Quoted from Darkstar1234:I’m not here to shit in anyone’s cereal or be “Mr. Negative”, but these really are marketed to the naive. I could write a whole essay on how KMart these machines are.
Anyway. I made a video a few weeks ago…again, I’m not here to be a downer, rather to express to people “you can really do much much better”. As far as a cabinet if you go purpose over fashion, you’ll be much more pleased.
There are a few things wrong with your video.
First, Stating that people are profiting off of work people are doing for free; You show an Arcade1up cabinet while saying this which is completely inaccurate, they paid for licensing and Zen legally owns the licenses to those tables and developed the games. Sure other pre-built vpin might be doing this but that's not the case for the thread you've decided to post this video in. I wouldn't consider it to be "A complete rip off" it's like saying because you can build a Pi with a thousand roms an officially licensed cab is a complete rip-off because it costs a bit more. In fact, there are ethical issues with the "free" tables people are creating due to the fact it's based on licensed IP and it's amazing that the IP holders haven't stepped in and gotten angry in any way about it, the more attention this hobby gets the more likely it is to happen despite the already "forbidden" tables.
Second, Not everyone wants to build their own and learn about VP X/etc. Some people just want to play and are willing to pay for the convenience of doing so. In my opinion, going with a build-it route vs buying an Arcade1up is more expensive not just monetarily but time-wise I'd have to spend just getting solenoids working, getting button encoders, doing all of those things that are not only already done for me but also all already integrated.
This is why I choose to modify it in the way I did and keeping with the principle of making things as easy as possible to do it, because there shouldn't be a barrier for entry where you have to learn every little thing and have an electrical engineering degree just to get some feedback going (overexaggerating there) but that's how intimidating it is for some people.
You say they're marketed to the naive, you are the naive. There's a market for these for people like me, I absolutely have the talent to build one and even improve upon the interface for ease of use purposes but I'll still take the A1up over putting the effort into it because the screen was already chosen for me, the feedback was already implemented for me, the DMD was already put in for me, the wood was already cut, the graphics were already applied, most of all the software is commercially built specifically for it and works great.
Your feedback wasn't asked for and propping crap up with a diarrhea medication isn't how I want my cab to look when people come over and play with me.
Quoted from kool1:It's very bad - I had mine for a few months and sold it.
Very unfortunate as the cabinet itself is beautiful. They should have charged $100 more and put a decent PCB in there to run the games properly.
If you're referring to AFM(Williams Tables) then yeah, they weren't great in the beginning supposedly the firmware update corrected some of it. However, I don't really play those so I'm not 100% sure.
I've really enjoyed my table, and with what I've done with it I enjoy it even more as do my kids. To each their own, if you want a 'professional' vpin experience build like the guy above said, if you're just looking for something quick and entry-level to get your feet wet it does its job and it's fun to play with the kids and family.
Unless you're trying to run 1080p on Williams I don't notice a ton of flipper latency, though I'm biased because this is my first VPIN and I never played a lot of Pinball prior to this. I will say it was much more responsive than the toyshock.
Glad to be here, just wanted to comment on someone asking about Toyshock; thanks.