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Retro Ralph's Home Arcade Tour 2023

RetroRalph·video·15m 46s·analyzed·May 26, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

RetroRalph's 2023 home arcade tour showcases 30+ cabinets and pinballs with acquisition tales and gameplay insights.

Summary

RetroRalph gives an extensive 2023 arcade and pinball collection tour of his home setup in Arizona, featuring roughly 30+ arcade cabinets across garage and indoor spaces, including rare machines like Grid (with custom Galloping Ghost topper), Baby Pac-Man, 19-inch Smash TV, and two pinball machines (Stranger Things and Foo Fighters). He discusses acquisition stories, restoration projects, gameplay preferences, and personal nostalgia tied to specific games, while humorously struggling with a fog machine that obscures the garage footage.

Key Claims

  • Grid cabinet has a one-of-a-kind topper recreated by Galloping Ghost with their logo

    high confidence · Jon (RetroRalph) explicitly states ownership of unique Grid topper created by Galloping Ghost with their branding

  • 19-inch Smash TV is very rare and fetches top dollar

    high confidence · Jon describes the 19-inch variant as rarely seen and commanding premium prices compared to 25-inch version

  • Received Tekken 2 cabinet (in MK1 cabinet) for free from Electric Bat Arcade's Rachel

    high confidence · Jon explicitly thanks Rachel at Electric Bat Arcade for providing the cabinet at no cost

  • Fast and the Furious arcade was originally not licensed as such; Eugene Jarvis got licensing via a Stern contact at the last minute

    medium confidence · Jon states the game was last-minute scrambled to be Fast and the Furious licensing after Eugene Jarvis' buddy at Stern facilitated the deal

  • NARC cabinet acquired for $500, plus ~$600 for medium res monitor sourcing, totaling ~$1,100

    high confidence · Jon provides specific pricing breakdown for NARC acquisition including monitor cost

  • Discovered pinball gaming two years ago at Pinball Expo and has grown to love the hobby

    high confidence · Jon states pinball interest began approximately two years prior at Pinball Expo event

  • Owns two Smash TV cabinets (25-inch and 19-inch variants) and considering selling the 25-inch

    high confidence · Jon explicitly notes ownership of two Smash TVs and mentions potential sale of 25-inch model

  • 19-inch Smash TV runs original hardware boards for Smash TV, Robotron, Total Carnage, and Xenocrisis

    high confidence · Jon specifies all four games running on original hardware in single cabinet

Notable Quotes

  • “The space is the same. It's just, I sell stuff and then I regret selling it and then I get it again.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 0:44 — Reveals collector's tendency to repurchase machines, indicating emotional attachment and decision-making patterns in arcade collecting

  • “You're going to bury me in this cockpit. Marry me with my Sinistar.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 2:04 — Humorous expression of deep personal attachment to Sinistar machine; indicates collecting is tied to emotional/nostalgic value

  • “X-Men's better than The Simpsons, I'm sorry.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 4:02 — Personal game preference statement; acknowledges previous community criticism of trading Simpsons for X-Men restoration

  • “Robotron is a gamer's game, in my opinion. You have to really like the game.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 4:31 — Commentary on game appeal and difficulty; suggests Robotron has niche audience requiring dedication

  • “Just think about all the variety of arcade games there are in the world for you to discover. So if you just play the common normie games all the time and don't venture out, then you don't even know what you're missing.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 6:43 — Philosophy on arcade discovery and collector mindset; encourages exploration beyond mainstream titles

  • “I don't really know what I'm going to do with that yet, but we'll figure it out.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 2:48 — Honest assessment of Outrun restoration challenge; indicates reality of hardware sourcing difficulties in arcade restoration

Entities

JonpersonElectric Bat ArcadeorganizationRachelpersonSteve LaitypersonNick MadsenpersonEugene JarvispersonGalloping GhostorganizationKerry HardypersonRaw Thrills

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo serves as significant entry point for new collectors; Jon's pinball journey began there approximately two years prior

    medium · Jon credits Pinball Expo attendance two years ago as catalyst for pinball collecting interest development

  • ?

    community_signal: Electric Bat Arcade's Rachel provided free cabinet (Tekken 2/MK1) to Jon, indicating community goodwill and venue operator support for collectors

    high · Jon explicitly thanks Rachel for providing cabinet at no cost

  • ?

    competitive_signal: 19-inch Smash TV variant positioned as rare and premium vs 25-inch standard version; price differentiation based on screen size scarcity

    high · Jon explicitly states 19-inch Smash TV is rare, not commonly seen, and 'fetches top dollar' compared to 25-inch variant

  • ?

    product_concern: Multiple machines experiencing hardware failures (Outrun graphics chip issue, Afterburner graphical problems); parts sourcing requires destroying known-working boards

    high · Jon discusses proprietary chip failures in Sega games and the dilemma of harvesting parts from working boards to repair broken ones

