# Arcade1up vs. Game Room Solutions - Watch Ralph Wreck-it!

**Source:** RetroRalph  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2019-02-19  
**Duration:** 22m 24s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTd_k4Cmv10

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## Analysis

RetroRalph reviews the Game Room Solutions arcade cabinet kit, comparing it favorably to Arcade1Up in terms of build quality, sturdiness, and modularity. The cabinet features a real arcade design with hinged control panel access, adjustable monitor mounting, and runs Sega Genesis cartridges including Fix-It Felix Jr. Ralph highlights the superior wood quality and service-friendly design while documenting the assembly process and noting a few minor quality issues that the manufacturer offers to resolve.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Game Room Solutions cabinet is heavier and sturdier than Arcade1Up — _Direct comparison made during review: 'This is a real arcade cabinet. It's a lot heavier than an Arcade1Up. It's a lot sturdier than an Arcade1Up.'_
- [HIGH] The cabinet accommodates 22-inch monitors versus Arcade1Up's 17-inch — _Specific measurement stated: 'It accommodates a 22-inch monitor, so 17 versus 22'_
- [HIGH] The control panel has hinged design for easy access, unlike Arcade1Up — _Ralph states: 'The control panel has hinges for easy access... Makes it 10 times easier to work with' and contrasts with Arcade1Up requiring repeated unscrewing_
- [HIGH] Game Room Solutions provides pre-cut holes and pre-slotted design for t-molding — _Stated during review: 'pre-slotted for t-molding the whole system is pre-slotted for t-molding'_
- [HIGH] The cabinet runs original Sega Genesis hardware and cartridges — _Ralph confirms while opening the unit: 'This, my friends, is a Sega Genesis, an actual original equipment Sega Genesis'_

### Notable Quotes

> "This is a real arcade cabinet. It's a lot heavier than an Arcade1Up. It's a lot sturdier than an Arcade1Up."
> — **RetroRalph (Jon)**, ~26:45
> _Core comparison establishing cabinet quality superiority_

> "The control panel has hinges for easy access... This is actually a killer, killer piece of this cabinet. I'm so, so stoked on this."
> — **RetroRalph (Jon)**, ~19:30
> _Highlights standout feature differentiating from Arcade1Up_

> "I'm kind of cheating on Arcade1Up... my eyes started to wander a bit... these cabinets were a little bit more beefy and like had a little bit more curve to it"
> — **RetroRalph (Jon)**, ~0:30
> _Opening hook establishing comparison narrative and humor_

> "Ryan from Game Room Solutions has offered to replace those free of charge... it's important to me when you're buying a product like this that the company's going to stand behind it"
> — **RetroRalph (Jon)**, ~27:20
> _Demonstrates manufacturer customer support responsiveness_

> "I almost think this is a little bit of a level up, no pun intended... more of a level up from an Arcade1Up"
> — **RetroRalph (Jon)**, ~28:00
> _Positioning Game Room Solutions as premium tier above Arcade1Up_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| RetroRalph (Jon) | person | Video host and arcade cabinet reviewer |
| Ryan | person | Owner/representative of Game Room Solutions, responsive to customer issues |
| Mark Kim | person | Guest who demonstrated gameplay on the cabinet |
| Game Room Solutions | company | Arcade cabinet kit manufacturer and seller |
| Arcade1Up | company | Competing arcade cabinet manufacturer being compared throughout review |
| JC | person | Administrator of Arcade1Up modding Facebook community |
| Press Your Buttons | company | JAMMA harness manufacturer used in the build |
| ViewSonic | company | Monitor manufacturer (22-inch model used in cabinet) |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Arcade cabinet hardware comparison, DIY arcade cabinet assembly and modification, Sega Genesis emulation and cartridge compatibility, Cabinet design features (hinged control panel, monitor mounting)
- **Secondary:** Arcade1Up versus premium alternatives, Manufacturing quality and customer support

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Strong endorsement of Game Room Solutions cabinet with enthusiasm for design features. Minor criticisms (monitor mounting adjustment, door alignment, some wood damage) are addressed constructively and manufacturer responsiveness is praised. Ralph emphasizes liking both products while positioning Game Room Solutions as a premium step up.

