Because of course there is. I love this world.
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To those interested, there’s a pretty big community of home arcade folks, which means that parts are often pretty plentiful, and not as much as you’d expect price wise.
These more specialized beasts do get kind of pricey, but if you’ve got childhood memories of a metric ton of JAMMA harness games, then you can have one machine that you just switch out boards for.
I used to buy cheap cabinets and fix them up to sell when I was an undergrad. SFII was really popular then, and so many were made that you could get one for a little over $100, then fix any messed up buttons etc… and re-sell for more than twice what you paid.
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Do you have to buy 1:6 scale quarters to put in the slot?
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Due to inflation and the passage of time, just insert one Bitcoin.
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Me too, they look so damn good together. Only complaint is the clicky spinner on Tempest, but at that size, sometimes there are going to be compromises. A goodly portion of owning these is for love of functional miniatures.
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Wait, are you me?
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I just bought one–as an anniversary present. My wife and I both played the Tempest machine in a local arcade in college days. I’d get the high score, then she’d get the high score–we kept one upping each other even though we’d never met. The one day we both showed up at the machine at the same time—we ended up dating and eventually got married. So this is going to be a perfect anniversary present.
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Well you have a keeper.
I was talking to a friend at my kids birthday party and she remarked that her and her husband were celebrating their 11th soon, and I was like, “Well, you beat my high score.”
She laughed and realized she is beating the high score she had with her 1st husband this year.
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This can be a humbling experience: when you find out your limit based on your skill rather than how many quarters you could afford for practice… I mean for example I can get a little further on Robotron (MAME set to ooodles of lives) than I used to originally, but not by that many levels. The difficulty curve back then I remember being so very high.
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Now, Vectorgraphic Quake really is a wonderful thing. The idea of running the output through the sound card just sounds super cool to my non-techy brain. But, how do I get the Trent Reznor sound track to play through my Graphics Card?
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Sometimes life is more perfect than fiction. Thank you for that illustration.
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That looks great, and Tempest is a top 5 arcade game for me. But I fear that screen (and controller) is just too small! Would one have to have eagle eyes to play this comfortably?
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Get one of those vintage screen magnifiers.
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It is very cool 
When I got my first oscilloscope 13 years ago, I’ve downloaded a WAV file that when played on a PC sound card connected to the oscilloscope displayed a vector animation.
Even when you use sine generators instead of a sound card, results can be interesting:
If the card has an analog output it is quite doable. It would be done in similar way to converting VGA card to software defined radio, but it would be easier due to lower frequencies required. It should be also possible to generate 2 color channel video and audio (using 1 color channel) at the same time.
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There’s a company called Arcade 1UP that makes 3/4 sized arcade games; the Asteroids cabinet also has Tempest in it. (the company also sells a riser platform to left the machine up.) If it were not for the utter lack of space at my house, I’d buy one of these. 
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Yes, just like that!
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I remember a Joust game that had been set to reward an extra life at some ridiculously low threshold (i.e.every time I killed something I got another life). I played for quite a while that way, then it got to a point where they were seemingly killing me outright, before I could get two flappings in.
I did that on Mame. It was hella fun even though it got so damn hectic towards the end. Joust is of my favorite old school arcades.
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Geddycorns.
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