Can buy off of Ebay, or go to any local suppliers, but I would bet local suppliers only sell them once they are too crappy to use any more.

If you get a beat up one you can go to places like happcontrols.com to order buttons and joysticks. That stuff is actually pretty cheap.

They plug into normal wall outlets.

And starting your own arcade? That could be tough. I guess find a spot you can rent, and find a source for machines. Either get a supplier to rotate machines in and out or try to buy a few. Websites and stores that sell them in working order charge a lot, I just saw MK3 for $1425 (and MK1 for $1500) on a website today, which seems outrageous to me.

Find the boards on ebay, get buttons from happ, and get the boxes from ebay and suppliers maybe.

It would probably take a bunch of money to get an arcade started. Depending on where you would probably have to go to the town for permits and stuff also, and get any place you rent or buy checked out for occupancy rules.

Starting an arcade was just a random thought.

*edit: How technologically inclined would I have to be to properly maintain a machine?



Ka-Tra

There are many places to buy machines. Ebay is great but it's very expensive to have them shipped(like 300 dollars) if you live far away. I also recomend checking out the classified ads in local papers. You'd be surprised what you can find. This is how I found my MK II and I ended up getting a great deal from some guy that had it in his basement and needed to get rid of it. In the phonebook under amusement you'll find all the operators in town, they're worth trying but people in the business almost always hate dealing with the public. Usually they will have a small amount of old, crappy games for sale. At Namcoarcade.com you can use their "search for used games" finder to find games Namco arcades are selling in your state. They update the list every few months and have some surprisingly good deals. Most of my games have come from Namco owned arcades that I discovered using that site.

Most arcade suppliers sell or lease brand new games. If you're wanting something new like Tekken 5 or Ghost Squad then you could go through them, but that's like well over $3,000. If you're wanting old games then they probably won't be able to help you.

The price varies. It really just depends on how much you're willing to pay. I've bought old crappy games that barely work for 100 dollars and I've bought nearly perfect big name games for over 1,000.

They plug into walls, but most are that 3 prong type.

To start a business you'd need lots of money, a great location and a ton of luck. I've often had the same dream. It sadly isn't likely to come true. I think if you're serious about becoming an operator you should start working for one and then eventually start putting a few machines in businesses, like maybe one or two in a resturant or something.

And yes it does take a lot of technical skill. Your games WILL break and need new parts, especially if you're playing games that are 10 years old. I know next to nothing so I have to hire people to come fix them and that can be costly. I have 3 machines out of order right now.

What sort of parts do you see breaking Anyanka?

I have been thinking about arcades quite a bit lately and how neat it would be to get involved with one starting. Always looking for more info about it.

The buttons and joystucks and such I know are easy. Monitor replacement seems annoying but I've seen how its done, what sort of other technical problems have you experienced?

Mostly joysticks, buttons and monitors. Buttons/sticks is more of an annoyance than a real problem ,even I can usually fix that. Monitors are a huge pain though. My 3 broken games now are bad monitors. Even with the games that work fine there's still some problems, like screen burn, verticle lines, the screen bouncing and distorted colors. Probably 75% of my games have at least some minor monitor problems. I guess if you knew how to install them it wouldn't be too bad, just expensive.

Mike, I'll talk to Terry the next time I see him at Pathmark and ask him about this because he wanted to put an arcade in where that laundry mat is between what was West Coast Video and Valentino's years ago but Middletown wouldn't let him. He should have all the info.

Cool. Whatever info you get please share on here, might as well have a thread that is a resource to all wannabe arcade owners.

My advice on starting an arcade(not that I own one), start small. Have a few games in a little place. If the public like it and the arcade shows a profit, get more cabinets. Do not get a bigger place because if you expand too quickly, you could go bankrupt. Do not expand unless you know you have enough money to support the arcade.

Cool, look what I started. I hope your plans go smoothly.

Are there any differences in price between arcade cabinets, and pinball machines?

Thanks for your input. I'm not even sure about this, I just get ideas sometimes. I'm kinda on a nostalgia trip. There's only one arcade left in my city, and I haven't gone to one in years.



Ka-Tra

And moving parts, a lot more maintenance, etc.

If I ever ran an arcade, every game would have the big screens with the set back far apart controls. Fantasy.

My Tekken 4 is in one of those cabinets. The Showcase 33, made by Atari.

find a place going out of business such as a bar or something like that, usually bars have old pinball machines or arcade games and they will give it to you or sell it dirt cheap.

btw if you start an arcade you should get...
UMK3
MK2
Killer Instinct 1
Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo
Street Fighter 3 - 3rd Strike
Life Force (old spaceship game)

I ́m thinking abou getting an arcade cabbinet with a mk1 pcb, mk2 pcb and umk3 pcb for quite a while and here in brasil they are mutch cheaper then there

Oh man.