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Game Room Solutions manufacturer (Ryan) actively responds to customer issues and offers replacements for defective parts (confidence: high) — Ralph states: 'Ryan from Game Room Solutions has offered to replace those free of charge... he already gave me a fix for that too... Ryan seems like he's definitely going to stand behind his product'
- **[market_signal]** Premium arcade cabinet market showing differentiation from consumer-grade Arcade1Up with professional-grade features and materials (confidence: high) — Repeated comparisons emphasizing 'real arcade cabinet' construction, thicker wood, sturdier build, professional hinged access versus consumer product positioning
- **[product_strategy]** Game Room Solutions cabinet design includes service-friendly features (hinged control panel with latches) not found on competing Arcade1Up product (confidence: high) — Ralph repeatedly emphasizes hinged control panel design: 'it's a super nice feature', 'makes it 10 times easier to work with', 'killer, killer piece of this cabinet'
- **[technology_signal]** Game Room Solutions cabinets incorporate original Sega Genesis hardware rather than emulation, enabling native cartridge compatibility (confidence: high) — Ralph confirms: 'This, my friends, is a Sega Genesis, an actual original equipment Sega Genesis' and demonstrates swapping cartridges between Fix-It Felix Jr., Streets of Rage, and multi-cart

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## Transcript

 Hey guys, welcome back. So in this episode, I want to talk a little bit about Arcade 1-Up. When those cabinets hit the scene, I was so excited. And I knew about them even before they went public. And I was like, wow, it's a sleek cabinet, it's sexy, it's lightweight. And then, you know, as I started using them a little bit, and I love them, by the way, I was like, maybe there's some alternatives. And my eyes started to wander a bit. You know, that made me feel a little uncomfortable, because I was like, man, I'm kind of cheating on Arcade 1-Up. but then I saw these cabinets and they were a little bit more beefy and like had a little bit more curve to it really really kind of sexy and so my eyes started to wander and I just couldn't help myself excuse me babe no the cabinets the cabinets I'm talking about the cabinets stay tuned it also plays Sega Genesis cards all right guys let's do this thing time to unbox all right be careful when you're doing this because there are several pieces that actually are not cardboard believe it or not and we'll talk a little bit about that later everything was packaged really nice so great job guys all right, we got to put these screws into every single part of this board as step one. This is just like Ikea furniture, goes together the same exact way with those cam locks. Right now, you'll see me putting on the hinges. That's for the door. That is a really cool feature of this, and we'll talk more about that as time goes on. All right, time to mount the speakers and amplifier. So I actually did mess this step up, and I'll explain why in a second. It didn't come with screws. I actually had some screws for this but I screwed the amp down backwards so you're gonna want to screw it in the other way if you're following along so make sure you screw it the other way otherwise you can't adjust the volume from the back and there's a close-up view alright so got to hook up the speaker wires real quick simple and easy to make sure positive is positive and negative negative is negative and you should be good to go alright we're gonna start at the top of the cabinet I actually followed along with the video that Ryan over at Game Room Solutions provides. So every now and then you'll see me glancing at my phone just to make sure I'm doing things correctly. Actually, this board was giving me a little bit of a hard time, so John Youssi me struggling with that. So that's the top of the marquee that we're attaching right now. And you'll see those pieces of what look like cardboard are actually the plexiglass for the marquee, which is what I almost misplaced, and I actually contacted Ryan over at Game Room, and he showed me where it was. All right, so this is a quick look at the marquee because I forgot to record this part. You'll see inside that I put some LED strips. Just mount those a little bit further away from the marquee plexiglass, and you should be fine. You won't see any of the lights shine through. And actually, it really does look quite awesome, and you'll see that later on. So I'm really happy with how it's coming along so far. Okay, now it's time for the monitor mount. So the monitor gave me a little bit of a hard time. I chose a ViewSonic 22-inch monitor. Basically, this board that goes behind the monitor allows you to slide the monitor up and down, and you're going to need to do that to get it properly centered for the plexiglass that they provide in this kit. What I'm assembling now is actually where the control board will sit, and there's that nice slit right there that you can see, and that's for your wires. So it's really, really well equipped for being able to work on the cabinet easily, which I really appreciated. So here's the marquee, or sorry, not the marquee, but the LCD plexiglass. That's going to go right in there. That was a little bit hard to get into that groove, so you're going to have to put a little bit of pressure, but not too much. Then I'm going to spin this system around, and you're going to see me attempt to get this monitor correctly aligned. This is actually quite tricky because you have to align it, and then you have to go on the other side