Good thing you have such cool patrons, I was worried the channel would just be "The Underground" now since you would have no money for electricity bills if you had actually purchased that thing.

About the "cease and desist" mame situation... FBNeo never got the memo kiddos! Enjoy the games without selling your kidneys!

something i noticed when you were showcasing the cartridges is that the pins are very similar to Mini PCI-E slots, which are commonly used in laptops and motherboards for peripherals such as wifi cards and SSD storage something tells me it may be possible to disassemble one of them and plug it into a regular PC and look at the contents of it if they're not encrypted

Man if I spent 5k on anything and the company did me dirty like that, the last thing I would ever do is give that same company another 5k. Even if I was loaded, it's more about the principle of the matter than anything. I guess customers like that are how companies like this stay afloat though...

Was wondering about this arcade for a long time thanks for the review

Arcade operator who owns two exAs here; Also been blogging about this since 2018. No, I am not paid by exa in any way but I do have frequent contact with the people there. It's an interesting perspective to see this from the collector's side although the answer to some of your critiques/questions are not the ones most collectors will want to hear. The reason being is that as you mention at the beginning of this video - this was made for operators first, players second, then collectors being a 3rd. The more the collectors accept that, the more it will make sense. You mention the Neo Geo and that is an apt comparison, it's just important to remember that when the Neo Geo was released in 1990, there was not much of a collector scene and no emulation scene. It was made solely for arcade operators, the AES being made to please wealthy home players. Now there is both a collector/emulator scene but much about the arcade operations side hasn't changed, so exA is trying to fill in a need. I see collectors constantly ruminating about the price but among operators, this really isn't an issue. In fact, I've never heard a complaint, and I've been asked about this a lot from colleagues. If I go to Sega, Namco or Raw Thrills right now, I'm lucky if the cheapest game they have is close to $6000(it would probably be something used sitting in a warehouse). Most of their games are above $10k and that's for a single game that you can't change. The exA really is one of the most affordable coin-op solutions on the market, just like the Neo Geo was in its day. No not affordable for collectors but again, they're not the target market. I do agree that online updates would be great as having to ship in my carts or boards for updates is troublesome; But it might surprise you to learn that a vast majority of arcade games out there need something like a USB stick to update it, even those released in 2023. Many games just aren't online, even from manufacturers like Sega or Raw Thrills; Out of the 64 games I currently have at my arcade, only 5 of them connect to the internet! The arcade market has been slow to adopt online stuff over security concerns but there's another angle here - Japan. Japan has fully embraced online but this comes at a price - almost every single game there since 2009 has been on a rev share model (i.e., the manufacturer gets a portion of your earnings every play or month, even though the op has to purchase the hardware and pay for maintenance). exA's biggest market has been Japan so they've kept it offline to prevent worry about them turning around and start charging for every play. Their Japanese marketing is constantly stressing how "you buy the game and you keep all of the revenue." That same worry about getting charged for plays exists in the US, to a lesser degree(it exists for Big Buck Hunter and Golden Tee games). Now I'm not sure if it's the best trade off - I'd rather have online updates than the worry about something that might happen, but I do understand why it is that they do it that way. I can't speak much to the customer service stuff since they've taken care of me but again, they're used to dealing with operators and not consumers - that said, I know it's better to have good CS regardless. Finding great customer service in the coin-op industry is rare but again, I've not had issues with exAs CS, and yes I've had a few tech problems I needed assistance with. They've been attentive to my feedback and made fixes - I was the first op in the world to use it on a 4K setup, so I helped them correct a few little issues with that. Re: security, this is something that most consumers don't know about but it's a very, very important issue to developers. Both Taito and Sega's platforms (Nesica & APM3) have been hacked, the games released for free online. A developer looking at a platform doesn't want their investment to instantly pop up online as soon as it's released if they can help it - selling in the arcade space is more difficult and the numbers are much lower (most games sell in the hundreds, rarely in the thousands of units), so they are more prone to look at the most secure platform out there. There are Chinese devs who aggressively work to crack stuff and that eats into a manufacturer's profits but it can end up hurting operators too. You won't read about anti-piracy efforts online but devs have to take it seriously and do what they can to keep it from happening. Hopefully someone out there gets some insight from that :)

Thanks for the video Mark. Saw these EXA Arcadia machines in the back of arcade Mikado in a Japal IRL stream and was a bit curious about them. But the sheer cost of the unit and individual cartridges is insane. Props to the patron for providing you the hardware to test. I would have so much anxiety shipping thousands of dollars of equipment through the mail. Also just received the Electric Underground shirts, came out great!

