were to get an arcade machine?

I've had the best luck/prices with local arcade/gameroom auctions. You might check on the internet to see if there are any scheduled for your area.

I got mine from an auction of a local arcade that went out of business. Look in your yellow pages for Consession or Game Equipment and give them a call. I talk to our local one about once a month and they update me with games they remove from places. Most of time they put them on ebay, but if you catch them before they list them they may sell them to you. Worth a shot.

If you live near the East Coast, there is a place in New Jersey that has a huge auction every year for just arcade/pinball machines. The have hundreds of machines each year.

Try the GameRoom Warehouse in Pennsylvania.

That's where I got my Karate Champ stand-up.

Boy does that game bring back memories. Ready....FIGHT!

Craigslist.com has them if there one near you. I am from Massachusetts and they are on craigslist.com quite often.




Dennis

My father has been running an arcade machine business for 25 years now.

It will be hard to find good clean classics at an auction. It is mostly people getting away from the business selling things like Dance Dance Revolution, Marvel Fs Capcom, and a bunch of random other types of games wy/ custom built cabinets.

You will rarely find a clean Original classic at an auction. But if you are interested in going Id have to recommend Super Auctions, this is the one I go to.

If your not looking for a clean classic I might be able to help you out wy/ some newer 90's and up type games.

If you need a classic, go to a website like the pose above w/ the pic, only place you will easily find things like this.

Londonderry, NH is closer to the great white north than PA.

http://www.nicksjukeboxrepair.com/

He has some arcade games as well not on his site.

do you have any more details on this?

www.superauctions.com they have not come around the east lately. I sell arcades for a living a real good auction is also --- us amusements --- arcade and coin op auctions

I've used the Pennsylvania Gameroom Warehouse and TnT Amusements (PA too). Both are good if you want a refurbished system with a warranty. Of course, you'll pay more.

What's the name of it?

I think it is the Cherry Hill auction. But there is also one in Allentown, PA at some point.

Intertan, i've got a suggestion for you, that might or might not interest you. Just like there's avsforum for all of us multimedia heads, and there are other forums for other hobbies, there's a whole group of people that build their own arcade machines. There's an emulator called MIME, that lets you download all the old arcade games (the actual files that were in the arcades). And what you do is build a cabinet using the same wood and dimensions that the manufacturers did, then there's companies that supply all the parts that the old machines had. You can buy the buttons, joysticks, lighting, coin acceptor, etc, from the actual people that made them for the real machines (and they're cheap). Then you just put a crappy pc in the cabinet, put the monitor in the space for it, and wire the buttons to the keyboard with some soldering (or buy a converter), and that way you can have a legitimate arcade machine, but with every arcade game ever made. It'll cost a whole lot less too, if you have an old pc and monitor, you can make it for like 300 bucks depending on how nice you want it. Also, some people buy crappy old arcades of games that aren't that cool, and they just gut the inside, and put a MIME emulator pc in it. Anyways, i'll get you the link sometime soon and post it on here for you, i have to look through some magazines for the actual link, because i havn't been to the site in a while. Good luck!

no offense to samxm, but it's MAME, Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

Check local ads and you'll find some. Check them every day as some go very fast

In past years its been held at the National Guard Armory on Route 38 East in Mount Holly, NJ. I've been thee twice in the last 6 years.

Oh yeah, MAME, sorry, i got my acronyms mixed up

Criags List and Google groups

Local auctions in the GTA are at Starburst Coin, usually the every 6 or 8 weeks, you better know something about fixing them though if you buy at their auction... otherwise as suggested check the toronto craigslist... if you're from outside of the Toronto Area I can't help you much... well unless you are from Vancouver, or Halifax, I know some people in those areas that could probably help.

I'm telling you, man, go with a MAME system, its much more worth your money.
http://www.arcadeathome.com/pics.phtml

Yea, mame cabs are easy to build, just google for some plans and you will find a bunch. Im building mine off of Lucids Designs (Just google Lucid mame cabinet) but with a different Control Panel.

But its still nice to have an original cab, but most old school cabs, in good condition can fetch collector prices.

The cab im looking for is fairly common (NEO GEO 4 slot MVS), but i still cant seem find one in calgary. And i missed the last auction. And i would pay top dollar for a startrek next gen pinball machine.

I think this fall I will start my arcade... This thread has been very helpful...

also check out build your own arcade controls.. GREAT resource for building your own

www.arcadecontrols.com

By the way, the reason for the pricing of the Taito and Williams cabinets available commercially is the price of the licensing of the games.

The ROM images used with MAME are still owned by their corporate creators in most cases and their use is technically illegal unless you own a game board containing the original ROM chips.

If a vendor were to sell a MAME emulator without licensing the games they'd be facing a major lawsuit by the end of the day.

People don't sell MAME stuff, well people sell cabinets but not turn key stuff for the most part. The idea is that you as a private party build your own cabinet and try to help preserve the old roms that are no longer in service or commercially viable. I wouldn't worry about legal issues unless you're trying to profit from selling ROMs to others or are trying to get current games that are in the arcades and essentially defrauding the current manufacturers of Arcade machines. Who is being defrauded by your building a cabinet and preserving a copy of the original code from Asteroids or Pac Man etc.?

P.S. I think my MAME cab I built looks better than the authentic arcades not to mention its flexibility with controls and a full PC with 200watt audio with sub. I posted some pics of it in a thread just below this one.

My local tor.forsale and ont.forsale newsgroups occasionally have arcade machines for sale. Might be worth checking out your local newsgroups along with Craigslist.

Some of those homebuilt MAME cabs do indeed look awesome and can put the real McCoy to shame.

more importantly, who would actually go about filing a lawsuit against you? Remember that this would be a civil matter, not a criminal matter. Someone would have to prove in a civil court that you are losing them money by building these things.