See this cabinet above? It probably won’t be around much longer. If you are into arcades at all, you can’t surf the internet without running into one of these MAME-enabled cabinets that someone decided to put together in what is sometimes an authentic cabinet to resell off to anyone for a few thousand dollars/pounds. Some say it’s an easy way to collect all of the great classics in one cabinet so you don’t have to worry about the hassle of all that money and space it takes to put together a game room with all the same games. A company called Voyager Arcade felt that way and they are soon going to regret it.
We’ve received word from our good friends at The Stinger Report that Namco is planning to take legal action over this Voyager Arcade – it seems as though that it may not be the only case either with other companies beginning to take interest in these unauthorized cabinets. Looks like the days of the MAME cabinet reselling business are numbered. One just has to wonder though, why have the companies who properties has been violated all this time only taking action now? When you look at Voyager Arcades Multicade page it makes you feel a little bad knowing that their days are numbered like this as they use these heart-warming testimonials to show you how nice it is to have one of these things. Ah well, I guess they should have thought of that before illegally reselling such cabs.
UPDATE: Thanks to Editor’s clarification, it’s not the fact that it’s just a MAME type cabinet, but it’s being sold for use in an amusement environment with a coin-box and all. Also it isn’t supposedly isn’t running MAME but using a PCB with the ROMs built-in (thanks to RyanDG for pointing that out)
Just to clarify the situation – selling a MAME system not the main problem here. It is selling a MAME system with a coin-box for amusement application.
The recent Namco legal action against Eagle Distribution is proof of the active stance now being employed as Namco has a system of their own in the filed.
It is the greed that some cabinet companies have in trying to sell into the amusement sector is the problem (also the use of illegal ROMs in some cases).
From the company’s website they make the claim that this one isn’t a MAME machine. Is this a misrepresentation on their part, or is the potential suit over one of the other cabinets posted (since I noticed a couple that were running off a PC)?