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Arcades; Official thread
Topic Started: Jan 21 2017, 12:40 AM (992 Views)
Bratwurst
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BIG JERK
That DK cocktail is super clean inside, damn. I'll post pics of what I've done later tomorrow if I remember.
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strx10
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Sexy Beast
That would be rad if you could remember. I enjoy seeing pics of this kind of stuff especially when the setups are as unique as the one you've got with the Extron Emotia + TV config.

Anyway, what do you guys think of this barcade thing? I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in L.A. this seems to be a huge fad that's really taken off within the past few years. Personally it's not my cup of tea (I reaaaaaaaaaally don't like the crowd that hangs out at these places & I'm spoiled by freeplay), but a few do have games I can only play there such as Pinbot or Smash TV so sometimes I just gotta sack up and go to one.

There's also a theory that as soon as the novelty wears off and these places start tanking, arcade game prices will start dropping because the market will be flooded with their inventory. These games definitely aren't cheap to maintain these days especially if you want to be as original as possible and sooner or later it might catch up to 'em. Couple that with having to hire a dedicated tech, drunk people, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Should be interesting to see what the future holds for them...
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Bratwurst
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BIG JERK
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That would be rad if you could remember. I enjoy seeing pics of this kind of stuff especially when the setups are as unique as the one you've got with the Extron Emotia + TV config.


How could I forget when such a cool rad dude asks me? I'll take pictures of dad's pin too in a bit.

Quote:
 
Anyway, what do you guys think of this barcade thing? I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in L.A. this seems to be a huge fad that's really taken off within the past few years. Personally it's not my cup of tea (I reaaaaaaaaaally don't like the crowd that hangs out at these places & I'm spoiled by freeplay), but a few do have games I can only play there such as Pinbot or Smash TV so sometimes I just gotta sack up and go to one.


A barcade opened in Charlotte last year called Abari and it's pretty grimy. Concrete garage interior with a dirt parking lot. No freeplay/hourly fee so not really interested. I don't drink so the alcohol wouldn't do a thing for me either.

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There's also a theory that as soon as the novelty wears off and these places start tanking, arcade game prices will start dropping because the market will be flooded with their inventory. These games definitely aren't cheap to maintain these days especially if you want to be as original as possible and sooner or later it might catch up to 'em. Couple that with having to hire a dedicated tech, drunk people, and you've got a recipe for disaster. Should be interesting to see what the future holds for them...


That would be great but also kind of sad, because it seems to be the most viable business model to keep arcades as a 'place' alive now. I agree that eventually the interest is going to die out and the expense of maintenance will get unruly. Probably in five to ten years...
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Bratwurst
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BIG JERK
Okay I took some pictures. Like I said she's unfinished, I really should get back to it. It is in a playable state though. Stripped, sanded and patched the body for hours before I painted it, the red looks great in person but it took soooo many coats.

Mame cab pics

I have two Extron Emotias because I'm a greedy jerk.
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strx10
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Sexy Beast
Man that really looks nice. I like the Nintendo-esque color choices and the fact that the colors really go well together. I've never seen a cab with the TV out of the case, but it certainly makes the thing look authentic. I like it! Surprised you didn't go with the 6 button 'standard' configuration, but your layout definitely makes it way more unique.

Also that Cybernaut is in ridiculous condition. Jesus Christ. Hard to believe its over 30 years old. I also wish i had one Extron Emotia :(

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A barcade opened in Charlotte last year called Abari and it's pretty grimy. Concrete garage interior with a dirt parking lot. No freeplay/hourly fee so not really interested. I don't drink so the alcohol wouldn't do a thing for me either.

Wait, it's seriously called Abari? Good lord. The way you describe it sounds very appealing. You'd think they'd do a happy hour/freeplay gimmick... maybe some places do? The place you're describing sounds like it isn't made to last and they just want to cash in.

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That would be great but also kind of sad, because it seems to be the most viable business model to keep arcades as a 'place' alive now. I agree that eventually the interest is going to die out and the expense of maintenance will get unruly. Probably in five to ten years...

You're absolutely spot on with it being the most viable 'normal' arcade business model these days. You want to draw a different crowd than your typical arcade crazed middle aged nerds playing Mappy for 30 hours straight to actually make some money. The idea of drinking with old school gaming is absolutely cashing in on two booming trends with the 25-40 year old demographic and combining the two is ingenious. I can't comment on drinking other than specialty brewing has exploded within the past few years with that age group. Retro gaming needs no explanation on these forums. I've noticed most of these places usually have the same core games (Konami beat 'em ups, 90s fighting games, Midway sports titles) to get people interested and without any surprise, they are also the most nostalgic/remembered games that have also gone up the most in price.

