I recently found a gentleman online who was selling his Mortal Kombat Arcade1UP machine. I've seen these before, usually at Walmart, running for around $400. I'm not a fan of Mortal Kombat or any of the fighting games (mostly because I'm not good at them and that always takes the fun out of video games for me!), but this one caught my attention because he had it modded!
No longer did it house ONLY Mortal Kombat, but with the aid of a Raspberry Pi 3 and RetroPie, it now played 1000's of games. He was only asking $550 for it and I was able to talk him down to $500. For $100 more than an off-the-shelf Arcade1UP machine, I was able to exchange a couple of variations of Mortal Kombat for 1000's of games from both regular arcade cabinets and home video game consoles, including NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, NEO GEO, and a bunch more. What a freaking awesome deal!
Aside from the ability to play any game I want in its original form, another impressive thing was this is not a difficult thing to do. I am not someone who is handy, but this is so simple, a guy like me could do it. Either using a modded arcade cabinet like mine or a smaller desktop shell, anyone can easily use a Raspberry Pi and RetroPie to do the exact same thing. I can add more console emulators and game ROMs as I choose, too.
Check out my video below so I can show it to you and I'll drop some links below that to help you get started with your own:
A solid Raspberry Pi starter kit to get you going -- https://geni.us/retropi
Arcade1UP with riser -- https://geni.us/arcade1upmk
RetroPie website -- https://retropie.org.uk/
Find Arcade1UP machines -- https://goto.target.com/OLDNERD
Find more Arcade1UP machines -- https://bit.ly/2Fcqexu
There is nothing cooler to me than the old video games I played when I was younger and this setup has enabled me to relive those days gone by. Super groovy beans!!
If you have any questions, hit me up on my Old Nerd Reviews YouTube channel and shoot me a message. I'll be happy to answer anything I can.
HAVE A FREAKING AWESOME DAY!
Tony