The Gamerator: An arcade cabinet with a built-in tap and refrigerator

@L3gato
and a finger to put the ring on,
words cannot properly describe the want

@Drakkenfyre It's not necessarily illegal. There are avenues to license MAME ROMs for distribution and they claim all of the games included are licensed appropriately. Besides, it's not like you have to negotiate every game individually, just each publisher. If you look at the games list, you'll see that most of them are from Midway (who also own the arcade rights to Williams and Atari games). They've been pretty quick to license their arcade properties, especially in light of their recent financial problems. In fact, it would seem that it might even just be running bundled PC releases.

Regarding the price, yeah it's expensive. And yeah, you could build it yourself for less, but what's your time worth? Speaking as someone who's actually built a MAME cabinet from the ground up, it's not really that far out of line for what I would charge. I'd estimate it's close to $2000 in parts and materials. But you're not just paying for a big pile of parts. Add in design, labor, shop time, licensing and a little profit and $3500 isn't way out there.

I still doubt very seriously they actually have licensing. Midway is gone, Warner Bros. owns the rights to the companies and games now. 3/4 of the games on that list don't have pc ports. Maybe they have licensing, but I just doubt a company calling up those companies would say "hey, we want to make an arcade game with a beer tap, and put your games on it" and they get approved.

You said you would charge about that much for your time, but that's the thing, if you are building it YOURSELF for YOURSELF, that's a bit different than what you would charge someone for labor.

As for $2000 worth of parts, the most expensive thing in that cabinet is the HDTV, which is a mistake. Old arcade games ran at much, much lower resolutions, 320x240 wasn't even standard. So running those kind of games on an HDTV will just make them look stretched out, and worse. Money can be saved by using an actual standard monitor. And who knows what pc they use? They don't say. It could be a cheap OEM system (probably is.)

What I see here is a company that does custom bar works, who thought they could make a killing off a custom arcade game with a tap involved.

Hell, like I said in my above post, these guys are 50 miles from me. I might see one of their units around me.

@Drakkenfyre It's really not rocket science to keep liquid separate from computer components. I'd be more worried about people getting a bit excited and spilling on the controls.

@Drakkenfyre Yes, you can definitely make one of these things a hell of a lot cheaper than $3500. I built my MAME cabinet years ago, spending about $800 on materials and maybe 40 man-hours on construction. Of course, mine didn't include a kegerator, but I would imagine you could add one for around $500. I don't think it's worth another $2k to get one that is pre-built. I'd rather take that dough and buy a pinball machine.

@Drakkenfyre "Each unit is pre-loaded with over 85 licensed classic arcade games. NOTE: Unit includes the original, licensed PC copies of all games listed."

...from the site.

@Mach2 You forgot the option for putting out a perfectly cut line of cocaine.

@Mach2
Plus it's not "bro" enough. Needs a button to inject some 'roids into you.

@Faceless Troll

DUDE that would be AWESOME!

@Mach2
and an ashtray

@Hong Dong "Each unit is pre-loaded with over 85 licensed classic arcade games. NOTE: Unit includes the original, licensed PC copies of all games listed."

...read the site completely before you make assumptions.

@jhairumeee

The site also says "over 100."

And some of the games in the list were never released for pc.

Hydro Thunder alone was only available on pc in Europe. What are the odds they are tracking down a copy for each one built? Or how about Off Road Thunder? While it's presumable that a pc version was released, I never heard of it.

@Drakkenfyre

The PC release of Midway Arcade Treasures Deluxe has both Hydro Thunder and Off Road Thunder on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Arcade_Treasures_Deluxe_Edition

@jhairumeee Wow, you just told me. I hope you feel better for it.

@Unit076
"That's 'cause we piss in it!"