Let's talk about this abomination known as Ultracade

The Chief

U.N. Apologist,
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Posts
2,938
So short story time. I recently purchased this cab from a good friend and fellow arcade collector. He purchased it new from Betson in I believe '07. It's currently loaded with about 160 titles but has the capability to be expanded to 256 games. With the cabinet came a bag full of thumb drives and a couple of burned CDs and an itemized receipt for the cabinet and most of the game packs. The receipts total over $7k! I couldn't believe he spent that much on what's basically a glorified hyperspin setup for arcade use.

I haven't been able to find any details online about this "pedestal" cab varient and seeing as most appear to be in Dynamo style cabs with CRTs this was likely the past version produced. I heard they didn't actually have the rights to release the game packs and were eventually shut down, which makes total sense to me.

Been playing a lot of non JAMMA early 80s stuff and for being run off a PIII processor it does alright. High score saves of course, which is what I'm all about. Is it perfect? No, but it does offer a way to play some games I'll never have dedicateds of and my friends like jamming out on it. Joysticks could use swapping out as the diagonals are difficult to register on fighters. Track ball is smooth as silk, games like Marble Madness, Rampart, Centipede and Gimme A Break all okay great.

If any of my haxzors out there know where I could download the games I'm missing or even a complete set I'd like to get this bad boy up to the 256 max game list.

Anyone seen this cab version before, have any Ultracade stories or know it's history?
 

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Hawwa

B. Jenet's Firstmate
Joined
Sep 21, 2018
Posts
408
First time I see one of this even mentioned. That fucker is ugly.
 

The Chief

U.N. Apologist,
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Posts
2,938
No doubt, it's so ugly it's laughable.

I did some reading and it appears the guy responsible for starting up the whole Ultracade business, David R. Foley did everyone dirty including the company he sold the technology to, Global VR. I can't believe none of the companies having their goods pirated didn't catch wind of this sooner considering the earlier CRT versions of the cabs appeared in arcades across the country in the early 2000's. They made bold claims to have the licensing for all included games and even had marketing flyers made up stating this.
 

HornheaDD

Viewpoint Vigilante
Fagit of the Year
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Mar 22, 2016
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4,272
Ive seen one or two of these at local arcades. They were awful. But hang on maybe I misunderstood - you have a bag of USB drives and CDs, but the cab can only go up to 256 games - and the original owner spent 7K... on 128 games?
 

The Chief

U.N. Apologist,
20 Year Member
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Posts
2,938
Ive seen one or two of these at local arcades. They were awful. But hang on maybe I misunderstood - you have a bag of USB drives and CDs, but the cab can only go up to 256 games - and the original owner spent 7K... on 128 games?

I do have all the USB drives and CDs he purchased. They range from collections of games to single games and the receipts I have are from $99 to $600~. The cab its self was $4k plus. At one point in time this guy had an arcade vending business and the nicest personal collection of vintage video arcade and pinball I've ever seen.

Long story short he got divorced and sold most of his collection but retained this and a few others. My thoughts are he held onto this because of how many games it had, he actually used to own a good number of them dedicated. There's about 160 games loaded onto mine but I think they only came with 40-50 stock.

I'd like to find somewhere online that has the images of the games I'm missing but there's no way I'd buy them off eBay. Again this thing is far from perfect and I got it mainly because it was cheap, local, has some cool trackball games and is historically significant for being one of the biggest scams in arcade history. My friends that are casuals seem to think it's pretty cool, everyone hardcore goes right to the candies.
 

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