Price Check- Arcade Legends ultracade machine

khabbi

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Ok, I figured I'd put this out to the expert Video Game collectors here, what is the value of these Arcade Legends Ultracade machines? I have focused on dedicated games and have no idea.

This one is being offered at over $1K, is that really a fair price? I checked ebay for ones that sold and didn't find one that closed out (hence no reference point as to what they sell for).

My neighbor (a friend who's a small collector who doesn't mind the multi games that are emulated like this cab is) wants to buy it and offered the $610 for it. What do you guys think? Just looking for an honest opinion to pass on to him...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Arcade-Legends-...ultDomain_0&hash=item19bd739db3#ht_950wt_1139

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that particular game fetches over a thousand frequently.

It's not worth the $2500 people think they are (IMO)

My buddy paid $1200 for his, but it has a better selection of games than that one.

I would expect to pay at least $800. And ifyou got it for $800 you have done well.
 
I paid $800 for mine. The were like $2500 new. The vector games Suck!!! but alot of the others are good.
 
how does the dragon's lair pack play on this, anyone know? Keep the price opinions coming, he is considering the game...
 
I have arcade legends 2, so the Dragons lair pack wont work on it. But I bet it would look and play fine. The difference would be the scoreboard.
 
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Dragon's Lair is a little grainy but otherwise fine. All the sounds are there and the scoreboard displays on the screen. $1000 isn't terrible. Keep in mind these are consumer/commercial machines with _licensed_ and legal games on them. Having said that, for $1000 you could make a decent MAME machine or multi 1-10000000 machine. Another thing to keep in mind - when your Arcade Legends/Ultracade harddrive dies (and it will die some day) or the mother board fries - you now have a nice cabinet with everything already in it to quickly toss in a MAME PC or multi-mother board. I have a dedicated Ultracade with every game they ever licensed and I love it (for what it is.) I bought mine for $300 from a local Web hosting company that was cleaning out its break room. Had a fried mother board which I found a replacement for.
 
Dragon's Lair is a little grainy but otherwise fine. All the sounds are there and the scoreboard displays on the screen. $1000 isn't terrible. Keep in mind these are consumer/commercial machines with _licensed_ and legal games on them. Having said that, for $1000 you could make a decent MAME machine or multi 1-10000000 machine. Another thing to keep in mind - when your Arcade Legends/Ultracade harddrive dies (and it will die some day) or the mother board fries - you now have a nice cabinet with everything already in it to quickly toss in a MAME PC or multi-mother board. I have a dedicated Ultracade with every game they ever licensed and I love it (for what it is.) I bought mine for $300 from a local Web hosting company that was cleaning out its break room. Had a fried mother board which I found a replacement for.

So, if you buy one of these can you back it up somehow? I'm guessing with the licensing there's some type of encryption? I am looking at a trade for one, but not sure if I want to do it. It would be nice if you could just copy the Hard drive so if it craps out you can stick the backup in there (IE the encryption key is on a board inbetween the hard drive and game itself somehow).
 
there is one locally for sale for $500 on CL. That is a really good price in my opinion.
 
there is one locally for sale for $500 on CL. That is a really good price in my opinion.

Yeah, they certainly have come down in price. I'm learning more about them, I love the front end on them and one certainly would be nice given my limited space.. but if it takes a dump on me then it's just another project cab.

Sucks that the arcade packs from 1 and 2 are not compatible also. The machine I am looking at is a "2" and you can't use the dragons lair pack, pacman pack, and several other packs on there. And the 2 doesn't have a few games I like (I would like to have Major Havoc on it, although I've hard that the Vector games are just OK on the machine).
 
Arcade Legends 2 was a completely different machine from the coin op Ultracades and the original Arcade Legends. The game list is much smaller and the machine itself isn't as nice, in my opinion.

There are a few repair guys out there that can provide replacement hard drives for these games. I have one with basically all the games that were ever available for them (close to 300 games). While there are a few bugs, it was a pretty slick system when it came out. You can make all the vector games look MUCH better by moving to a medium or VGA monitor. I can help anyone who'd like to do this as I did it with my machine. These machines CAN be converted to flash which solves the hard drive problem, and replacement motherboards are easy to find as well. Replacing motherboards in the coinop Ultracades is particularly easy, as the HD doesn't care if you switch motherboards as long as you connect it to the PRIMARY IDE channel. Don't screw this up, or it will erase all the games on the drive. Legends is trickier.

If you like the front end on the Ultracade machines, Hyperspin is an excellent frontend that is very similar, but looks even better.
 
I have a coin op Ultracade cocktail. I already had to replace the motherboard. I worry about the hard drive failing. I'd be interested in learning more about switching to a flash drive and making the vector game look better.
 
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