I guess the only benefit of the theoretical downfall is the repairs wouldn't be that hard to do especially with all the documentation and repro parts out there. I agree it would be sad to see arcades die off again as a place to go without resorting to having ticket games. We'll see what happens...

One thing I do want to note is the barcade I went to has already downsized heavily even within the past few years. The place is called EightyTwo and when they first started out I'd say they had about 70-80 games? According to their website, they now have 45 games and half of them are pins. Looks like the 'rarer' titles are gone and they've just kept the popular games around so it seems as if the maintenance cost theory might have already began. They've also started doing more gimmicks like DJs, food trucks, and everything else to try and appeal to their core demographic so they must be hurting. The other places I remember looking at a few years ago all seem to have downsized as well while keeping the 'essentials' around. I don't even see how it would be a factor considering most of these joints still charge like $15 for a cocktail, but whatever. Ain't my crowd anyway.
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bigbangblackbillyboatbeautiful
BIG BUTT BABY
...
Edited by bigbangblackbillyboatbeautiful, Jun 13 2018, 04:25 PM.
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strx10
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Sexy Beast
TIME FOR A BLOG POST.

I went to the Arcade Expo here last weekend with my girlfriend. It was held at the pinball museum here in California and had hundreds of both pins and games from all eras including some extremely rare titles. Unfortunately a lot of games had an issue or two like the joysticks being so worn out that they don't even return to center, games not working right or even at all which was kinda disappointing. However the pinball collection was spectacular and we ended up spending more time in there than with the games just because of their ridiculous selection and how well maintained they all were. There were also a lot of weirdos from the King of Kong/Twin Galaxies so it was interesting to see how crazy they really are in person. My favorite example is Mr. Awesome sitting alone in the food area at a table by himself eating a bag of 4 bagels and Centrum Silver that he pulled out of a large leather fanny pack while desperately looking around hoping someone would notice him. Overall we had a great experience and we might go to the next event they host this October.

Here's an hour and twenty minute long video of someone just walking through showing the games during the convention. I make a cameo playing Robotron with busted joysticks at 1 hour 4 minutes. I had no idea I was even being filmed so this is kinda neat to see this after the fact.

In my world of collecting: I picked up a project Tapper cocktail that has a Timber board at a ridiculously low price that I couldn't resist. Hell I could flip the thing and double my money as is. The issues it has are it constantly reboots after displaying a sound interface error, there's some heavy burn in, and it's missing the top portion of the cabinet including the glass. Those are really the only things wrong with it and it's in excellent condition otherwise. I'm going to try my hand at repairing the boards and swapping the roms so expect to see this thing for sale in about 3 months when I completely fuck this whole thing up and quit due to frustration.

Interestingly enough this guy has several other cocktail cabinets he wants to get rid of. He's starting to get into NES collecting (poor bastard) and is willing to trade some of my games for a few of his tables. This might be the only time where I'm happy with how stupid the market is these days.

That's about it. Edsel that's your cue.
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portnoyd
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WET NOSE
Was it California Extreme? I can't see the YT link from my work PC, but if it's not, that's another one you should go to. I think it's typically in the summer.

Oh man, Timber is awesome. Keep us posted on the refurbing.

Just getting into NES collecting... now. When you have been doing arcade collecting apparently for some time? Also, please keep us posted on how well it goes for that guy, assuming you stay in contact with him.
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strx10
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Sexy Beast
Nah it wasn't CAX. As you said, that's during summer and is about 4 hours away from me. This one is in Banning, California which is about a 90 minute drive for me so it was definitely a lot easier to make a day of it. The event was Arcade Expo 3.0 and a few people I spoke with have said it's already starting to rival CAX. They think within a few more years it'll be a true alternative for us bastards in the LA area.

Will do. If anything I've got a few options for repairs if I can't hack it. There's a guy who repairs them cheap on KLOV I can ship it to and I've also got electrical engineering buddies who will work for booze. I'm sure their hearty laughter at this 35 year old tech would be worth it alone. I'll take some pics when I get it home from the garage I'm cleaning it out at later in the week.

I do planning on keeping in contact with him just because he's been an absolute pleasure to shoot the shit with and has been hooking it up with these games. I just finalized a deal today consisting of 18 games for a cocktail Asteroids with a spare pcb. I think the most expensive cart on the list is Super C which we priced at about $24 so I'm still in awe about this whole thing. Considering what's in his arcade collection, (he has a dedicated Major Havoc, and I, Robot... 2 games together that would give a complete Stadium Events a run for its money) I get the impression that money isn't too big of a deal for him and this is all for fun so he's willing to pay the hyper inflated NES prices. He did say he would just get an Everdrive for the ridiculously priced games like anything above $50 so I guess he has some method to his madness. He's also been arcade collecting for about 15 years at this point so he's seen the prices skyrocket there and bought most of his collection when things were a lot more reasonable.

