I grew up in arcades & had a MAME (hyperspin) with LCD monitor and it never felt any diff'rent than OG games.

Mame was great but can be a bit of a bitch to set up at the beginning

I went jamma 3000 n 1 and sold off my dedicated. They just took up too much space. I did keep my pole position and a daytona usa.

You could get an Ipac and run mame on a pc through jamma.

My vote would be a nice MAME cabinet with big screen, good amplifier
and speakers. The preference here is original video games (25 so far) but
MAME has filled the holes for rare games I'd really like to find but probably
never will. MAME is well supported with a nearly limitless variety of games.
Steve

If you have kids, or frequently have others over that may use the machine, get the JAMMA. If it's just you and you want to be able to play pretty much anything, get the MAME. I've got a MAME and I love it, but it is not user friendly for my kids. Additionally, if you do have kids and get a MAME setup with 5 billion games, make sure you get a setup that does not have adult games. I can't get all of them scrubbed off my machine to save my life. I got mine out of a corporate office that couldn't get all the nudy games off it either.

mame is a whole lot better, you can do it cheaply on a Pi/Odroid for emulation up to Dreamcast, or go up to PS3/X360 on a modest PC build($200)

Uff, you gotta go in the master list C++ and delete the ones you don't want to show up; hassle. That's if you're not using a "favorites" folder for them.
But yes, it can be very confusing.

I run a pixel perfect Mame on a crt screen with a front end to select games and hand picked list of games separated by categories. The whole navigation is done through the panel and Windows isn't visible at any time

I strongly recommend using Attract Mode as a front end it's the easiest setup I could find and take 10mn to setup.

As much as I liked my original PCBs I ended up selling all of them.

I can send my configuration to anyone who wants it, you can copy and paste on your end and just download the roms. It can run as is on an LCD screen, for a crt there is another procedure to follow that requires a compatible graphic card.

If you build it on a Jamma arcade machine you will need a Jamma to USB interface.

A Mame offers more but will eventually break down so unless you can set it up and fix it yourself I would go Jamma. And fyi to all MAME is an acronym so every letter is pronounced and the E is NOT silent. It should be pronounced MA (a as in man) MEE and not MAIM.

Then go Jamma for sure. Ive owned 3 Mame's. They all eventually just errored out. If for some reason your jamma should break they are cheap enough to replace and are plug and play with zero set up for games. Often on Mames even if the thing comes fully loaded with games there is no way they have taken the time to configure each game to the controls which must be done on a title to title basis.

TheLaw can't handle the truth.

RIP my old Mamewah/arcade VGA config after my hard drive ate it and I didn't back it up like a numbskull. Swapped in a Pi solution, and while it's OK on my WG9200 CRT I miss the simplicity of the interface and the accurate clock rates.

May have to try one of these new 3D Pandora's box doohickies.

I'll never pronounce it "JIFF" either dammit!

Me neither. Its obviously a hard "G." Jiff is peanut butter.

The 60-in-1 / 700-in-1 boards are also emulators. They suffer from the same issues/ complaints as a MAME system. IMO just go MAME. It’s not perfect but the only way to get perfect is a dedicated original game.

Additionally, the MAME options out there have filters to add scanlines, to compensate for using an LCD screen whereas the games were made for curved CRTs. The Jamma boards don’t do that.

You can also just buy a Pandora which has a million games, options, and is basically a MAME board without requiring a PC. Our MAME setup runs on raspberry pi. Same diff.

I went with pandora 7 and love it. everything plays great and I got 3000 games.

Woody, have you added any games? Looking at the game list I did not see Robotron, or Crazy Climber. I'm thinking going this route instead of rebuilding Mame on a new computer for time # 4.
Thanks. Sputnik

Not sure about the 750-in-1 JAMMA option. I have a JAMMA cab with a horizontal CRT monitor and a Pandora's Box 6 (1300-in-1). It works great for most mid-80s to early 90s titles and you can easily add your own games. They play near perfectly, but there is ocassional screan tearing. There aren't as many configuration options as on a pure MAME setup, but it's pretty much plug-and-play. There are a lot of knock offs out there... FYI - there is no legit Pandora's Box\Key 7. Yea, technically it's a knock-off of a knock-off, but you never know what you are going to get under the hood. Most of the 'legit' units you will find out there now will be Pandora's Box 6 (successor to the PB4, PB5) or Pandora's Box 9 (geared more for console games). Haven't seen much of the newer Pandora's Box 3D yet, but not sure if that's even legit either.

I have not added games but I am pretty sure crazy climber is on there but robotron is not. Black widow is not either which I wanted.

What do these Pandora box run on to retail for 150$ ?

Don’t do mame unless you are also a PC nerd. I have built countless 60 in 1 machines and 6 mame cabinets with all different amounts of nonsense. When it’s all said and done, I have exactly none of them now and just own my 10 favorite arcade games and am way happier now.

you can order them from China for like $40

MAME has always discouraged me. Many hours of getting ROMs/previews/animations/menus no thanks.
Raspberry Pi's emulation has come a long way. I got a Torrent from ArcadePunks.com and threw it on an SD card.
Pi+Case+Nice SNES Bluetooth controller all from Amazon and I have a kick ass setup for $100 and no time at all!
If you want to interface arcade controls and throw it in a cabinet that's very easy and cheap also!