Controller. I've tried playing Ecco for SMS on a full keyboard and I just couldn't get him to jump high - made it impossible to get out of the first stage.
In the states there is a traveling auction for coinoperated things, called Super Auctions. Anything from Cigarette machines to those little rides that go up and down outside of super markets. Their selection of arcade games goes from old school to only a few years old - it is whatever anyone locally want to sell. Luckily there is one only about an hour from my house every four months. At these auctions you arrive early and putz around playing with the cabs. Then when the auction starts a mob moves slowly down the aisles being bid on. If you stick around, want big cabs, or want cabs that need alittle work, you can easily walkout with alot for pretty cheap. At one auction my friends and I got:
My VS tenttop - $125
A Marvel Vs Capcom Competition - missing the marquee - $300
Econofloss Cotton Candy Machine - $150
Other times we picked up a 2 player SCUD racer, couple dead NEOGEO's (for the Carts), and a Rush 2049 cab - all together it was about $600.
If you can load your truck and your friends are cool, you can easily make a pretty decent arcade for under a grand. Just gotta have time, alittle ingenuity, space, and a truck. If there is a PSU or Monitor problem I usually skip on it, but if it is just bad buttons, artwork, or needs some tweaking on the monitor - Im in.
I think I may have spent about $500 on all of mine, though I have sold some to pay off the others, and I am slowly selling the others to the friends who are storing them. However a friend of the family just rebuilt their house and they have an elevator and a large storage area in the basement...I am already asking about storing pinball machines there. Pinball - so great, so expensive, so heavy.
Twilight Zone is the one I am also looking for but I have only seen two at auction. One working, over $3000, one dead, over $1500...
Luckily there a little more common here. I've seen plenty in arcades in my time. I've got an eye on one local to me, but i'm just waiting for the right moment to try and prise it off his hands. They go for about £1000-1500 for mint condish on ebay. one with 60+ mods and a dvd player went for £2500 on ebay last week. A slightly worn slipped with no bids last week too. starting bid was £500. If i had the cash i would've snatched it up.
This is a tough one. As far as authenticity goes I'm always into playing the real thing reason #1 for my video game collecting, but limitations on the real thing which we have grown so fond of now bring me to emulation. Limitations like carts not working on the first time, saving anywhere and controllers. Yeah now everybody's gonna flame me for saying controllers, but after playing chrono trigger with a ps2 controller and using the analog stick to move I wouldn't trade that for the digital pad on the snes. So maybe limitation of early controllers like atari and such. One thing that I wonder is how people who did not experience the actual consoles feel about original controllers after they have first emulated a console then used the actual controllers.
