Arcade cabinents are EXTREMELY hard to repair and keep up with unless you know exactly what you are doing. This means that a business will either:
1: Sell it to a private collector for cheap, as they will more than likely know what to do with it.
or 2: Unfortunately, scrap it.

Most arcade games are leased from an amusements company, so that the company repairs and maintains the machine if needed. As above said they use a lot of unique/special parts that are hard to get for a layperson who does not know where to look.

If owned privately they are either sold to one of these leasing companies (who either fix and re-lease them or harvest for parts) or private collectors.

I used to work for lizardlick in north carolina, and we had relationships with a few such companies. Sadly this business is drying up somewhat, as arcade machine just aren't wanted most places.

They're expensive to repair, and the lease costs needed just aren't on parity with those costs, most people don't want them.

Especially large/unique cabs like Time Crisis or any game with a bike/snowboard/unique controller. Most old arcade games you can build cheap cabs around because it's just normal buttons and joysticks, not so for unique games.

That's why you see so many knockoff emulator cabs in bars/pubs. Cheaper.

arcade cabinets are like old cars. They are made up of many complex parts that have not been made for a dozen years and are not easily obtainable, and not cheap. There is not a vast network of people able to fix these issues, as these games are aging and the publishers have since ended support outside of 3rd party repair.

Is there some sort of effort to reverse engineer the hardware of these games and somehow find a way to port them to different hardware? I know MAME has come a long way but its nearly impossible to emulate anything past they year 2000 without a major hardware bios leak or hack.

>>341263635
the thing I am most curious about is what happens to the super expensive/large novelty games like Sega's "Special" version of shooters like House of the Dead 4 Special or Lets Go Jungle special. Same thing with Namco and the Galaxian Theater machines. I just wanna know where all of them are and what happened to them.

My autism flows unchecked.

>>341264094
Warehoused or destroyed

>>341264624
the thought of this makes me sad. I wish I would be able to buy them and even if they dont work, at least document all the little details before they're lost forever.

>tfw arcade near me has around 500 arcade machines
>tfw they keep saving more of them from being destroyed
Thank you Galloping Ghost

>>341261696
Arcade emulators and arcade roms exist

>>341264094
Large/unique machines are usually parted out and sold as repair parts for people that still maintain the machines. A machine like, say, Crisis Zone, or that weird Die Hard machine with the body detection and rifle, are usually not wanted by clients because they are large and take up a lot of space for their play areas. You may be able to get a grand or two at most from stingy private collectors, but if you sell every part in the machine you can get a shitload more.

For example, we sold a Time Crisis (the first one) machine for $450 to a collector a good while ago. Granted it was in rough shape (signage broken, scuffs, splintering in back of case, dirty) but it still sold. Sounds good, right?

Well, the guns themselves sell for $80 each to private buyers of parts. The wiring harness for the guns goes for $40 or so. The holsters and backplate for them to mount to is $40. The monitor (which is required for the guns to work, can't be replaced with an LCD like most machines) goes for nearly $200 if in good condition just by itself. This isn't even the PCB or signage yet. You can go even further by selling the parts of the guns.

It's just typically not realistic to sell whole machines to collectors because they're such jews about it. You can sell parts and make a lot more money, and be able to ship them instead of having to wait to find the one-in-a-million buyer that's willing to pay freight

>>341265483
This all makes sense now. I had never considered that it would be easier to part and ship the cabinet than it would be to sell it as a single unit.

I wish I was able to get my name known in this business as someone willing to outright buy obscure shit. Ive got the money but dont have the space.

>>341266008
It's not hard. Most arcade part vendors have relationships with arcade leasing companies just because they end up talking with the same vendors and scratching each others backs.

Message the owners/admins of arcade part sellers and see if they can put you in contact with a vendor, or see if they can be your contact for buying whatever obscure shit you're after.

We had plenty of people contact us asking about weird shit we didn't sell on our website that we were able to get for them.

Just don't be that guy that wants a full arcade cabinet in like-new condition for an impossible price and then scoffs at freight to ship it to bumblefuck being $300 on its own.

Americans are just too lazy. I went to the arcade near me, literally half the games were powered off, likely out of order.

In akihabara, I went to 4 arcades in a single block area. These buildings were easily 5 stories tall or more and packed with games. Every single one was clean and functioning.

Just hire staff and fire them if they're lazy. Americans just cannot grasp this concept.

>>341267180
>What is population density

>>341266390
ok this is good to know, thanks. I just wish I would stop getting relocated for work or else I would start buying shit.

Maybe if they find one of the really rare games (cobra: the arcade or galaxian theater) I could buy it and pay to store it for a year or so.

>>341267298
We don't need 5 arcades with 8 floors. Just one or two. Things in America break and nobody fucking cares. There are 6 broken escalators at my mall. One has been out for over a year. How many broken escalators did I see in Japan? Including random Hick towns I visited? 0. Not one.