The price of nostalgia: wallet-busting arcade cabinets on Amazon

I highly doubt that they are utilizing original circuit boards. Being an Arcade collector if you do your research you can pick up a decent cabinet at a good price and with a little TLC have your own working machine.

I have a Midway Pac-Man upright in good shape. Bought it from a guy who had it sitting in his bowling alley for 6 years. He thought it had been broken for years.

It needed a fifty cent fuse replacement on the power supply.

I also have the Multi-Pac upgrade. And the Ms. Pac-Man daughterboard, incase I ever want to change it to the Miss.

Total cost - $300. Everything on the machine is factory original, except the multi-pac chip - That added $100 to the price.

Honestly... You can still find Ms. Pac-Man machines, all over the place. Why manufacture more? How about some games that haven't been put in an 'class of 1981' type of compilation yet..

I got Outrun for $150, and a Neo-Geo with 4 games for $120.
Ms. Pac goes for more but it's easily under a grand at auctions.

Any auction would give you far better prices then these. Heck from the manufactoer of several of the cabinets listed such as the Time Crisis 4 you would get a better price.

anyone who pays all that money is a FOOL. I'm in the process of building my own arcade cabinet right now. The total cost will end up being less than $500. I got a used TV from craigslist, and I have an old PC that will run MAME perfectly fine. The only hardwork is building the cabinet. Mines not done yet, but here's some photos of the unfinished project with my dreamcast running on it.

http://www.imageviper.com/dip/67782/100_0105.jpg

When it's all said and done, it'll look like a real cabinet, with a full-fledged joystick panel and a lit-up custom marquee. Like I said, the total cost is under $500. Could be done for even less if you built your own joystick panel and used cheaper wood, but I went with some medium-density fiber board for a realistic arcade machine look. I intend to buy side artwork and everything for it to. Hell, you can even download high-res images of the control guides for games like Marvel vs. Capcom and Marvel vs. Street Fighter.

I started this thing two weeks ago, and it's been a blast. With the help of a friend and the proper planning, it's been relatively easy to build to. Here's a link to a book that I got that's been a huge help to.

http://www.amazon.com/Project-Arcade-Build-Your-Machine/dp/0764556169/sr=8-10/qid=1168494199/ref=pd_bbs_10/002-9003983-7048856?ie=UTF8&s=books

Better to just build your own arcade cabinet and stick MAME in there. thousands of real arcade games for a couple grand

BYOAC FTW

You can get great arcade machines for way less than that from local vendors. When I lived in Chicago I bought a multi-game cabinet from www.quartersup.com - good prices, and a amazing customization because they're local. They even painted the sides with an original design (I got Ken and Ryu on the opposite sides).

The typical value of Ms. Pacman cabs in decent/good condition tend to sell more realistically around $800. Now there are some Ms. Pacman/Galaga combo cabs called The Class of '81 that were a remake with a much larger 25" vertical monitor that sell for around $2,000. But nearly $3,000 for a real Ms. Pacman, nah.

I actually wrote the software used for the 16 game "Super ABC kit" (Ultra Pac-Man was my original game on the compilation). I worked for Two Bit Score in Austin, TX from 1996 to 2000. I can assure you that those are original circuit boards, with a new "daughter board" plugged in to offer the expanded ROM set and static RAM. Remember: even Ms. Pac-Man was just a daughter board on top of the original Pac-Man.

BYOAC!

Just build your own for $500. It's more rewarding and more versatile. Check out my reproduction cabinets of Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong 3:

http://mariobrosarcade.blogspot.com

Having worked for two different arcade companies, I can tell you that there is not, nor will there ever be, any shortage of used Ms. Pac-Man game cabinets. Non-working cabinets cost as little as $100 and fixed cabinets cost between $200-$500, not $3,000.

Call your local arcade and get the number of the company that provides the machines. There's always a warehouse of used games ripe for the picking. I missed my chance years ago of getting a Bionic Commando cabinet for $200 or a X-men Children of the Atom cabinet for $300. Wish I had jumped on that, but didn't have the space for it. :(

Cheaper that a launch-day PS3...now that's some good stuff.