and just make sure that, you know, the screen doesn't show in certain areas. I want the whole screen. I don't want to show the border of the screen. So this was actually quite tricky, and I actually could not get it right. I tried a bunch of different times, and I wanted it to be perfect, and I just couldn't get it the way I wanted it. So I fiddled a little bit more, but the problem I found is that these grooves and the outer grooves are where my monitor would connect. They're just not long enough. So I'm going to modify this, I think, just to get it the way I want because I'm a little bit anal. So let's do that. Okay, so the reason why we're outside is because I had a problem with the monitor mount, which is really kind of a bummer. So you move the monitor up and down on this mount to actually get it to fit in the bezel. And the problem is, you know, obviously every monitor is slightly different. The mounting holes are usually about the same. I think VESA is the standard. I think that's still the case. It's been a while since I've looked at that. But, yeah, it's a bummer, man. And so it either is too high or too low, and I don't know if you guys saw that from the video. So I'm going to have to extend these holes so that I can move the monitor up and down to get the right fit. Wow. That is a really, really bad hole. Oh God, I suck with a jigsaw. But anyways, it's going to get the job done. It's fine. It's not pretty, but it's fine. show you guys real quick Wow that is bad Look at that Look at that big gaping hole That definitely work Hey you know what I not perfect at this stuff I don claim to be So anyways let head back inside Okay, so with our mount extended, I should be able to get this perfectly aligned. So I'm fiddling with it a little bit more. It did take a while, but I finally got it to a point where I thought it looked really good. However, there was one other trick to it that I found is if you look, you can't really see it in the video, but there's actually a couple different options of how close you want to mount the monitor to the actual bezel. I chose to change it because I was a little bit further away and I thought maybe I could get it closer and it would look awesome. So you'll see me change that in a second. But before I do that, I just want to clean this screen up really good because I don't want any dust or anything behind it just so that it gets the best picture as that I possibly can so right now I'm changing those cams so that I can get it a tiny bit closer and now it's super super snug up to the top so I'm really happy with the way that came out all right so now it's time to do the kick plate super easy installation you just you know put that down and then you lock those cams in place which you'll see me do right now so so far so good guys I'm feeling like the cabinet is an awesome quality the wood is really thick and great now I will get to the back the back door so again I love this feature because you'd be surprised you know I actually don't keep my back door on my arcade one up because I want to get in there and fiddle with it from time to time so this is a super nice feature and props to Ryan for doing this I love it over at game room solutions all right let's uh let's get the top panel down this was actually kind of tricky and uh it it the video was a lot longer but I cut it down you have to really fiddle with those boards to get it in. And then the other side of the plexi for the bezel has to really, you have to really be careful as you get it into that groove. But there's a closer look inside so you can see what's going on. This part sucked because I had to get on my back and I kind of have a bad back. So yeah, so if you have a bad back, just know you're going to be in some tight spaces and you're going to want to get a knobby screwdriver that's really short because there's some weird angles that you have to try to get into in order to screw those cam locks down. So yeah, Not the most fun part of it, but I just wanted to ensure I got them all so it's a nice tight fit. Now, here's some feedback on the door. It appears that the door comes out a little further than I would have liked, and I don't know. I haven't contacted Ryan at Game Room Solutions, but I am going to give him a chance to respond on this. There was also some damage on the wood of the door. I don't know if you just saw that as we back up. See, there's some damage there. So some damage on the door, and I don't feel like the door is flush, but I'm not sure if the door is supposed to be flush or not. So in their defense, I was looking at could I possibly move that back a little bit, but I didn't want to drill new holes. But these are the holes provided that are pre-drilled from the factory. So I used those holes. So I decided to leave it alone for now, but I am going to give Ryan a chance to respond on that. All right, so now we're on to the control panel. Another sweet, sweet, sweet thing about this system is that it's got latches for the control panel just like a real arcade cabinet would have. so you can gain access to the control panel. Makes it 10 times easier to work with, guys. This is actually a killer, killer piece of this cabinet. I'm so, so stoked on this. But, however, I made a big, giant mistake, and I had mounted all the buttons on here, not knowing that there was a piece of plexiglass that goes over this thing. So that's an awesome thing, too. But had I known, I wouldn't have put all the buttons and joysticks in prior. So I'm actually having to take all of the joysticks out, or not the joysticks out, sorry, but all the buttons off, just so I can put this piece of plexi on. So you'll see that's the