Cost/Feature Comparison of Home Built vs. Retail Arcade Cabinets

Many folks have asked me about the cost of building my arcade and why didn't I just buy one of the retail options.  For those reasons, I decided to check out a couple of local retail establishments and the machines they offered and the features they had.  Here are the results:

Retail Option #1

• Arcade Games: 412
• Total Games: 412
• 26" monitor
• 1 LED joystick 
• 3 LED buttons
• Small (~2") LED trackball
• External volume control
• Coin operated
• Under cabinet LED lighting

PRICE:  $2,999

Retail Option #2

• Arcade Games: 130
• Total Games: 130
• 25" monitor
• 2 joysticks
• 6 buttons per player
• 3" trackball
• Coin operated

PRICE: $2,995

Home Built Arcade

• 408 Arcade Games
• >3,700 Total Games
• 27" monitor
• 2 programmable 4-way/8-way joysticks
• 6 LED buttons per player
• 2 dedicated LED pinball buttons
• 4 dedicated LED administrator buttons
• 3" LED trackball
• Spinner
• Full LED animation / attract mode
• External volume control /stereo sound
• Coin operated
• Under cabinet LED lighting
• Full end-user addition/removal of games

PRICE: Approx. $1,500*

*My cost is approximate.  I tried to keep track, but I had to purchase tools and other items in quantities over what I needed.  If I were to build an identical second machine, I could probably build it in the $1,200-$1,300 range.

But as you can see, the home-built version has many more features, games and expandability over the retail versions.  Of course, you have to supply the labor and possibly the time invested to learning, but in the end, I feel the home-built option is far and away better than the retail version at less than half the cost.