When I wanted to start this project, it became pretty apparent that building my own arcade cabinet from scratch wasn't going to work. I lacked both the tools and space to build my own arcade cabinet. So, I thought about it for a bit and decided that my best bet was to purchase an arcade cabinet and then go through the process of renovating it to suit my needs.

My cohort in crime, Andy "yoda" Mecham, told me of an arcade auction that is held every other month in nearby Anaheim, California. This auction was rumored to have just about anything you could imagine in one place: old and new arcade games, pinball machines, jukeboxes, bill changers, and just about everything else you'd see in an arcade. So, yoda and I headed off to the auction in search of a suitable cabinet. What I saw there was pretty amazing.

There were hundreds of arcade machines there. Probably close to a thousand of them, actually. They were arranged in rows inside of a large warehouse, with the newer games towards the front of the warehouse and the older games towards the back. Most of the people there at the auction were chomping at the bit to get the newer arcade titles that were located towards the front. I was waiting for a chance to bid on the cabinets at the back of the warehouse, since I could have cared less about the actual title in the cabinet. I just wanted the cabinet itself.

I waited for hours while the auctioneers moved throughout the warehouse and auctioned off each arcade game and pinball machine. I spent most of that time wading through a haze of smoke, since every other person there was smoking a cigar or cigarettes. Some games went for a few thousand dollars. A large number went for about $200 to $500. Some went for $20. The price each game fetched appeared to hinge more on the cleanliness of the cabinet, rather than the actual game inside. I constantly moved around as people carted arcade machines to and fro with hand carts. After about 4 hours, the warehouse was really starting to clear out. The bidders were starting to clear out as well, since most of the higher-end games had been sold off by then.

I had my eye on a few different games, and I ended up snagging one of the ones I was looking at. I had spotted a 4-player Konami X-Men game way in the back. Closer inspection showed that the game was actually an Atari Gauntlet cabinet that had been converted into an X-Men. Blashphemy! Still, the cabinet was big enough to accomidate four players at once, and it had a unique shape. Looked like a winner to me.

The pack passed through that portion of the warehouse and I put in a bid for the cabinet. I ended up bumping my bid up a touch and I bought the cabinet for $100. Considering what I got out of the deal, I made out pretty good. After all, I liked the Gauntlet cabinet design a lot, I got an X-Men game board, and the cabinet came with an audio amp and power supply system that had multiple 5 and 12 volt power outputs on it. This cabinet was made for some serious sound, since the amp drove two 5" by 7" speakers in the top of the cabinet. I also got four joystick mechanisms that I could reuse in my renovated cabinet design.

I also fished about $5 in quarters, nickles, and tokens out of the coin door mechanisms.

When I finally got the game home, I invited several people over to play a marathon of X-Men. The idea was to burn through at least $100 worth of quarters playing the game so that I didn't feel guilty about paying that much for the cabinet. We rotated people in and out as we beat the game over and over, and we finally hit the $100 mark. Most of the people there probably never want to play X-Men ever again. I, however, wasn't through with the game yet. I was going to play that thing until I was sick of it.

And play it I did. I beat the game with every character on every difficulty setting. I played it when I was put on hold on the phone. I played it while I downloaded files. I played it as two characters at once by using two joysticks at once. I even invited some Jehovah's Witnesses in to play when they knocked on my door so that we could "slaughter some unbelieving robots". They declined my invitation. Spoilsports.

At this point, I'd rather gnaw my own leg off than play that game again. Once I hit that point, I pulled the X-Men board from the back of the cabinet and decided to start in on the cabinet renovations. I estimate that around $900 worth of games were played on the cabinet while it was in my possession. Sounds like it was a good purchase to me.