The year was 1995. The place was the Broadway Mall in Hicksville, NY. For months they had been clearing out this HUGE section of the mall, right by one of the entrances. I wondered what all the commotion was about. Finally they finished, and I was stunned when I finally went there again and saw it - what they did was take their tiny little "Sega's Time Out" of "Aladdin's Castle" or whatever it was, move all the games into that huge open area they had been clearing out, and order a ton of new games. It was frigging video game Shangri La the first time I saw that thing. For the hot new titles they would have multiple machines; they had a row of literally 8-10 Street Fighter Alpha cabinets, plus two of those Big Screen versions you described with the set back far apart controls. Actually most of the really big games would get that treatment - a whole row of normal cabinets, plus one or two of the big ones. They had a bunch of Tekken 3's plus a big one, they had the just-released Wresltemania The Arcade Game on a big one, and yes, they had Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on two big screens!!! It was madness!

But sadly, the problem was that it was just too much. The market wasn't alive enough to support such a wondrous thing. This was late '95, and arcades were dying. I guess the local morons didn't support it enough, because the mega arcade was gone before long. I forget what exactly became of the area, it's just some nondescript generic mall bullshit now. They moved the arcade to a smaller location downstairs before just getting rid of it altogether.

Damn. I'm gonna go cry now. Ha ha, you have awakened some memories there MK2KB.

brings memories shure does

I have so many memories and there's been a lot of threads about it, I always share the same things. But keeping specific to the topic there's a certain experience with the big screen glass encased cabs and set back controls I love to share, and it was the very first time I ever played UMK3. It was like going to a company banquet. So much competition was there, and the brand new controls and set up was just such a spoiling experience. I was about 14 years old, and I cleaned up big time, defeating this guy who was abusing Sektor teleport uppercuts, for some reason no one could compete with it and I was mind boggled because I was so use to crushing idiots like that in MK3. So I picked Scorpion, saw the new pose and was like "Wow that's cool" and then I tried some MK2 combos with him and I was so pleased with how solid everything felt compared to MK2.

I will never ever forget that day mostly because of the cab.

Matt

http://www.carobinson.com/games/ATARI%20-%20SHOWCASE%2033%201993.jpg

This kind of cabinet?

Yeah the ones I saw pretty much looked like that.

Oh and another fine "big screen" memory... in 8th grade my science class had a field trip to Six Flags Great Adventure, for "Physics Day" or something like that. Anyway we split into groups and decided to meet back by one of the arcades at the end of the day. So my group gets there first and WHAM, there it is, big-screen MK3. Asked the guy playing if I could join in and he was like "sure." So the vs. matches began... I didn't know much about the game back then, but I knew enough to do most of the special moves and put on a decent show. With my classmates cheering me on I got a sweet 5-win streak against a few human opponents. I wanted to really wow the crowds with some fatalities, but that was right when the second revision of the game came out and they changed all the finisher commands.

Ah, it was glorious! Man I gotta find a local cabinet. I could check United Skates in my area to see if they have UMK3... that was where I first saw the game; I'd be kinda suprised if they still had it but its worth a shot. And oh... oh oh.... Fun Zone... I got a tip from someone here on the board that Fun Zone has a MK3 machine. My sister confirmed this, because her youth group went to that Fun Zone the other night and she told me that she played it!!! She said it "might have been" Ultimate... now I just gotta interrogate her a little bit... show her some select screens in MAME and see if it was in fact UMK3 or just regular MK3. Man, if it turns out it IS UMK3 I gotta try and stir up some local competitive action...

yes fun zone has an umk3 machine, and i believe mk4, might even still hav mk2. havent been there in a long time. im really surprised westbury nathans dont hav one of the classics.

OMG. Thanks very much for the info!! I am definitely gonna check that out. Awesome.

And yeah, I feel kinda betrayed by the Westbury Nathans! I went there recently and there was no MK representation whatsoever. Just SoulCalibur II, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and everything else was basically DDR or a racing/gun game. They used to have two rows of classic old-schoolers like Aliens and Wrestlefest, but no more. Oh well. So many MK memories there... I always got so excited when my old youth group would go there after church. Most of the people would go across the street to Taco Bell and McDonalds, but me and a few others were always like "screw that, we're going to the arcade!" I'd play some MK and Street Fighter and Darkstalkers, usually with a little miniature cheering section of fellow youth-group members, and then we'd run across the street to meet everyone else by the fast food places. Ah, good times.