Please Convince Me I Don't Need a Home Arcade Cabinet

howtogeek.com:

Growing up, my dad owned a small arcade. So while my friends were playing NES games, I was rocking Street Fighter 2 with unlimited credits. Now, I might be making a midlife crisis decision soon, and need help!

I've been toying with the idea of getting an old-school arcade cabinet. Not the original single-game systems I grew up with, but a modern emulated multi-game system that has the look and feel of stand-up arcade cabs. It's the ultimate geeky white elephant and as you might imagine as a responsible adult, I'm conflicted.

Arcade Cabs Are Too Big (or Are They?)

All of my gaming stuff has been getting smaller and smaller over time. Gone is my huge gaming PC tower, replaced by a gaming laptop. My TV is now a razor-thin OLED mounted up on a wall. My OLED Nintendo Switch won't quite go in a pocket but it's still pretty tiny. So the idea of bringing a virtually immovable gaming device into my house seems like a bad idea.

Then again, these days you can buy alternatives to those full-sized arcade cabinets. There are three-quarter scale replicas, as well as smaller half and quarter scale systems. Of course, if you go below three-quarter scale then it might be hard for an adult to play!

Then there's the option of a counter-top cabinet. Which removes most of the height of the system, and you simply place it on a counter of your choice. Since modern arcade cabinets don't contain heavy CRTs, it makes these truncated systems easier to move around as well. So maybe getting a little of that arcade nostalgia doesn't have to be so much of a space hog.

Finding Good Boards Is Getting Harder (Does It Matter?)

An original arcade system contains bespoke hardware meant to run that game (or a set of games) exactly as the developers intended. If you have deep pockets, and want ultimate authenticity, then it's still possible to find this hardware. However, the number of roadblocks can seem endless, and that's definitely not a route that I'd want to take. Especially since I'd like to