  • ?

    technology_signal: Candy cabs (JAMA-compatible multi-game cabinets) represent aftermarket trend enabling flexible software/hardware combinations, multiple emulation systems per cabinet

    high · Jon describes Jelco Pony cabinet running RGB Pi, Pandora's Box 10, and Mr. Kade simultaneously; notes 'major identity crisis' but celebrates flexibility

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.047

0:00
Hey guys! Welcome back! Okay, it's time for another arcade tour because I've changed a lot in the last couple months but this room is the one that's changed the most so we're going to end up in here last because I want to show you some of the cool stuff I did. So what we're going to do is we're going to go out to the garage first. There's some new stuff in there too but keep in mind, you know, last year was a big year for buying arcade machines and I need to calm down. And, and you know, I'm not suggesting that you calm down too, but if you're like me, you get excited. Steve Laity, classic example, guy lives in Vegas. He's become a friend of mine and the guy buys everything. Now he claims that my garage and my space just keeps getting larger. Not true. Not true. Actually, the space is the same. It's just, I sell stuff and then I regret selling it and then I get it again. Okay. Well, bonehead, the garage is closed, which is awesome. So if this works, it should open up the garage. So let's see.
1:01
All right, here we go. This is the official garage tour, garagecade tour for 2023. And we've got fog effects now.
1:13
Okay, but the problem is, is with the fog, you can't see anything. So this garage tour doesn't work because of the fog machine. But anyways, we're going to continue anyways, despite this ridiculous, stupid idea, which already has failed. So over here, there's a Tekken 2, and this is actually in an MK1 cabinet. Now, I was going to restore this to an MK1. I got this for free, actually, from Electric Bat. So thank you to Rachel over at Electric Bar, Bat, Electric Bar? Electric Bat, who got me this. This is pretty awesome, and she gave it to me for free, so that's a big plus. We're going to convert that into an MK1, but now that the weather's turned in Arizona, we're probably not going to do it for, probably until the fall. But we're going to get that done. Then over here, we have the Sinistar cockpit, which has remained here and will stay here till I die. You're going to bury me in this cockpit.

  • “Very fun game. If I were to compare it to anything, I'd say it's very similar to Cruis'n and Exotica.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 8:12 — Direct gameplay comparison between Fast and Furious and other racing arcade titles

  • “Kerry Hardy, if you're watching, I'm stepping out of my lane, baby. I'm a pinball.”

    Jon (RetroRalph)@ 14:42 — Friendly jab at Kerry Hardy; indicates personal relationship within arcade/pinball community and playful acknowledgment of genre focus shift

    • company
    Sterncompany
    Pinball Expoevent
    Dream Machineorganization
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Fast and the Furious arcade licensing was facilitated last-minute through Eugene Jarvis's contact at Stern, suggesting licensing deals in arcade industry can be opportunistic or reactive

    medium · Jon states game was originally unlicensed and licensed 'till way later' after Jarvis's Stern contact secured deal

