.... but I just wish it was more fully baked. That's my honest opinion of the board as it stands today.
I'm with you all the way on this assessment. I purchased one direct just before HighScoreSaves started selling them.
It's well built, great product and it's almost there. The problem is that the images that exist today for the public consumption are typical. It's a giant rom dump with a zillion games and with nobody checking for functionality, which of course there are lots of issues and problem games on both vertical and horizontal builds.
I took a stab at trying to put together my own custom vertical build with a much smaller game list of titles I wanted to play. The frustrating part was having to whittle down that game list and take so many titles off that I could just not get to work properly, most being sound issue related.
I also feel like all of the front-ends and menu systems just plain suck. I don't have a deep skill set in this regard, hence the purchase of this thing to begin with...was hoping for more plug/play. But all the front-end options are not very appealing. And the general functionality of the using the "menu" is not very good. Some of the emulators don't want to exit to the menu the same. The button combination currently is wonky.
I kinda look at these and think...could I put this in a cab and let a non-arcade person use it or could my kids navigate through the menu, choose games, exit back, etc.
Absolutely No way! you would have to babysit and help people along the whole time IMO. Even more so when you have games that don't work properly. It all just leads to a poor frustrating experience I think.
Is this a neat "gadget" for us arcade guys to mess with and try new games, sure. Can we suffer through the clumsy front end - of course!
The thing is though it's so close to being really good. Someone needs to take a look at the menu of an ArcadeSD board, or even better IMO look at the one prior - the Arcadeshop/Programmable Jamma. That has one of the best menu systems and interfaces to launching and exiting games ever. Anyone can use it, figure it out and it works 100%
And if I could give Joe @ highscores any advice....pay someone to develop a build like this and focus on a core of 50-100 classic games that all work properly. You would have a gold mine on your hands then. Because then you could sell this as an option to an arcadeSD with the ability to expand at your own risk.
So many cool ways this thing could go too. Obviously you could have a classic build or a 4way and 8 way game build. But you could also do something like a horizontal neo Geo MVS one. Right now you got a bunch of neo geo guys clammoring over a neo geo multi on original hardware. I'd honestly be thrilled with a horizontal build with a nice proper menu that was just all MVS games. It would be sweet and almost half the price!
It's sooo close to being prime time...but like Reality Studio says it's just not fully baked.