Semi-related, I just learned about the pinball market and it is akin to NES collecting. Pins go for $8k-$10k now a days after nearly 2 decades of sub $1k where you couldn't even give them away. It's just ridiculous how much the pricing has changed just across the board as we've talked about a hundred times now.
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Bratwurst
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strx10,Mar 28 2017
09:02 PM
Semi-related, I just learned about the pinball market and it is akin to NES collecting. Pins go for $8k-$10k now a days after nearly 2 decades of sub $1k where you couldn't even give them away. It's just ridiculous how much the pricing has changed just across the board as we've talked about a hundred times now.

Wow, you're not kidding. I haven't been paying attention to that at all but I guess it makes sense relative to arcade cabs and boards being nuts.
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shain
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i was always the under the impression that pins were expensive/time consuming as fuck to repair and maintain, and thats why folks were willing to offload them for cheap
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lannyc
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i hucked in guite a few quarters at this guy recently.
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strx10
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^ Really good selection of 90s games and the fact that they have a Space Harrier in any sort of working condition is amazing. Looks like a pretty rad place to bring friends especially with all the 4 player games.

BLOGPOST: So here's the latest in my world. I'll just link this album and commentate in the order of the pics to make life easier.

http://imgur.com/a/dIATS

So I decided to completely strip and give Tapper a deep clean from top to bottom. This wasn't too bad thankfully and I was able to spot + repair a few shorted out wires along the way. Sadly this cab didn't have the keys for the coin box so I had to drill it out to remove it and much to my surprise, I also found 50 cents buried deep within it's depths. After stripping it, I flipped it over to address the issues with the leg levelers where 2 of them at some point broke off. Whomever repaired it decided it was a better idea to just move them in closer and use 2" wood screws which made the whole thing wobble while also narrowly missing drilling through the audio driver board. After some liberal usage of Bondo, I went ahead and put the levelers back where they belonged with the proper bolts, cleaned everything out and reassembled the cabinet and gave the board a spin hoping that the fixed shorts would allow it to run. I got the same error as it had before so I'll start troubleshooting the PCB now that everything's all situated and cleaned.

The next steps after I get it running are to install a switcher power supply kit (the original one had battery acid leaking all over the place and I'd like to bulletproof everything as much as possible), rebuild the top, get replacement glass, and I'll need to find someone who can burn EPROMs to swap out the Timber roms for Tapper. Overall not too bad of a project and there are no regrets about buying this whatsoever. I'll seriously be tripling my investment when this is all said and done.

Time for Asteroids. As stated before, I got it from the same guy who sold me Tapper for a grand total of 18 common NES games. One thing he was mistaken on was this actually is an Asteroids Deluxe with a repro Asteroids underlay and not the original Asteroids. I am a ok with this. He also said this is another project that isn't working, but he included a spare logic and soundboard he had laying around so I could have donor parts when attempting repairs. Much to my surprise, I swapped out the board that was in there with the 'dead donor' and the thing fired up without issues... until I reconnected the main board without fully securing the connection. This caused the Atari sound board to short as they're infamously known to do resulting in a billow of nice electronic smoke. Thankfully the spare sound board also worked and everything is now a ok. I can go into depth as to why this occurs if anyone wants to hear some quality technical babble. Not much else to say other than I'm going to disassemble the bastard for deep cleaning and a once over like I did with Tapper. Unfortunately this was left in a shed and became a hotel for spiders so I'm looking forward evicting whatever the hell may be living in here. At least it wasn't rats.

What I need to do next is bulletproof the soundboard with a sense bypass kit + cap kit, replace the acrylic plexi someone hastily put on there with the proper tinted glass, get a repro monitor bezel, find a coin door/box (original was replaced and blocked off), and repaint all the rusted out metal. Unfortunately no company has any sort of Asteroids Deluxe reproduction underlays and control panel overlays so I'm SOL for a true restoration. I'll figure something out when the time comes.

That's about it for now. I must say that I'm really enjoying this hobby and think it's a nice segue from collecting.

Oh and if any of you can program EPROMs or know someone who can, please let me know. That would help me out tremendously and I'd really REALLY appreciate it.
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Bratwurst
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BIG JERK
strx10,Apr 8 2017
01:26 AM
Oh and if any of you can program EPROMs or know someone who can, please let me know. That would help me out tremendously and I'd really REALLY appreciate it.


I've got a programmer and eraser, so if you have any other game eproms you might want to do them all in one batch so it'll 'recharge' them for another couple of decades. Be glad to do this for you for free- shoot me a PM.
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strx10
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Sexy Beast
PM sent! Thanks!!
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