Are they really that terrible? I love how they look and didn't think they had such inferior parts.

Edit: And if you're knowledgeable about these cabinets, and which ones are awesome, would you please send me the appropriate links from Coinopexpress.com so I know exactly which one's I should be looking at?

Here's the Aero City.

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[url=http://coinopexpress.com/products/machines/cabinets_only/Super_Neo_29_Cabinet_1661.htmlHere's the Super Neo[/url].

Please don't buy from coinopexpress. They rip people off, charge ludicrous shipping fees, and generally suck. There are much better places to purchase cabinets and boards from.

Ask me if you have any questions! I know everything about arcade cabinets. I would say to PM me but that's slow and I'm literally on AIM and MSN 24/7.

Hooo boy. 

Oh yeah. I know nothing, but compared to some people on here...

Of course compared to some other people who transcend the boundary of man and god (see: Bobby Conover)...

Well Kevin, I'm not on AIM often, but between you and Laura and my accumulating questions, I might try to hop on a bit more. Whats your AIM name?

Also, if u hate coinop so much, who would you suggest I buy from?

The business plan / feasibility study I'm doing for my arcade business (at the moment) is going for a Japanese-centric arcade that caters to the hardcore and older players (i.e. not little kids). I don't know if this will end up being the final model, but I'm trying to find cabinets to recreate the Japanese arcade experience and to impress older players with. I love the cabinets you suggested, I just thought that some older players might feel they're way too "childish" and so I was thinking about getting some of those knock-off Taito cabinets I posted above.

I personally feel that China has come a long way in terms of manufacturing abilities and that most times the Chinese knock-offs (of any product) rival the originals, while being significantly less expensive. However, if you really know your stuff and think this is a big no-no, I'll pay attention.

I can't speak with any direct experience, but the shiny expensive ones Suko originally  posted are LCD based and while that would be shiny, high-res goodness, I have a feeling that (especially at the listed price; my lagless [as far as I can tell] 46" LCD cost almost as much as one of those cabinets) they're not good LCDs for gaming.  Lag hits music gamers harder than anyone else, but I know people complain about lag for fighting games too, which seems to be your intent with these cabs.  Hell, until I got my new TV, we had to give up on Tetris Attack because the lag was too bad on our cheap LCD.  Additionally, the Guitar Hero machine at Narrows is nigh-unplayable because the LCD they put in those lags to the point that you have hit the notes about 1-1.5 inches above the line, so I can definitely vouch for at least one bad arcade LCD.

Between Kevin and Bobby you should get some good input when it comes to parts and suppliers.

I can see the hardcore-centric model working to a limited extent, the best thing might be to have a little more of a general appeal up front to lure random people in (generally lacking in niche/obscure games, unless its something anyone can easily pick up like Bishi Bashi; redemption games have pros and cons, but can definitely make you some money) and a back section with the hardcore appeal who mentioned.  CHQ (up in Canada) has a little bit of this setup, (if you're looking in) the far right side is a one-way in/out cluster of candy cabs and the newest Bemani/racing/fighting titles tend to follow the back wall, while DDR/ITG, shooters, and photo booths are along the main pathways coming in.

No kidding! I played one over in Pullman and I couldn't believe they didn't sync it up better than that!

However, most HDTVs offer some kind of image sync ability. Plus, I just assumed an arcade cabinet utilizing an HDTV would've resolved this problem somehow. It might sound naive, but that's why I'm here asking questions.

Regarding your intent to cater to an older crowd... forgive me if this suggestion is totally not the direction you want to go, but have you ever thought about what kinds of hours you want? The Seattle area is distinctly lacking in nightlife - even bars and clubs shut down at two - and I know plenty of people who don't live on a "normal" schedule who would love to be able to go do something in the middle of the night. If you had an arcade that was open until 3 AM, I would put thousands of dollars into it, not even factoring the whole "arcade swap" idea.

HDTVs usually offer different "AV Modes" where the "gaming" mode usually drops the precision rescaling and filtering in favor of a quick-and-dirty rescale to the native res (not an issue if you pipe signal in with an HDMI cable, but that's not happening in arcades too easily), but that's often still not enough to compensate on all screens (Sharps are generally very close, and their best models are praised by expert IIDX players, but most other companies fall short while attempting to make a cheaper TV set that what Sharp sells, which is the issue you'll run into with these cabs most likely).  There's no custom sync ability, even on Sharps (the technology isn't particularly possible, since the visual lag is a function of hardware capacity, the only thing you could do is add more lag to it with an artificial delay), and in a lot of cases they fight the screen delay down to something very solid, but to balance the cost, they keep cheap (read: slow) filters, which then don't handle non-HD signals.

We'll have to stick to Sync on oni mode then.

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GET IT LOL

In all honesty though, I don't know anything about the hardware end so I can't comment. What I will say, though, Suko, is that if you really decide to go for this, I'd be happy to be a "volunteer" employee. I REALLY want to see Seattle's gaming scene blow back up.

Suko,
I work for a Japanese logistics company so if you need any help figuring the costs of moving these from Japan or wherever in Asia to Seattle, I would be interested in helping.

That said, the shipper may insist you use their shipping option and depending on order quantity, that may be more worthwhile.  But from what I'm seeing on that site ($600-1200 a cabinet) that's a pretty wide range and certainly room for potential assistance from myself.

Bill may have more ideas there, as well.

I appreciate the assistance.

If this thing ever gets off the ground, I intend to use any help I can find. From what it sounds like, running an arcade is basically a minimal profit kind of business, so any dollar I can save is for the best.

Theres a good post on bemanistyle right now for cheap music game related cabinets...

http://www.bemanistyle.com/index.php/news/random-ebay-curiosities-2-1379

A few of them seem like good deals, such as this...

http://cgi.ebay.com/GUITAR-FREAKS-10TH-MIX-ARCADE-GAME-KONAMI-RHYTHM_W0QQitemZ110387128805QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_2?hash=item19b395e9e5&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A570|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A0|293%3A9|294%3A50

Oh fuck, Wunderland is selling off their GH and DM machines? (well, that DM machine sucked anyhow)

Crap, I really shouldn't have looked at that thread because now I'm considering stuff.. I wonder how hard it is to upgrade from earlier verisons of DM to later ones and from and version of beatmania to The Final