I diy'd one and I can chime in and say just get j_m_'s... it's way less work

I can also say my wife loves the clock and it actually found a spot on the main floor and not relegated to the basement with the pin's. So I've got that going for me

Read the first post for option one... roll your own by buying run-DMD board directly from run-DMD.com. My reco is to order from this thread, j_m_ does an awesome job with these. I also believe another user sells these directly from a Pinside store too... he may have even posted in this thread.

You can... yes... the interface is pretty intuitive, easy way is to walk through all the games and turn of the games you don’t want to see animations for. Personally I’d recommend playing all the animations to start and then start removing as get used to things. Some games have more animations than others... like WWE/WWF, those seemed to get a lot more play on my setup so unturned now them off.