The ambience is easy to replace.. but having multiple machines. I'm actually not a video game guy, but I collect pinball machines. I have room for 8 in my game room (and more in the basement and garage) and when I have all of them up and running and someone standing at each one of them, turn the lights off and ambience flourishes.
I've been collecting coin-ops for about 7 years now, and started with arcade games back when MAME machines were still something that real collectors had to satisfy the holes in their collections to now, where there are several people in my office who have built one. Even if you aren't going to collect dedicated machines, if you really want the ambience, you gotta have enough machines to go around when you have guests come to play. One mame machine isn't enough. I can accomodate more people than will fit in my game room at one time with just my 8 pinball machines.
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The ambience is easy to replace.. but having multiple machines. I'm actually not a video game guy, but I collect pinball machines. I have room for 8 in my game room (and more in the basement and garage) and when I have all of them up and running and someone standing at each one of them, turn the lights off and ambience flourishes. I've been collecting coin-ops for about 7 years now, and started with arcade games back when MAME machines were still something that real collectors had to satisfy the holes in their collections to now, where there are several people in my office who have built one. Even if you aren't going to collect dedicated machines, if you really want the ambience, you gotta have enough machines to go around when you have guests come to play. One mame machine isn't enough. I can accomodate more people than will fit in my game room at one time with just my 8 pinball machines.
Why not learn ventriloquism. Won't that confuse them when everyone seems to just be sitting there staring at each other.