"power to the exa" sounds maximum cringe. Speaking of, at around 20min you're talking about how powerful this machine is. It's an older generation i3....

Thanks for the informative video! I'd love to hear your opinion not on just the hardware and games, but the future of the Arcadia and how it's business model affects players, it's access to a robust library, and if we as a community really need or want it. Personally I can only see the EXA as a hurdle to playing the games I want to not only because I can never afford one, but the closest arcade to me is a plane ride away. I love arcade games, but at the current time I see the 'arcade' culture to mean meet ups in person, and playing online.

I'm holidaying in japan right now and I've been enjoying the arcadegoer experience with exa machines in Taito HEY and Mikado for what it's worth. Like it's just a really good experience as the player. They play very well, good games, keeps me coming back. I hope my 100 yen coins are helping chip away at the crazy initial costs. Makes me wonder how much Mikado would struggle more than (I think) they already are if they have to have one serviced. God no an exa is not worth it for your average nerd at home, but for an arcade operator yes.

Very enlightening video. At first I only thought of it as something like owning a supercar where it's a product for people who have the means to buy it. But now that you discussed all the caveats and the expenses and the hassle makes me question the customer service practices of this company. Unless you are the high roller person that doesn't care about losing hundreds to thousands of dollars, it really does feel a lot like a major rip-off, or a major liability at the very least. That cease-and-desist order for MAME reminds me so much of the way Harmony Gold handled the Macross/Robotech IP where they just blocked every attempt to make Macross content accessible to the US fanbase for decades until they had the lawsuit and agreement way back 2021. Block people from wide accessibility so that they would have to purchase your system. Not really the most encouraging idea. And I can relate as well to the South American case where the mail system can be unreliable. I live in the Philippines and whenever I order something from Amazon US, I would have it shipped to a freight forwarding company. That way I get to claim it from their office instead of the local post office and get slapped with whatever charges the officers felt like slapping on my item. The longevity is also my biggest concern. I only bought a Nintendo Switch last year and I'm already scared about buying the Ray'z Arcade Chronology because I don't know if I'll ever get clears on them before the Nintendo Switch gets replaced by Nintendo's next console, and Nintendo's track record with backwards compatibility is not very promising either.

More than anything, I'm now very curious about the "shmup shed" 👀👀👀

I was looking forward to your review of AKA TO BLUE. Especially because we mere mortals can only play the touchscreen version. For that much money I expect a much better customer service even a concierge that can assist me in real time. As an Arcade Operator you must be able to open your arcade and repair your equipment. Online updates is a must on this day and age. It has good titles and the input lag is amazing but they have to back it up with a premium customer service for that price. Just my two cents.

So, Mark drives a truck. Jean jacket and baseball cap were dead giveaway, but it's nice to have a confirmation. That was informative and interesting breakdown, even if I will never be able to have one of this, thanks.

Fantastic review! Funnily enough I've been seriously considering purchasing one of these the last few weeks, even despite it being a huge blow to the wallet. Mostly for things like Akai Katana and all the cool modes it adds and some of the other cool exclusives. However, having watched this video, I feel a lot better about abstaining from doing so until they release some kind of home/private use version. Especially with the spotty customer service and the battery being on a timer, I think its a lot safer to wait and see what happens. Either way, thanks for the great vid. Your vids are actually what got me super interested in the genre a few months back! Keep putting out bangers : )

If they ever do go out of business, they better hook everyone up with that password.

Fascinating video, thanks for lifting the curtain on this beast. I guess the anti consumer nature of it shouldn't be a surprise as it's not a consumer device but still, damn, the anxieties regarding handling and customer support are visceral. Thanks again.