    • 2:07
    Remember, remember Cadillac? No, it's not Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Remember, shoot, is it Sunset Riders? Whereas I'll bury me with my money.
    2:18
    Marry me with my money. Marry me with my Shinistar. Alright. Over here we've got the Outrun. So this is an original Outrun. It's an Outrun stand-up. It's not the deluxe cabinet. This one's down right now. There's a proprietary graphics chip in these Sega games. Problem is, when the graphics chip goes, the only thing you can do is harvest another graphics chip. So, from like a known working board. That sucks because you're destroying a board to save a board. So I don't really know what I'm going to do with that yet, but we'll figure it out. And there goes the fog machine again. On this side, we've got Smash TV. This is the 25-inch Smash TV. Just take a note of that because I own two Smash TVs. I'm probably going to get rid of this one, but this one's unique. It's the big 25-inch one.
    3:06
    There was a lot of these out there, so it's not necessarily rare, but they do go for quite a bit of money at this point in time. So anyways, but I'm thinking about maybe getting rid of that because I already have another one. Now, Terminator 2, I got this for a really good price, Terminator 2. I don't know, Terminator 2's replay value is, this is a nostalgia game for me. I remember vividly at the Dream Machine in Lincoln, Rhode Island playing this. And it was around the time of the movie and everything, there was so much going on around Terminator. I love this series, so I kind of hold on to it more for nostalgic value than replayability. because it's a hard as I'll just swear it's a hard as shit game and when you have someone else playing with you it a lot more fun than playing it solo anyway so over here we got the x you guys remember I did the restoration with Nick Madsen We actually went from Simpsons to X so this was a game I wanted for a while. Got a little flack for that, but X-Men's better than Simpsons, I'm sorry. Okay, then you got the Robotron. Now, Robotron, I'm going to say this about Robotron. Robotron is a very difficult game. I didn't grow up with Robotron. I didn't grow up with Robotron, but I'm trying to get better at Robotron. Jeez, I'm not the best at the game. It's a really hard game, actually. You just got to keep practicing it. You just got to keep practicing it. It's as hard as nails game. This is a gamer's game, in my opinion. You have to really like the game. The gameplay graphics and stuff might seem dated to you, but to me the gameplay is so good that, yeah, it's one of those just ultimate classic arcade games, but unless you truly love the score chasing and the difficulty of it, you may not like it, but I love it. Okay, over here we've got NARC. NARC took a while for me to find, but I got this one. These go for a lot of money, and I got this one for 500 bucks. I did have to source a new monitor for it. This uses a medium res monitor. These are not easy to find as a matter of fact They're like finding diamonds in the rough. So I love I was lucky enough to score one of those so all in that probably cost me about $1,100 for my narc considering the monitor cost and stuff like that Now you swing over here and you've got the grid You don't see grids a lot now who the heck wants to own only one grid. That's a really good question I really wish I could find another one, but these go for a lot of money and the chances this fog machine was not a good idea The chances of me finding another grid for a good price are probably slim to none But this one is unique because the topper was recreated by galloping ghost I don't know how many people can say that and I had them put their logo on it So this is a one of one one of a kind in my opinion This game is awesome. If you've never played it before you need to especially if you like first person shooting games third person shooting it like you will absolutely love this okay swing over here now you got baby pac-man baby my gosh whose idea was it to do this fog machine you okay we're gonna press on so this you've got baby pac-man is awesome it's very difficult and if you don't know how to play it it's very frustrating but this has become one of my favorite it's definitely in my top five arcade games of all time and I did not grow up with this. So it's pretty cool when you discover a game that you didn't grow up with and it becomes one of your favorites. That's the cool thing about arcade gaming. There's so many arcade games made. I mean, think about it. Galpin Ghost has 900 of them, more than 900, and they're all unique. So just think about all the variety of arcade games there are in the world for you to discover. So if you just play the common normie games all the time and don't venture out, then you don't even know what you're missing. Okay, let's continue. So we've got the Silver Strike Bowling is down right now. I'm having a little bit of an issue with it, so we'll get that back up and running soon. I'm going to swing over here because we've already done this row. We talked about the Sinister Cockpit.
    7:13
    I have something new. I have a Fast and the Furious. So this Fast and the Furious, check out the ground effects. Watch. Hold on. Can you see that? Look at the ground effects. That's cool. remember I bet you put do you put ground effects on your car you know you did like right now yeah you're an adult now and you're not as proud of it but when you were a kid you're proud of that I put ground effects on a Mustang purple lights now the funny thing about my purple lights is I hit a speed bump the first day I installed them me and my buddies installed it and I hit a speed bump and it broke the front tube right off and that was like when it was fluorescent tubes it wasn like this led stuff it a total pain in the butt but anyways Fast and the Furious is a very fun game thrills it their first racer as a company so their first game was actually target terror and then their second game was fast and furious this game wasn going to be fast and furious it was actually licensed it wasn't licensed as fast and furious till way later eugene jarvis had a buddy that worked at stern who got the licensing for him so this game they kind of last minute scrambled to turn it into a Fast and the Furious game. Very fun game. If I were to compare it to anything, I'd say it's very similar to Cruise and Exotica with a lot of different elements that make its replayability better because you can level up your cars. You have a unique keypad system and stuff. So it's a very, very cool game. It's one of my favorite racers, but I feel like it gets a lot of flack and heat. But I have a feeling the people that give it flack and heat haven't really played it, so play it, give it a shot, my only beef is the music could have been better, but whatever, like, like, come