I have a AL3 Pedistal. Yeah it is a perfect fit for my gameroom. It also double as the TV for the room. I have all the game packs in it. Two if I remember correctly.

Was thinking about one of these too because my family keeps bugging me they want golden tee golf

We’ve had the AL3 and game pack for a while in our arcade and it’s played every time we have people down. Golden Tee and bowling are popular. I love playing BurgerTime on it myself.

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Left next to CV.

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Heck yes, I have had one fore years with the expansion pack. Has lots of great games, I especially love the side scroller games like double dragon and final fight. Plus you get street fighter and golden tee. It’s really the best multicade out there IMO.

Full disclosure I also sell them

Greg
Pinballpro.com

I have the LCD version with the capcom exp pack. Love it.

I have an Arcade Legends that I'd be willing to sell for the right price. It's in fanstastic condition with an upgraded hard drive and all the expansion packs installed ...

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Why consider resale? I will say 50 pins have come and gone since I bought my AL3 and its still here. Its worth it to me for Robotron alone. which plays fantastically. I had a pacman pixel bash and it 2 went away. Don't hesitate sir, worth every penny.

I agree, I love Final Fight and Tempest I think the most.

Any additional info on upgrading the hard drive and expansion packs?

I was hoping for more game packs. How many are there now?

Bought the LCD version with expansion pack a few years ago. It has always been very popular with my guests. Disappointed it did not have Dragon's Lair, Space Ace or the Mortal Kombat series; but there still are many games to enjoy. Golden Tee is fun, but the putting can be very tedious and demoralizing to casual fans.

Have a peak at "Extreme Home Arcades" and see if they could build a game system to your liking?

How about abvideoarcades.com? A wide variety of commercial quality to choose from at a reasonable price and good customer service.
I chose the 3505 game lift up cocktail and am very pleased. Sounds like one of the other options would be more appropriate for your purposes.

It’s nearly impossible to find one arcade with every game, unless you build or buy a MAME cabinet. These are bootleg games and often do not play like the original. Games such as the AL3 are fully licensed, legs, and play true to the original, if that is a consideration for you.

The Arcade legends sounds like a great option if you want games for the FAMILY. I have the gazillion in 1 premade game build and its awesome... with adult supervision. It's too complicated for the kids to work and if you want something easy, go with the arcade legends. I have a few Arcade 1ups next to my multicade an they get much more play because the kids can use them, everything works, and they are kid friendly. They also seem to hold their value like pins.

I'd recommend a Legends but would check craigslist/facebook for a used option nearby. They used to sell these at Sams Club so many are floating around. Good luck!

False - properly configured MAME will be the closest to the originals you can possibly get. The whole point of the MAME project is to be as accurate as possible. OTOH I found the earlier AL cabinets to have a fair bit of lag - they don't do any optimization to fix that. Maybe the newer ones are better but MAME is definitely the most accurate.

I am unsure what's false......I had a mame cabinet and certainly found some inaccuracies and errors. Certainly not every game has problems. AL3 works problem free for us and is licensed..

"It’s nearly impossible to find one arcade with every game, unless you build or buy a MAME cabinet" - TRUE
"These are bootleg games and often do not play like the original." - TRUE
"Games such as the AL3 are fully licensed, games, and play true to the original" - TRUE

Help me understand what I am missing and where I am giving false information?

AL3 is a great machine - most important thing is making sure whatever you get has the games YOU want. The titles on the xxxx in 1 boards go about 98.4% unplayed. It's always the person's favorites that get played with VERY small variance from that.

What version of MAME was in your cabinet? Some cabs are based around much older versions and those may show issues. I'm curious which games you found inaccurate, as most popular boardsets and titles are pretty spot-on with current MAME releases.

3rd statement is just untrue, ALL Arcade Legends cabs have noticeable lag, which is absolutely NOT true to the originals. Not to mention they're displayed on an LCD, which looks nothing like the original CRTs. (did older AL cabs come with CRTs?) MAME can be configured to eliminate the lag, and for me that is the #1 reason to use it. I do agree on the bootleg/licensed issue - if you want to be legal, AL is the way to go. It's also plug and play, whereas MAME can be very fiddly.

All AL cabs, including early runs of AL3 shipped with CRTs until they became non existent. They then switched to the LCD. I would agree that there are plenty of games with lag and also games like the Williams classics that play too fast. This has been confirmed by marathoning experts. Not that this will effect a casual gamer's enjoyment of the games.

Yeah I just checked their site and they show LCD, but I could have sworn I played a CRT version back in the day, thanks for the confirmation. It still had lag but at least it looked correct - they did the proper progressive resolutions and didn't just hardware scale everything to 640x480.

I've owned 2 AL2s and was very satisfied with them as a casual experience. I'm too old to compete at the crazy levels of some of these classic arcade records, anyway.