plexi. It did look like a piece of cardboard. I almost threw it out. That would have been a huge, giant mistake. So what I'm going to do, though, is after this paper comes off, I'm going to clean this thing off because the paper kind of leaves a little bit of a residue. And if I want to make it stay nice, I want to make sure it's clean the first time I put it on. All right, so I'm wiping that down, getting that nice and clean. I'm not going to let you sit through or have you sit through all of the buttons going back on, but that's what I'm doing now is putting the buttons all back onto the control panel, and then we'll put it finally mounted. So we'll get it secured and locked down. Again, awesome, awesome feature of this cabinet, and it makes it really great if you have to go in there and do any service later on. I'm probably going to talk about this again just because I love it so much. All right, time for wiring. So I chose to do a JAMA for this installation, so it is running a JAMA harness, and it is by that company Press Your Buttons. So it is fully labeled in English and super easy to follow. I'm going to mention this latch system again for a moment because, you know, if you're modding an arcade one-up and you've got to do the wiring, this makes it so much more convenient than that. I'm not bashing the arcade one-up by any stretch of the imagination. But in this case, when you're doing wiring like this, it's just kind of nice to be able to do it quick and easy. and then if you have to make a correction, you just open the latch versus if you had to go back in and you've already screwed down the control panel on arcade one, you got to keep opening it up and unscrewing it. So it's a little bit of an inconvenience, but I really liked this feature. So of course, this is like the third time I mentioned it. So in a minute, I'm going to go ahead and start to organize these wires a little bit. That is the one thing when you're working with a jama harness, it does take a little bit to get the wiring great. And admittedly, I'm still not that great at doing it but I thought this looked pretty good I was actually it was one of those moments where I stood back and went damn that actually looks pretty good So I don always boast about my wiring skills but I thought this looked pretty good for Retro Ralph who not known for being the best at wiring Sometimes I'm not that clean when it comes to this stuff, so I thought it looked pretty good. So there's a closer look. And I didn't use those four buttons on the bottom, those yellow ones. I'm going to reserve those for future mods. All right, so let's spin this guy around. Keep in mind, this is a lot heavier than an arcade one-up. This is a lot thicker wood. It's a lot more sturdy in a sense, so it does take a little bit to turn it around. All right, here is the mystery board. I am not going to talk about this until we get to the end of the review, but I'm super stoked for what this system has in it, and I'll just leave it at that. I kind of gave a hint in the beginning of the video, but you will have to stick around to find out what that thing is. All right, so I haven't done this before in a video, but I thought this would be great for this particular mod. so what I'm doing right now is I'm making a switched power supply so that what I can do is switch on the whole entire unit from the back so what you need to do is you have to take a power strip cut the end of it and put some quick connects on it and then you need to also go out and buy the switch itself which the great thing is is the game room solution system already has a pre-cut hole for the actual switch so all you have to do is be able to do this and then you can you know utilize that hole. So now we're going to wire this thing up. I am going to provide a diagram along with this so that you guys can understand how to do this. You know, whenever you're messing with electricity, you really want to be sure you know what you're doing. You do not want to get electrocuted and you do not want it to be unsafe. So that's a close view of the wiring. You will notice this is a square receptacle. And when I push it in there, this is supposed to actually just fit snug. And there's supposed to be these wings that kind of separate as you put it in through the hole. I did notice that, you'll see in a moment here, I did notice it seemed a little loose. So when I pushed it in, I did not like the way it fit. So I actually chose to do the one with the wings. So John Youssi all of a sudden the magic of video, it's actually a different switch. But that's the one I liked. It fit a lot better. Then you could screw it down. And when it's electricity, you don't want to mess with that kind of stuff. So I made sure it was nice and snug. All right. So at this point, I am going to complete the rest of the wires, clean this up a little bit, get the arcade power supply figured out and then I think I'm gonna try to see if Classic Kim, used to be Retro Kim, Classic Kim, her new name, will want to help me out with a little bit of review and gameplay. So I'm gonna finish this up and we're gonna go right over to the beginning of the system and fire this thing up. All right guys, before I bring in Classic Kim, I want to do a couple of initial reactions. I wrote them down because I don't want to miss anything. So for one, This is a real arcade cabinet. It's a lot heavier than an arcade 1-up. It's a lot sturdier than an arcade 1-up. It accommodates a 22-inch monitor, so 17 versus 22, it just depends on what you're really looking for, but you have to source that yourself. The cam lock system works really good, just like IKEA furniture. It goes