1986's OutRun a maintenance hassle for arcade operators in 2018

[ficuswhisperer]

@beschizza

You can whine about authentic monitors all ya like, if I were running an arcade, I would replace the innards on most of the machines with Raspberry Pis and 4k LCDs

The problem with LCDs is the latency makes them inappropriate for many old school arcade games. You can’t use a light gun with LCD monitors because of this as well. Also 4K? What a waste. Must old arcade games are barely pushing 480 lines.

[bcsizemo]

If I won the lottery I’m buyjng a house with an entertainment room and finding this:

Oh yes…sure it took a dollar to play, but I crushed so many people on it.

[sluggo]

Since presumably he’d have the original ROMs displayed next to each machine, he’d be able to make a pretty unassailable case for Fair Use.

I see homemade MAME cabs all over craigslist all day long, now covered in local sports team’s trademarked logos. If they’re really selling for 1200+ bucks, I’m in the wrong biz.

[Kimmo]

I wonder if anybody’s still repairing CRTs…

Pretty hardcore.

[Skeptic]

@sluggo

Since presumably he’d have the original ROMs displayed next to each machine, he’d be able to make a pretty unassailable case for Fair Use.

Plausible, yes. Unassailable? Absolutely not.

[sluggo]

I thought ‘pretty’ as a modifier covered that

[RevVeggieSpam]

I don’t have the billions of fingers required to count that.

[NickyG]

I think my favorite old-school sit-down arcade game is Stun Runner, which I haven’t played for probably 25 years.

S.T.U.N. Runner

[jerwin]

NEC sells squarish IPS displays.

https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/p212 (1600x1200, bloody expensive)

https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/as193i-bk (1280x1024, prolly overpriced)

It might be possible to take an UHD panel, stack it on end, and hide the bit’s that you aren’t using within the cabinet

That would get you a resolution of 2160 x 1620 (and more importantly, get you the appropriate size)

a 25 inch 4:3 display has a width of 20 inches. So figure on a 41 inch display.

[CongenitalOptimist]

I’d be getting one of these:

[GoatCheezInfrno]

Atari’s Hard Drivin’ and Race Drivin’ cabinets were another classic - and the only ones I ever saw that offered a realistic manual transmission with a clutch (though you could choose automatic or autostick if you so desired).

[nungesser]

@sluggo

I can’t imagine what a full time gig it must be to be a sole tech at a place where all the electronics are 20-30 years old. So much must be out of spec!

A friend of mine opened a pinball/retro-game arcade a few years ago near me, and it was heaven, but when it closed, she admitted that it was a huge relief. Being the business owner and sole tech at a place with 150 pinball machines and retro arcade games made it a 12-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week job.

The arcade game that’s the biggest hassle may be Tempest. Those early vector games are all fiddly little mirrors and things inside and break if you look at them funny.