Yeah for plug n play you definitely can't beat em. I've got PCs, arcadeVGA cards and a couple d9200 CRTs, but haven't found the time to put 'em all together in a couple good cabs. Bench-test playing is as close as I've gotten, but at least it's damn accurate bench-testing

Learn something new everyday. I was not aware that my 3rd statement was untrue. I would certainly never intentionally mislead anyone. Apparently the manufacturer is also unaware. I have sold these for years, and have one in my home and have had nothing but great a experience.

I no longer have a MAME because I did not enjoy messing with it. I did say MAME was the way to go if you want to have any game you want. I didn’t intend to start a debate on CRT, LCD or whether or not there was lag on the AL3. Frankly I could care less, was just trying to help the op.

I appreciate your input. I know who you are and your experience. Your knowledge and expertise are always welcome here.

Thank you for your kind words, and I do appreciate them very much, makes it all worth while. Straight up….people like you is why I am still in this hobby!

I don't think you were trying to mislead anyone... the AL games appear to be pretty good at first glance and they run fine for the most part. But, you did claim they were more accurate than MAME and that is simply not true:

I don't know what else to say except that, aside from licensing, the above statement is false. Nothing against you personally.

Anyhoo……

Op, have you tracked down a game?

There are HDD's available which have all the games from AL1, 2 & 3 compiled. Simply swap out the original HDD for a flashcard containing all the games and you're all set.

Link?

Contact user John2564 on the Arcade Forums, formally KLOV.

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/ultracade-arcade-legends-1-computers-motherboards-hard-drives.489732/

Would love to see an Arcade Legends 4 with games from the 1990’s….

Thanks

AL1, AL2 and AL3 all had Wells Gardner CRTs

No lag to speak of in all three of them...I've owned them all, multiple times.

Which AL did you play? What game specifically was lagging?

Now, AL3 ships with a Wells Gardner LCD, not nearly as good; and there is screen tearing, which can be a major deal breaker to some.

I have spoken to Chicago Gaming about an AL4, but they don't seem motivated to get one out; not sure it will ever happen...They have been lacking in more AL3 updates or and AL4, can't blame it on licensing when you see what Arcade1Up has been able to secure.

MAME machines with 20k+ games are too complicated for casuals, guests are over whelmed and don't touch them; AL3 is a great option for a game room that will get play.

Although none of these compare to the original arcades; nothing beats an original control panel...But I just don't have the space.

Only AL1 has a PC with a hard drive. AL2 and 3 use a small pcb with SD card developed by Hanaho. Very easy to upgrade AL1 to include every available game, but that isn't the case with 2 and 3, unfortunately.

There is one that has the capcom games and the Midway games...Rampage is on the expansion pack, I think it's 536, not sure why they title it that, as it adds like 30 games, not 536.

i have had a an AL1 with all the games on it for years. I bought a drive from John or someone else who had it listed on that site. I never had a problem with it and it works great.

Depends on how into it you are?

The Arcade Legends are a good catch all for casual players. They are also expensive IMO

They are for sale all the time as people get all gung ho to get one and then dont use it after the first month.

As has been said you can get someone to build you a MAME setup or for straight "classics" Arcade SD is great.

Really need to narrow it down the the games that are most important to you and take it from there.

Or do what I do and just spend years collecting every classic game you like so you have proper controls and hardware etc. (good luck doing that these days though)

Not sure which AL, but it was a CRT model. Whatever Watsons in Cincinnati was stocking around 6 years ago, so probably an AL3? I know it was towards the end of CRTs because I was pleasantly surprised to see it had one and not an LCD. Also can't remember what games I tried but it was several and all had some lag. They did play properly otherwise and looked good thanks to the CRT.

I do want to point out, I am very sensitive to videogame lag. I played consoles from Atari and NES through Dreamcast on CRTs, but stopped playing at PS2 thanks to getting into pinball, so I never experienced any gameplay on an LCD. I played PC games on a P990 CRT through 2014 or so, then pretty much switched to pinball. When I got back into PC games, I had to get a gsync card and 144hz monitor with 1ms response, otherwise the LCD lag and blur drove me nuts. It's still not as good as CRT but the P990 is a bit large for the desk.

I'm pretty sure whatever emulator AL3 uses had both vsync and buffering enabled. The buffering helps maintain a smooth framerate, but at the expense of 1-2 frames of lag. Most people won't notice but it's there and I do notice.

I also agree MAME is fiddly as hell and ALs are good for most players. And yes, if you build a MAME, limit the games to the ones you want instead of dumping the whole romset in it.

Yep, all 263 games on the one SD card. Faster boot time and the convience of no moving parts. Apologies for stating it was a compact flashcard in an earlier post.

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