together fairly simple. The control panel has hinges for easy access, which I did cover during the video. That makes it a lot easier when you want to work on the cabinet. So it's something that I personally really like. So if you're looking for something that you can change and modify really quickly without having to unscrew things, that's a pretty nice feature. They did a great job on the artwork. I happened to pick artwork that they created, and they have a bunch of user-submitted things, and then you can also submit your artwork, and then when it leaves their factory, it will have your artwork on it. That saved me a ton of time, because honestly, I hate doing the wrap myself. I'm not that good at it, but even with a good product I just don't do it very well. They provided the plexiglass for both the marquee and the bezel I think that's a really cool feature and then it's pre-slotted for t-molding the whole system is pre-slotted for t-molding you do have to get the t-molding and do that yourself so if you're not as familiar with t-molding you know that's something you just have to be aware of and there's a few YouTube videos to show you how to do that. I want to give a special thanks to JC on the Arcade 1UP modding group. So he runs a Facebook modding group. I'm going to have links in the description to that. That community has been great. They've really, you know, they've really accepted my channel and they've done a lot to support me personally. So I really do appreciate them and I appreciate that and props to JC for setting that up. And I'll leave links in the description, like I said. You do have to provide the LED lights for the Marquee, but it does have the plexi as I mentioned and there were a couple of boards that showed up damaged as you saw in the video and Ryan from Game Room Solutions has offered to replace those free of charge. So and I did also ask him about the rear door. He said the rear door shouldn't close the way it's closing right now and he showed he already gave me a fix for that too. So you know it's important to me when you're buying a product like this that the company's going to stand behind it and Ryan seems like he's definitely going to stand behind his product. So props to that. So quick side by side. I like them both. They're both really great. There's pros and cons to both. I'm not really saying it's one or the other. I almost think this is a little bit of a level up, no pun intended, because that's what it's called. It's more of a level up from an arcade one-up. You're getting a little bit more sturdy cabinet. You're getting a cabinet that's a little bit more versatile. So it just really depends on what you want. Again, love them both. So that's my quick summary. I'm going to bring Classic Kim in here and she'll play some Fix It Felix Jr. for you. Kim here, she's ready to play. Hey guys. Although I still upset with your wandering eyes comment Alright let do it You moved my stump Okay, oops. I already suck at this game. All right. Come on, Classic Kim. I'm trying. Ah! Oh, oh, I jumped right in his way. Okay, should I show them what else this thing does? Sure. But how was this? Was this fun? Yeah, yeah, it was awesome. It was a lot of fun. All right, so now that Classic Kim has done horsing around, I can show you a little overview of the cabinet. So you can't really tell, but it's got a killer lit marquee. As you saw, it's running Fix-It Felix Jr., and the control board is pretty damn cool. So I got to give them props for an awesome design on the control board. But my favorite thing about it, as I stated before, is the fact that you can lift it up to service it. Awesome, awesome feature. As we move down, you got this cool plate underneath the control panel and you have the kick plate. The kick plate is actually already got a hole for the coin door, which I will be doing at a later time. And I'll do another video for that. The speakers are mounted right there. The side artwork is really nice, as you can see. But what was I talking about earlier? So what is Fix-It Felix actually running on? Let's open that up and check it out. So this, my friends, is a Sega Genesis, an actual original equipment Sega Genesis. And this is the Fix-It Felix cart right here. so here's the cool thing since this is a Sega Genesis I can run any Sega Genesis cartridge I want in this machine so if we wanted to run a multi-cart with hundreds of Genesis games we could if I wanted to play the original Streets of Rage we could do that so I'm going to pop this in real quick all you have to do is power the cabinet off we're going to replace the cartridge with sheets of rage. I'm going to power the cabinet back on. Pretty cool stuff. So I'll show you what the multi-cart is really quick, and then we'll wrap this video up. I'm putting in the multi-cart. And what you have with the multi-cart is tons and tons of Genesis games for you to play. So if I wanted, say, Comic Zone... Sorry about the glare from the lights, guys. And then I actually configured this exit button to take you back to the main screen. So if I wanted to play Aladdin... So, you know, obviously you've got many, many, many titles to pick from. So I was pretty excited about this. This is actually one of the coolest features. I think this is going to quickly become one of my favorite cabinets to play on. So if you guys like this video, please like it. Please subscribe to the channel. Please hit that notification bell so you can be informed of future videos. And as always, guys, thanks for watching, and we'll see you on the next one. Thank you. Thank you.

_(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 12b467f6-91fb-4190-bbdf-411c96863be4*