Arcade Project 09: Tally and August 06, 2014

Arcade Project 09: Tally

Ok.  So here we are.  I started this blog series about an arcade because of the people getting press for making $30,000+ arcade rooms in their apartments, and my lack of being impressed by them.  I thought I could do comparable with much less money.  Note: I did not say "Better" as these rooms are a personal experience for their owners, so there is no "better" because that's changes from person to person.  Was I surprised at how expensive things did get?  Yea, I would say I underestimated by about $2000, which means if I built the room I probably would be underestimating by $3000.  Arcade games are becoming a speculation market, and like the baseball and comic book of the 80's, we're approaching a fevered high end for very popular items.

So for the room itself, I did not factor in a lot of labor costs, as for the most part I feel like this is a DIY project.  Painting a room is not very hard work, and applying trim just requires you to have good measuring and leveling tools.  The carpet though, I'm a stickler for good carpet installation, so I'm going to go with full on padding, removal and installation fees.  For the carpet I chose it came out fairly expensive for the room, but it is really great quality carpet that will last a very long time and stand up to food, stains, moving of heavy items, and the casters I want on the Sit-Down arcade.  For moulding, paint, tools and materials I have an estimate of $300.  This is for a not-so-fancy moulding for the ceiling, floor and chair-rail area.  The paint is a real high quality primer, which I believe in and most people skip, and a solid stain resistant paint coat.  Probably twice what someone really going for economy stuff would pay.  Then the carpet installation services run $850 with advertised prices, which means you can get that lower in a number of ways.

Total to this point $1150

As for the accessories we have $1502 without factoring in shipping costs.  This is for a 4 set of gumball machines custom made to require no money to work, and painted in red, with 2 different size configurations.  A two column sticker machine that will match the gumball machines.  A high quality, spring loaded booth seat complete with custom table.  Two ottoman "storage" seats for gaming and extra seating.  A matching counter top for placing things like snacks and the popcorn machine.  A 4oz popcorn machine to give the room a nostalgic smell and also for a nice cheap snack.  Assorted utensils, and stuff like pizza serving trays.

Total to this point: 2653

Now we have the machines.  The racing game: Pole Position.  A Neo-Geo 2 slot MVS machine.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Konami.  Included also is a "catch all" MAME arcade cabinet with a high quality monitor and a decent sound set up with sub-woofer, also X-arcade controls.  Next to that is a Sit-down arcade mainly for fighting games, powered by a PS3, and a couple of X-arcade single sticks, with a $500 flat screen budget.  An addition to this set up is a highly rated racing wheel and a decent joystick for games like Afterburner.   All of these are prices calculated at the time of this writing, and will vary over time and with work the arcades could probably be gotten a little cheaper(its all luck with those).  With all that in mind, we come at a whopping

Total to this point: $8977

However, if I was budgeting things, I would add 10% to this rough total for leeway(even though I've added 10% to most budgets for the room already, I'm just extra cautious)

$9872 for a 10x12 arcade room.  Well under the $30,000 in a recent article.  Can it be had for less?  Yes, and really the sit-down fighting game set up is pretty specific to myself, and most people would be fine with the upright MAME cabinet.  The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game is about $1000 extra than the average arcade of its type simply because of its popularity.  You could shave several thousand off, but it would be experiences that I personally would not want to do a project like this and miss out on.

August 06, 2014

A while back I watched a Japanese/Korean drama called Cafe Seoul.  I really liked it, and Netflix made a few more suggestions of other movies I may like with some kind of similar theme.  Well I was recommended Miao Miao and I put it on my list.  The brief description was that two girls form a friendship due to their love of baking and it develops into more.  I thought "hey, a movie about baking" and put it on my list because my girlfriend enjoys baking as well.  I felt I was a bit mislead.  There is barely any baking in the movie at all, maybe 5 minutes total.  The real story is about a Japanese girl that moves to Taiwan.  Sure enough she becomes friends with a girl that falls in love with her.  The movie only barely touches on that too, as the REAL plot is about a CD Store owner that the Japanese girl falls in love with.  Only... the Japanese girl sure can pick them, because this guy has a past that keeps him from ever falling in love with her.  The movie was really slow to start, though I found the 2nd half interesting.  The movie ultimately misses a few plot points that could have made it actually really great, but just as things come to confrontation, the movie starts to end.  I recommend you skip it and go watch Cafe Seoul or one of the all time good movies about baking; A Boy and his Samurai..

I have been watching a lot of retro Youtube channels lately because I can actually sit and watch people talk about old video games and find it entertaining.  I've found several games I'd really like to play that I didn't know before(I have an aversion to platformers, so I missed a lot of good stuff).  One of the things these people do is collect games, and it has made me realize that while I collect games, I'm not really a game "collector".  They collect games... all games, and try to complete collections or go for rare games just because they are hard to find, which is cool, but that's not what I do.  I do not like to keep games I consider to be "bad" games.  So while I have a lot of JRPG's, I find merit in all of the ones I own.  I never find myself just wanting to go in to a flea market and buy a box of games just because they are games.  I only ever want things that give me memories or games I enjoy playing.  If you're interested, MetalJesus is pretty good and Happy Console Gamer is great stuff.  If you are a huge fan of 8-bit and 16-bit obscure systems then you might like Gamesack, but I should warn you... they're not keen on finishing games... and hate RPG's... and hate fighting games... but they discuss and shed light on alot of consoles I never had, like Turbo Graphx 16, Turboduo and Neo-Geo CD.

My girlfriend bought a Veggetti.  It is this device that allows you to take vegetables and turns them into shoestring shreds, mainly sold as a vegetable spaghetti maker.  We first used it tonight with a cucumber to make California Roll Wraps with Krab, guacamole, carb-master wraps(the best for flavor and texture), and some soy sauce and Japanese Mayo.  The cucumber done this way was AWESOME.  It allowed for it to be distributed throughout the wrap, and it soaked up the causes really nicely.  If it only worked on cucumber, it would be worth getting.  On our list is zucchini spaghetti, shredded salads, potato strings(maybe on a turkey burger).  We're keeping our eyes out for other things as well.