Advice on first standup multi game machine

[Kevlar]

I'm mainly a pinball guy but I have room in my gamesroom for a single standup arcade cabinet. I understand the options for a multi game machine are mainly mame or jamma. I've dabbled with mame on PC and iPad in the past and always found the experience frustrating so I'm leaning towards a multi game pcb jamma machine, maybe something like the Cosmic 3 from liberty games. Is anyone familiar with this machine? Is it a bad choice?

Any help appreciated

Kev
Kevlar2013-09-26 18:53:28

 

[IDCHAPPY]

If you buy that monstrosity, for that price, I will personally drive down to Wales and poke you in the eye

 

[IDCHAPPY]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CUSTOM-BUILT-ARCADE-CAB-CGA-VGA-JAMMA-FULLY-WORKING-/331032487563?pt=UK_Video_Games_Coin_Operated_MJ&hash=item4d1312e68b

You'd probably get that for £150, it already has a multi board in it, just unplug one and plug in another.

Frothmeister has the ones with 300+ games on it

 

[Kevlar]

If you buy that monstrosity, for that price, I will personally drive down to Wales and poke you in the eye

 

That's why I'm here, not very constructive though lol. Please educate me!

 

[Kevlar]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CUSTOM-BUILT-ARCADE-CAB-CGA-VGA-JAMMA-FULLY-WORKING-/331032487563?pt=UK_Video_Games_Coin_Operated_MJ&hash=item4d1312e68b
 

You'd probably get that for £150, it already has a multi board in it, just unplug one and plug in another.

Frothmeister has the ones with 300+ games on it

What's Frothmeister?

 

[tb lilley]

Fair enough to ask for constructive critiscm, but what do you like about it? If you set that out then people here can assess whether it's the right cab for you.

 

[IDCHAPPY]

You can get a nice classic Jamma cab for about 10% of that price man, add in a decent multiboard and your looking at £250 all in-ish. Better than wasting £1200 on the pile of wank you linked too

 

[tb lilley]

One man's pile of wank is another man's treasure Chappers. Depends what the chap wants.

 

[IDCHAPPY]

I don't mean to sound harsh dude, it's been a long week and I lost my wallet yesterday with £250 and cracked the screen on my phone which may cost me another £200 to fix.

That cab you linked to is one of a growing trend of smallish, ballbag companies creating these monsters and making huge profits from the ones they manage to sell to usually unsuspecting people.

You can pick up a nice classic cab with multiboard for a fraction of the price

 

[Kevlar]

Fair enough to ask for constructive critiscm, but what do you like about it? If you set that out then people here can assess whether it's the right cab for you.

Well obviously I know nothing about these things and just came across that one searching. I just want a single machine with controls for 2 player games and a good selection of games from the early games like Galaxian to games like SF2 etc.

 

[tb lilley]

Ok. You know nothing about these things - but as a pinball guy you must have a bit of form sourcing machines, unless you buy retail?

This might sound like a false analogy - but go on a car forum and post a link to a Hyundai dealer, pick a mid range car, and ask 'is this any good' odds are people will tell you it depends.

It depends if you want to pay top dollar.
It depends if you just want to press a button and simply have it delivered to your door.
It depends on how important it's going to be to keep the mrs sweet.
It depends on whether or not having something squeaky clean, never used before is important to you.
It depends whether the only car in stock is an automatic, but ideally you'd like a manual.
Depends whether you need finance or can pay cash.

The cab you linked to might be brilliant for you. Depends what you want.

You'll get a ton of reasons why you shouldn't buy that cab from people on here. But what most will really tell you is why they wouldnt buy it:

- LCD screen which will be horrible.
- cheap construction
- poor quality components
- hideous art work.
- overpriced
- far better and cheaper alternatives.

Does that help?tb lilley2013-09-26 19:40:38

 

[Kevlar]

Yeas some good info there thanks. So where do you get these 300 game boards from mentioned above?

 

[IDCHAPPY]

Yeas some good info there thanks. So where do you get these 300 game boards from mentioned above?

https://www.ukvac.com/forum/member_profile.asp?PF=89

 

[ZedEx48K]

In my opinion

I would skip the multiboards too, none of them work 100% and the China PC ones take a decade to boot, best is to get a decent XP PC, don't install excess crap and then shell it.

 

[Kevlar]

Stick shells on the case?

 

[RGP]

Can I point out that the price of JAMMA cabs has been steadily on the rise due to the proportion of sledgehammering they keep getting.

You used to be able to buy one for about £50 then £100 now I keep seeing them go for £200+.

Hmmmm, anyone want 9 x ..... no, seriously not in my lifetime.

I started out on a JAMMA cab which I installed MAME into its existing wiring using a JPAC etc, then I got annoyed with the flicker and framerate issues even though I bought the ArcadeVGA card etc so I got one of Frothy's 60-in-1 boards and just enjoyed the heck out of it for months.

The sound is a bit pants on some of the games and the playability is not there on some either but in the main, if you just want a trip down memory lane for about 45 classics out of the 60 advertised then you can't beat the price, in fact, you couldn't cost your time out and the PC etc cheaper - and what's better is they just boot up and that's it - ok, it'll take about 60 seconds to boot but meh, I have some original PCB's that have the longest test cycle ever.

I still have my multi game boards, they are my emergency back up boards for the parties and taking to events, nothing worse than a dedicated Galaxian board failing after 3 hours on a 2 day event - slam in a 60-in-1, set it to one game only and it looks to the casual observer like an original.

Just don't go buying one of those frankencab's no matter how much you think you'll need it - you'll never need 5 spinners, 6 player positions with 10 buttons each, 4 steering wheels and 8 trackballs.

 

[cools]

MAME nowadays is bang on. It's been a *long* time coming. It craps all over any and all of the multiboards. If you use GroovyMAME that is.

http://code.google.com/p/groovyarcade
http://forum.arcadeotaku.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=24216

My advice? Start out with something that doesn't kill your wallet that you can learn from.

This looks decent for the money nowadays: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fully-Working-Arcade-Cabinet-/141067633105?pt=UK_Video_Games_Coin_Operated_MJ&hash=item20d84941d1

It could use a little work on the aesthetics, and the monitor clearly needs to be recapped, but it's local, working, cheap - the seller should go for less cash in hand. Get a couple of cheap PCBs as well to have something to play with (I'm just down the road and have got some stuff that's up for grabs, hint hint), and work on a MAME setup.

 

[ZedEx48K]

Stick shells on the case?

Not sure if that is a joke or not

But shelling a PC means replacing on bootup windows explorer with the frontend you use for MAME, means it skips a bunch of things and you don't see any of windows running, just a fast boot straight to the games.

 

[Kevlar]

Cools, thanks for the info, where do you live? Maybe I can pop around so you can show me the ropes? Your welcome to come and play some silverball.

ZED, yes it was a joke!

I should add that I do want something that looks fairly nice, I've got enough on my hands maintaining 5 pins, don't want a tatty looking cab that needs some tlc adding to my workload. Also want something fully working that doesn't have problems like the monitor that needs recapping ( whatever that is! ) on the linked cab on eBay.

Thanks all for the info so far, you've all at least saved me a lot of money on the one I was considering.Kevlar2013-09-27 10:07:56

 

[Kevlar]

Do many cabs come up on here for sale?