Awesome Arcades — Local services in Meridian

The word awesome is often overused for things that aren’t really awesome but Awesome Arcades does deserve that name.

The cabinet is well made and I got the yellow strip around mine which makes it really pop against the standard black cabinet. I also got the indestructible control panel wrap which Bruce recommended. I like the texture of it. It sort of holds my hand in place. I was impressed by the neatness of the wiring and how they were routed in wire looms. Here’s a tip to raise the cabinet higher. When you raise the lid you will notice the feet have about 4” of threaded rod to raise and level it. I was able to put a 2x4 block sideways under one side at a time to make it easy to unscrew the legs and now it’s at the perfect height for my chairs.

The pandora dx is great. The new model is newer than the older model. That sentence is in the owners manual and I thought it was funny. This isn’t meant to be a pandora review and the emulator can be swapped or replaced at any time to whatever they come out with next. The 5,000 list has tons of games from the 80s and 90s and some have several variations and even some C-64 games! Some games suck but some are really great. Here’s a tip while creating your favorites list. Be careful not to hit the C button at the wrong time or it will erase your favorites list. For this reason it’s a good idea to write the numbers down so you can fix it if you have to.

The volume control. It isn’t necessarily that it’s hard to get to as others have said but you do have to open the cabinet to reach it. The problem is you can’t just set it and leave it. One game is louder than the one before it and the next game isn’t loud enough. That’s the issue. The amplifier and speakers do sound great though. I’ve got a solution. I’m thinking of connecting it to an auxiliary input on an external stereo to run it through speakers on my wall. Then I can control the volume with a remote control. I won’t have to change any wiring in the cabinet. There are just standard rca phono plug wires hooked up to the existing amplifier. All I need are some female-female couplings to plug up to the wires that currently connect to the amp, and I can run an audio cable out the back to another stereo!

Tip to choose what size cocktail table. I chose the 26” instead of the 32”. When I put it in my room I hadn’t fully considered how much room the chairs would need, especially since I got a 3 sided table. You may have room for the cabinet but you’re gonna need room all around it as well. For this reason I’m glad I didn’t get the largest screen.

Shipping: The best advice I can give is to call and communicate with the shipping company. It turns out not all of them do things the same way so you cannot rely on what other companies in the past have done. Bruce told me for one price they will put it in my garage and for another price they will put it in my driveway. I just wanted it in front of my garage so that’s what I paid for. I got a text from them with an ETA and confirmed it. They gave me no information or instructions and I waited till that morning and finally called them. That’s when I learned it would be an 18 wheeler instead of a furniture truck and they would not bring it up my driveway at all. They threatened to charge another delivery fee if I didn’t accept. They wanted to drop it in the road which in my case is a 4 lane major highway and I’m not loading and unloading stuff in the emergency lane with traffic flying by. The delivery was running about 3 hours early and I had to drop what I was doing and get my 5x10 trailer 8 miles away to the biggest parking lot in town and transfer the cabinet from their trailer to mine. It all worked out in the end but the moral to this story is I should have talked with them beforehand to know exactly what to expect and to plan for it.

All in all, we’re very happy with the game and it’s brought a lot of nostalgia back to us adults who haven’t played these games in over 30 years and we are having fun with it. Great addition to our game room. Thanks for being so...

Everything about Awesome Arcades is, frankly, awesome. From the info on their site for products and arcade tables in general, to options for the cabinet and controls, the communication and customer care, and the craftsmanship and materials of the cabinet.

(That’s the short version. I cannot say enough good things about Awesome Arcades and our new arcade table, so please forgive the prolix review that follows or scroll down.)

My husband and I have long wanted an arcade table but almost everything we saw looked either a little too retro, was the possible offspring of a heavily sponsored Nascar or was committed to just one game. Nothing wrong with any of those, but it didn’t fit us. If we were going to get this arcade table of our dreams, we were going to do it right.

There are several sites and businesses to choose from and while we prefer to support small businesses, that wasn’t what initially sold us on Awesome Arcades. Their website has a wealth of information and insight about pretty much every aspect of the table and games: the what, the how, the why. It’s apparent they know what’s what, take pride in their product and value their commitment to the customer. After reading about arcade tables and watching a video from their site, my husband and I enthusiastically agreed that Awesome Arcades was who we’ve been looking for. At this point, it wasn’t only about the table, we wanted to give them our business and felt confident they would do it right.

Awesome Arcades offer so many options. The cabinet, buttons, controls - even stool options - the possibilities are endless. This was a big factor for us because almost all the arcade tables we’d seen were mostly the same because they’re made en masse, and none were exactly what we were looking for. But not with Awesome Arcades. And while we ended up buying stools separately, the stool options from their site gave me an idea of what height to look for. With Awesome Arcades, you pick what you want, what fits your home and what works for you. The table you order is not just a table, but your table.

The communication and customer experience is excellent. You are never left wondering anything. There’s not even time to start wondering anything because they (Bruce, the owner) give you a quick heads-up before any pre-wondering. Any questions? He has answers and sometimes a video, or offers to facetime and walk you through it. In a world of customer “help” chat bots and call centers, this is unicorn-level customer experience.

Last but not least, the arcade table/cabinet: we love it. It’s beautiful, meticulous craftsmanship with solid, quality components. It puts the “joy” in joystick. I won’t go into materials because you can read that on their site. (Yes. Go there. Read. Place an order.) But as people who grew up around woodworking and soldering irons, we were beyond pleased at the craftsmanship. Even before we saw it, we knew we had made the right choice with Awesome Arcade because it was packaged and shipped with that same thorough care. They have surpassed our expectations in every way.

TL;DR If you are looking to buy an arcade table, Awesome Arcades is who you want to, and should,...

I have always wanted to own some version of a classic arcade game. A few years ago, I started to see classic upright games being sold in big box stores, but I quickly became disappointed because you could tell immediately that they were very cheaply made. That started my quest to find a quality arcade cocktail table.

Awesome Arcades was one of the companies that showed up early in my online searches, but so did several other companies. I began my research on the Awesome Arcades website though because there are tons of videos that I could watch to answer almost all my questions. I learned about the differences between the game boards, cabinet designs, and the gameplay experience. I did have one specific question regarding a game board, and when I sent an email after work hours, I received a 15-minute video from Bruce two hours later directly addressing my question and giving me other helpful information.

For sake of comparison, I did email the other arcade companies asking the questions important to me “Does your machine save high scores?”, “Can you pause and save game progress?”, and “Can you download external games to your machine?”. From all these companies, I simply received a short email stating “Our arcade machines can’t do those things”, which made my decision very easy.

I purchased the 26" Ultimate Cocktail Arcade from Awesome Arcades, and I couldn’t be happier with my choice! The delivery process was explained in detail, and the cabinet was packaged securely and heavily protected. I was able to easily connect my third-party game board to the machine, and I was up and running!

Now, if you are not as particular about the build quality or performance of an arcade machine, the following should be the main reason you buy from Bruce at Awesome Arcades: the post-purchase customer service. Over the first days of playing on my machine, I noticed that certain games would have a loud buzzing noise. I contacted Bruce, and while he had never seen that issue, he walked me through some things to try to troubleshoot the problem over the course of a few weeks. We were texting back and forth into the evening, well beyond any expectations I had of the lengths he would go to in order to help me. He ended up sending me a care package of no less than eight components for me to try to swap out on my machine. That fixed the issue, and I am so happy with my entire purchasing experience! I know that other companies would not have spent the amount of time and energy helping me after buying their product like Bruce did....