So the next best thing I could find was a cabinet that was turned in to SFII and it was only $1000 USD and shipping was $300 USD. So it would cost $1300 USD. |
And you can forget Pac-man
Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. It was created by Japanese video game designer Toru Iwatani. It was licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway and released in October 1980. So I want the Cocktail Table version as it was what I use to play. There nothing like eating food on top of the game your play. This one was hard to find to as it seems that most of these units where made in to Ms. Pac-Man. But I did find one that was Ms. Pac-Man / Galaga/ Pac-Man 20 Year Reunion Cocktail Table Arcade Game. It was $1750 USD and Free shipping. I know it was nice of them to offer free shipping right. |
Last but not least.
Mortal Kombat is an arcade fighting game developed and published by Midway Games in 1992 as the first title in the Mortal Kombat series. I Ran in to the same thing as I did with Street Fighter II. Oh well I still love my 2d fighting games. This one I found cheaper Offline then It was on eBay. So it was going to cost $700 USD and I had to pick it up witch was a 4-hour dive. |
Well I start to see two things coming together that would stop me from putting together my gaming nirvana. First being the Cost, it adds up to a grand total of $6050 USD. To point out I live in Canada so with our bad exchange rate it would be $8175.36 Canadian. I also still had to Drive to the USA to pick most of them up. Side note they would not ship to the UK but if you like to know what the cost was it was £4361.15.
The second thing was how much room this was going to take up! Slapping a small arcade in to a spare of bed a room and have the room to move from system to system. Well that was not going to work. Also I’m not rich.
This is the point when I came across systems that offering 41-1 games. But they did not have all the games I like and why only 41 games why not more. Seem as those they were running them off a little black box that had the games flash on to a chip. Being a geek I was like “why not use a computer”. Well thank god more people think as I do and I found a nice little program called …….
All I have to say Is WOW What a great program. Witch we will talk about more later.
So in my next post I will go over what it takes to make your own arcade Cabinet CHEAP.
