I'm on the verge of buying a house finally either this spring or summer and making sure I have adequate space for my very home home arcade is actually a priority of mine as silly as that might sound lol. I have every intention of creating my dream arcade which will probably consist of about a dozen arcade cabinets and anywhere between 5 and 10 pinball machines. Obviously I don't plan on doing this overnight and will likely be acquiring and building my arcade over many, many years. But I'm fairly committed to getting my first cabinet within my first two years of living there. This is definitely the next stage in my evolution as a collector and gamer and I am beyond excited to get started on it!
Doesn’t sound crazy at all. This is basically what I did the last three years.
Let’s keep in touch. If you want I can give some tips. I have separate power, voice activated, etc. :-)
Looking for folks to swap ideas, advice, and stories with.
Stuff like “should I get a house with wall out basement and double doors? Or keep ‘em all in my garage?” And “what did you do for power?” Etc. :-)
I’ve already faced and answered a lot of these questions on my own.
Happy to share what I did or what I wish I’d done. :-)
I really appreciate that. There's one house in particular I am very, very interested in for a variety of reasons, but I'd be lying if I said a third of the reason I wanted it wasn't because it has a large dedicated space in the basement (almost 1000sqft) designed specifically to set something like a game room up. I know I shouldn't count all my eggs before the house is actually mine, but I frequently imagine how I'd place various machines in it and whatnot. If it were about 50k cheaper I'd have already moved on it, but it's currently out of my reach, a least for another month or two. It's already been on the market a while so I'm very hopeful, but who knows.
I did the same thing. So many houses I passed on or pined over.
There was one on a lake with a dock and paddle boat. But the arcade would have been 1/4 the size and surrounded by windows. So my cabs would have been bleached by sunlight in just a few years.
That said, real reason I passed was the driveway was at such a wicked angle my Volt and Leaf would have been constantly bottoming out.
I still wish I’d gotten that house sometimes. But it was way more expensive and smaller than this one.
Walk out basement with double doors is totally worth it.
Also, if you have a choice of carpet vs hardwood, I’d recommend going carpet for several reasons.
Carpet is warmer on your feet and easier on your back.
Carpet absorbs noise. hardwood echoes.
Magic Sliders work great on carpet. Tuck your cabinet feet into them and you can slide around most of your cabs without a lift and they won’t tear up the floor. :-)
Even if you don’t reorganize, you’ll need to move them for service (at least swapping cmos batteries) once a year.
Another thing I did, I drew the floorplan to scale and then made arcade and pinball cutouts to scale. Then used that to “test” how many machines I could fit in particular floor plans and layouts. Sometimes there is not as much space as you think when you take spacing, standing, and walking around the room into account!
