I thought emulation would bring back the arcade, but that failed to catch on. A dying arcade I visited several years ago had a simple cabinet and a marquee that said something to the effect of "500 Games in One!" After trying it, it was pretty clear that it was running some kind of legal version of MAME. I wouldn't be surprised if the innards themselves were just a PC tower with a MAME-GUI loaded onto it.

The point being, however, it probably cost them less than $200 to put the thing together assuming they had an empty cabinet, and you paid a quarter to be able to pick from 500 games on which you could have a "vintage" experience. It was cheap, it was space effective, and to be honest it was alot more enjoyable than most of the other games they had there.

I kinda figured that would be the sort of thing that would survive in this day and age. I came back six months later and it had been replaced by a "Deal or No Deal" cabinet...