Living the dream
Living my dream, at least. And it's not the only dream I've had. There are plenty of others that I have yet to fulfill, and many of them will never be written about here or anywhere else, I should imagine.
The dream in question here is that of owning an arcade machine. Ever since I had seen an advert in a games mag (I forget which one) from a company that supplied arcade machines to home users I had wanted one. The machine in the add was a two player cabinet with three buttons per player, and was priced at about £400. I thought that this was a very reasonable price, but I had a sneaking suspicion that my parents wouldn't so I never asked.
It wasn't until the advent of eBay that I even considered seriously looking into owning a machine of my own. It was the run up to Christmas a couple of years ago, and I'd been watching some cabinets and game boards to see what sort of prices they went for. It was much less than the £400 that had been asked by that add all those years back. Fantastic! I managed to win an auction at the very reasonable price of £104. I also picked up a game board (Section Z, a side scrolling shoot 'em up by Capcom) for £30.
At this point the first of many complications had to be overcome. The cabinet itself was in Newport in South Wales. This wasn't too big a problem as I have relatives who live reasonably close to Newport. All that needed to be done was to hire a van, which my dad did and we headed off to collect the machine.
Getting it back was easy. But the next small complication was about to occur. The cabinet itself weighed a ton (I haven't actually weighed it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this estimate isn't far off) and it was to be placed in my bedroom - which is of course up stairs. It took myself, my dad and my brother an extreme amount of effort to haul the cabinet into my room, and I'm sure that in years to come we'll all develop some sort of back problem as a result. This particular complication could have been avoided if I'd had the keys for the cabinet, but the seller had lost them. If I'd been able to open the back I could have got the monitor out of the cabinet, which would have drastically reduced the weight. Still, I now had an arcade machine in my room! How fantastic is that?!
However, the arcade machine had some more surprises up it's sleeve. Three days after I got it I turned it on. Instead of the high pitched ping of the monitor (which is an old CRT model from the 80's) bursting into life, the machine emitted a strange humming sound and smoke began to fill the room. There's nothing like the smell of an electrical fire, is there? It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I found that the transformer supplying the power to the monitor had blown (I was still new to all this stuff).
So, I needed a new transformer. I had to drill the lock of the back door of the cabinet to get the old transformer out. Luckily, I found a mail order company that supplies all sorts of parts for arcade machines, and they had a transformer in stock for my type of monitor. Lovely. The new transformer was installed and the power was switched on. But, instead of the monitor springing to life, the new transformer started to overload. Bugger. The power was switched off:-(
It transpired that it wasn't the transformer's fault but the monitor itself. Something had blown on the monitor and the power wasn't getting to it. Instead, the high voltage was being retained by the transformer and causing it to overload. I now had to find someone to repair the monitor.
I won't go into detail on this, but it turns out that when you phone most TV/monitor repair shops and say "I have an arcade machine monitor that I need fixed" they simply won't do it. They won't, generally, even offer to look at it. I finally found a place that would fix it, though (this after buying a spare monitor from eBay that turned out not to work either - my fault really as it was listed as untested). All I had to do was get the parts for it - from the same company that supplied the new transformer - and they were fitted and the monitor now worked!
I've since had many months of happy use out of the machine. Earlier this year I fitted a PC to it and installed MAME - the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator. Although now the hard drive has decideddoesn't want to work any more, which sucks.
The game boards that I acquired have all since either stopped working or developed various problems that I have no idea how to fix. Hence the switch to PC. If anyone reading this does want to have their own arcade machine it is worth noting that it is a continuing project. Like an old car (or any old equipment, really) things will break down with disheartening regularity. Unless you are very technically minded and like fiddling around with huge game boards (they are computers in there own rights as there are no actual electronics inside the cabs - besides the monitor) go for a cabinet with a PC in it. This has it's own complications, of course (you need adapters and possibly new graphics cards to make the image appear properly on an arcade monitor) but it's far more enjoyable once it's up and running. The other massive (literally) problem with game PCB's is that they are generally very large. If you have more than one you have to be able to store them away somewhere when they're not in the cab.
There's plenty I can do to the cab now if I feel inclined, such as adding more player buttons or putting flashing led's all over the place, or loads of other customisations. It just keeps going. But it is very satisfying doing it, and it's great getting reactions from your friends when they see you have an arcade machine sitting in your bedroom.
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