on, Raw Thrills, cruisin', cruisin', like, that was so epic, why didn't you do that with this? Anyways, okay, now we've got the Candy Cab, this is, this is the Jelco Pony 4 or 5, I think it's 4, uh, this thing's running an RGB Pi, but it also has a Pandora's Box 10 and it also has a Mr. Kade. So this thing has like a major identity crisis, but that's kind of what candy cabs are all about. You can run whatever you want in them. This one's JAMA compatible, so you can put anything really that's a JAMA board in it. So very cool. Everyone should own at least one candy cab in my opinion. If you swing over here, you've got the War of Final Assaults. I just did a video on this. Super, super underrated. Way underrated. Very fun. If you like the grid, you'll really like this. Those two are great. I'm not going to go in a grid versus war final assault kick, but they're both very good I think people favor the grid, but I think people should give this one a shot Okay, the last one in the in the garage right now is uh Super hang-on so super hang-on is a project cab. It has jaundice right now You know when babies come out and they look orange. Yeah, this this guy's got jaundice at the moment. It does work I just can't run all these games on the single circuit. I have in here I'm gonna have to upgrade the power in here eventually because I can't run all the games at once Anyways, that's all the games in the garage. I have about eight more in storage. We're not gonna go there tonight So we're gonna round out the tour by going inside and checking out the inside because I made a lot of changes there that I Want to show you guys I was able to actually fit. This is a nightmare with the the fog. Oh my gosh my neighbors It's funny. My neighbor the other day is like why do you always have trucks pulling up? I'm like, uh, because I get arcade games delivered all the time. But they get mad because it takes up a bunch of space. You know, the street in front of my house is kind of narrow, so they get a little upset for a little while. Anyway, alright, let's go through here very, very fast. Very, very fast. I'm not editing any of this, by the way. This is all raw. I just figured, I haven't done a video like this in a while. But, uh, the Big Blue has Street Fighter 2 champion edition it's one of my favorite games of all time i grew up playing it awesome game it's got some quarters over there on the glass getting ready to play it you got michael jackson's moonwalker this is a new project i finished this in two days i got the cabinet from another collector it was his project and he didn't finish it he actually didn't start it so i really got it as a this game was a shooting game when i got it it was sharpshooter but this is an actual moonwalker cabinet. It's got the serial numbers to prove it. Great, great fun game. This is one of my favorites. It didn't do well in the arcades, but I love that I own it. It's just, this is one that I'll be keeping for a very long time. Okay, over here you got Ms. Pac-Man Galaga. This one actually came from an arcade owner here in Arizona who bought one for his arcade or two for his arcade I think and one for his house This one never saw an arcade floor This is probably the most pristine game It minty Like this game looks brand new It looks like it just came out of the box. Very, very cool.
    11:59
    Over here, we've got the Smash TV. This is the 19-inch variant. This one's actually very rare. If you see a 19-inch Smash TV, you don't see those a lot, and they fetch top dollar for something like this. Now this one is extra special because it's running the original boards for Smash TV, original boards for Robotron, and original boards for Total Carnage, as well as Xenocrisis. I have four games running in here, all on original hardware, all twin-stick shooters. Very cool. Xenocrisis, you could argue, isn't because the way they made the arcade version, they didn't use a twin-stick. It's weird. So one stick does directions and the buttons kind of shoot. It's kind of weird. but anyways it's still worth having in here and if you've never played xeno crisis it's available on every platform it's by bitmap bureau check it out it's totally worth it golden axe you guys know if you watch this channel super sega fanboy love sega games you gotta have golden axe you gotta love golden axe it's just a staple in the collection you gotta have it that took me a little while to find though afterburner another sega game go figure right afterburner is near and dear to my heart because I played it with my grandfather. I've told this story before at the Dream Machine in Lincoln, Rhode Island. This is epic. This one's kind of having some graphical issues too, so I'm gonna have to figure out, but I think I have a solution for that, and I'm gonna do a video on the channel. It's kind of controversial, maybe a little bit, but you're either gonna have a broken game or a working game, and I don't know if I can harvest good parts from another known good board. I don't know. I just don't like the idea of that. Okay, moving on. Favorite game in my collection, Sinistar. The game is stressful. It's fast. It's fun. It's hard, but it's totally, totally worth your time. If you haven't played Sinistar and you're not a Sinistar fan, play it and you will become a Sinistar fan. Just know it's not Asteroids. You have to learn how to play it. Once you learn how to play it, very, very fun. Okay, rounding out the tour here, we've got the pinball machines. Now, I was able to fit two pinball machines in here only because Nick Madsen, my buddy, helped me play some Tetris in this room. So they both fit. I've got Stranger Things and I have Foo Fighters. I've gotten pretty good at Stranger Things. I've owned that one for a little while now. It's going on almost two years. But Foo Fighters, it's a hard game. I haven't mastered it by any stretch of the imagination yet, but that's what's fun about pinball. Every game is different. Some games are good. Some games are bad. And there's just a lot of replay value to pinball. So I'm loving it. Now, will I buy more pinball machines? That is the question. Kerry Hardy, if you're watching, I'm stepping out of my lane, baby. I'm a pinball. No, just kidding. I love pinball, though. I do. I've grown to very much love pinball, and that started about two years ago at Pinball Expo. Anyways, that is the conclusion of the tour. Now, we didn't go into the storage unit, so you're not seeing everything, but it's mostly everything. I appreciate you guys watching. If you enjoyed the video, give me a thumbs up. Consider subscribing to the channel. Put your comments below. Do you like my games I have in my collection? What do you wish that I had? Or what do you not have that wish you had? Or whatever I just said. Anyways, it's getting late. I have to depart. Thank you so much, guys. And we will see you on the next one.