What was your first gameroom unit ?

I wanted to build a mame... found Maaca, started buying pinball... mame is still a empty cabinet in the corner of the garage

SFA2 in a 1990 Midway universal cabinet (2002). Everyone thought it was the COOLEST thing ever. This sent me on a spree of E-bay JAMMA PCB buying. Funny thing is, once I completed the collection of JAMMA games I wanted...THEN I found out about MAME

My Uncle's showroom in Vancouver in the 70's was our first "gameroom" - and since he was one of the largest  coin-op distributors out west we had access to everything.  Does that count?   But ultimately he gave me a pinball on my 14th birthday and one of the very first Atari Pong units (but I forget which came first), for our home use.

Quoted from Hyann

I wanted to build a mame... found Maaca, started buying pinball... mame is still a empty cabinet in the corner of the garage

I started out pretty much the same way. Bought the 'Project Arcade' book, surfed BYOAC for ages, and then I started doing research on pinMame cabs, ended up on CGCC for some reason at the same time I was selling my old Jeep and saw a High Speed for sale. The rest, as they say, is history. 8 months and ~20 machines later and still no mame cab.  

went to a starburst auction a decade ago.  erin (wife) saved her tips for my birthday.  i won 9 machines.

dedicated bubble bobble, with silk screened blue and yellow artwork on the sides. Received it from a starburst auction in 1994. Have not seen another like it til this day.Paid 75 $ for it

first machine i ever got was a really crappy baseball arcade game i found in a berzerk cabinet in the back of KW Surplus,

had 200 then 150, then 125, then 75, then 50, then 25 TAKE IT written on it,

i was 15 and had no idea about arcade machines or what to look for or anything, so my mom pulled the van up, we tilted it on it's back to slide it in, and all we heard was "SMASH" and a hissing sound..... turns out someone had been screwing around with the machine, and took out all the monitor bolts from the cabinet (who does that stuff) as well as cut EVERY SINGLE WIRE in the cabinet.

Well, me and my friend brought it home, removed the monitor and spent the summer fixing it up, rewiring the whole thing, finally got it playing (without a monitor) then realized how crappy the game was,

My grandmother offered me a color tv she was getting rid of, and we realized when we took it out of the case, it was a perfect fit for my arcade machine, slid right in,

So we mounted the TV, screwed the dials into the inner cabinet, and hooked a nintendo and a super nintendo into the cabinet, and took apart controllers, and soldered a wire onto every pin of the chip, and wired it to the control panel of the arcade machine.

People loved it, and you could watch TV on it, or you could play any nintendo or super nintendo game.

Had it till i was about 20 and sold it to a kid about 15 for $ 50 cuz i knew he would get as much fun out of it as i did.

Sorry for the long story.

Eric

My first game was Space Invaders pinball, I bought it from Howison Amusements for $300 back in 1987 and my second game was a Bump and Jump knockoff called car action $200. After that I have had more that 500 machines, I have over 100 now.

First for me was a dedicated DK Junior at a local auction about 8 years ago.

Visited a friend in Oakville who built a MAME... and I was hooked.  At the same time, I ended up transferring from Cobourg to Ptbo to teach closer to home,,,, as luck would have it, the same school as a guy you know as Bish.  What a coinky-dink!  Went through a half dozen vid restorations before getting a pin, and then the classic slippery slope from there!

NBA JAM dedicated cab for me...