I do not know how much interest there is here in this, but I recently decided to get back into Arcade game collecting.
About 15 years ago, I worked as a Technical Manager for my local Chuck E Cheeses. My job was to maintain all of the games and animatronic show. During my time there, I discovered that most of the video games were essentially the same inside, with just either a different board or a different set of chips.
Fast forward a few years later, I decided to build my own game setup with parts off of ebay. I did not have room for a full on cabinet, so I bought all of the controls, a professional video monitor, and a few game boards. I built my own "Universal control set", which had a standard 8 direction joystick and 6 buttons per player, as well as some buttons for the test modes and coin inserts.
I then put it all together in the living room, as a massive joystick.
I focused on the fighting games and puzzle games at that point. The NeoGeo MVS (which is playing Metal Slug there) and Capcom CPS2 platforms were great for fighting games, and I bought a Taito F3 board from Korea.
After then, I moved a few times.. and lugging around the large 29" video monitor and finding a place to set it all up became an extremely low priority. I ended up selling off most of the games, but I kept the Taito games and a Super Street Fighter 2 game along with all of the wiring and the control panel that I made.
Fast forward again to today. I now have the space to set this all up again, and the finances to get into some more advanced games. The developers who make the games have shifted more towards "platforms", where you have a standard motherboard and the game is just basically a cartridge or CD/DVD that you can change out. The NeoGeo MVS and Taito F3 above are good examples of that, but there are newer ones such as the Sega Naomi (The arcade version of the Dreamcast), and the Namco System 246/256 (The arcade version of the Playstation 2). Of course there are newer versions too, but the newer you go, the more expensive it gets. As such, I picked up a Naomi setup along with its GD-ROM addon and a System 246 from Japan.
After accumulating these games, I decided to start looking into game cabinets. I figured I would buy one and just swap games in and out of it. This lead me to my latest purchase, which is not the stand-up cabinet that I was looking for.. but a sit-down driving game.
It is a (mostly) complete dedicated Cruis'n World game, I was able to pick it up for $50 (plus $120 for the U-Haul). The only thing it is missing is the power supply, which I should be able to replace later today. Hopefully all of its boards work correctly.
Using this chassis, I should be able to get a number of driving games working, such as Crazy Taxi or Initial D (both Naomi games), or other Midway driving games such as Crusin USA or Crusin Exotica.
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