For the longest time it never dawned on me to look into Arcade machines. I was distracted by home consoles; and the inner kid in me still saw arcade hardware as unattainable.
Then out of the blue a buddy started buying pinball machines. We played them regularly and they are a ton of fun and I started to want my own piece of that pie.
I don't have a lot of room so I started considering getting just one arcade cabinet. At first I wanted something like Golden Axe or Altered Beast but I couldn't find them.
As I was reading about hardware I discovered that the MVS took cartridges and I would be able to easily swap games.
So I went looking for a Neo Geo and I got really lucky and found one right away.
In 2014 I bought this 4-slot with four common games for $650 CAD:
At the time it felt like a ton of money but it was totally worth it.
And thanks to these neo-geo forums I've be able to get a lot of great games for my Big Red.