Blog

Hi, I’m Richard, the person behind Ultimate Arcade Machines. I want to share with you my journey and how I came to build arcade machines and why I’m now the owner of an arcade machine business.

It started with gaming as a young boy and being pretty good at arcade games but before I knew it, I had grown up and I was busy building a business, so I didn’t do much gaming for about 10 years. Even though I was busy getting on with life I always had this desire to get a sit down 60 in 1 Cocktail Arcade Machine and every time I saw one, it brought back memories of spending all my pocket money playing arcade games.

I didn’t have spare cash to buy a brand new one so I kept a watch on eBay and Gumtree, etc. until I finally saw one that was cheap. I went to meet the guy and when I saw the arcade machine he was selling I realised why it was so cheap! Let me put it this way, it played the games, but the cabinet was homemade, the wiring fair at best, half the cabinet was stained and half wasn’t, it had no glass cover and, well, I think you’re getting the picture. But, it was cheap, so I bought it and it sat there as a project for me to restore for far too long although I did play with family and mates quite often.

Fast forward a few years and I finally managed to find the time to start on my project. I sanded it, painted it, and had glass cut for the top, etc. Finally it started to look a little like a professional sit-down arcade machine and this was the moment I realised how much I enjoyed restoring it. So, I ordered a flatpack lowboy arcade with a bigger games system and started building my very first arcade from scratch. This one came out looking really quite good and it had more games! I decided to sell the first one I bought because I had two arcade machines and I also made a couple of dollars from the sale.

My kids started playing my arcade machine and because I have 3 kids, there was a lot of fighting over whose turn it was next! Even though I had the urge to build a bigger machine I needed one fast to keep the peace in my house, so I ordered a four-player arcade machine online. The machine was a solidly built machine but overall I felt let down from the service to the support and ultimately the machine itself.

That experience got me thinking …. What if I could build more arcade machines and use a better front end system, make better graphics (I do have a degree in graphic art), and give great customer service? What if the machines were also affordable and had extras that no one had ever seen before? What if I combined old school arcades with modern ideas? Perhaps I could build arcade machines that people were excited to buy? And it was with those thoughts that Ultimate Arcade Machines came to be.