I thought it would be fun to get an arcade and play some of my old favorites.

I'm doing research now. Are there any buyers/collectors of arcade games that can give me a few pointers on how to verify if a machine is good? I believe some of them have some self diagnostics? Any other advice?
[Reply]

Maybe contact these guys
[Reply]

A nice quick fix, though without the glamor of an actual machine, is M.A.M.E. on your PC. There are ROMS for almost any arcade game you can remember from Pong up to fairly recent ones. I've got around 3,600 game ROMS at the moment, but I stopped actively collecting several years ago.
[Reply]

My friend's family collects Pinball machines. Sounds like a headache if you need restoration work and it's not cheap either.
[Reply]

I would recommend getting a modded xbox (origional) and a decent arcade pad then install mame (Sega/SNES emulators while your at it). If you can pick up an old display setup from a video game store then you basically have a custom arcade machine.
[Reply]