Amazing! Got my shirt today. It's beautiful!! Thank you;

Was considering one of these once I did some decent overtime at work in the near future but the cmos battery issue along with the absurd $500 service fee for a password they could've easily emailed the customer killed that interest. Freaking insane they're charging so much for a console that has arguably a shorter lifespan with very little to no failsafe than a dang PS3.

great review mark

They should release consumer versions of the games which can't be credit operated so that the games aren't locked to high rollers/ arcades only. That business model really only makes sense from an investment standpoint, if you are buying this unit to put in an arcade and charge people credits per play. It's a little silly to say that the price makes sense when you could just buy a very high end pc for less than the cost of the exa unit and 3 games. IMO the games are what makes the hardware interesting, not the hardware itself.

I was able to borrow an Exa unit for about a month from another local collector. I was running the video through a very similar HDMI-to-VGA converter as the one in your video and my Exceleena's tri-sync monitor handled the output without any issues. So it may have functioned for you on another CRT monitor. As for the issue regarding Aka To Blue, it appears to be some weird compatibility issue with certain I/O converters. The individual I borrowed the unit from was initially having the same problem with the game but after trying some different JAMMA-compliant I/O converters the game decided to boot. I've offered to test both of the NAOMI I/O converters I have (one just handles the inputs while the second has a built-in audio amp) seeing as I had no issue running the game before.

Thanks for the review, while I find it fun to collect arcade hardware for the nostalgia, I do have a threshold on how much I pay for a game system and the Exa is definitely way out of my league and not enough to warrant the required nostalgia to pay the admission price. I have a friend that collects these expensive boards and he has one, and I personally don't think it's a major improvement to the original versions of inexpensive Steam games they sell such as Infinos Gaiden, or games that have good versions on consoles (Saidaioujou and Akai Katana) or emulators. Especially at a $1500 price tag. I'm not sure that their business model is very sound, the lack of online updates is boss mafia paranoia at best, sorry, this is unacceptable to keep the tabs on buyers and force people to spend more money with them. As for the broken Aka to Blue, it's probably the nvme drive that got corrupted - yeah, Exa cartridges are just glorified SSD disks. Nice to see Filipe as the example of a South American collector. Cheers!

Wow the level of service provided for the cost is pretty terrible. The hardware in itself seems rather good and the games top notch but its environment and the manufacturer's practices aren't on part with a premium product standards.

Interesting and informative video, thanks. I would have liked to hear more about the games though, even if 24 hours isn't very long for full reviews.

I own an exa. SDOJ and Aka to blue. This video was really fun to watch and it's crazy because I was thinking of reaching out to you a bit ago to see if you were interested in checking out the exa for a video. Glad you went over how it's pretty sketchy. Basically they want you to trust them, doesn't feel AMERICAN but oh well I can accept that: You wouldn't feel "free" at all living in Japan lololol they be crazy. I view the exa as a life experience, it's more than just spending money because you can. Maybe some can spend large amounts of money without being stressed, but it really hurt me to purchase the machine no matter how "affordable" it is. EDIT: Also I'm not sure why the person sent you a broken copy of Aka to blue. If it stops working, you can send it back and the process takes about half a month. Pretty long, but it's not impossible to get a working copy again. Exa support has always been responsive to me but I really agree there should be exa servers which perform basic system updates...Networking not too hard in 2023, especially when the machine is built on Windows.

I was initially very happy with the Exa project but hearing your concerns about the design philosophy really made me change my opinion. The only option for the preservation of the Exa in the future will be hacking and reverse engineering. Abundance of money should never make people blind about those issues that are very real, planned obsolescence is a problem here since you can't buy the new model every year and print is limited, we won't see new arcade hardware devs for a very long time. Right to repair, right to actually own the product (Exa proved it's a problem even in the always offline model), right to schematics for easier repair/modding etc. are the battles we need to fight right now.

Looks as if those "cartridges" are basically dedicated SSDs in a case, makes me think some kind of corruption or something may have happened at some point with that Aka to Blue copy sadly :(

Great video! Two thoughts: 1) This hardware is supposed to be for arcade operators. So far, the baseboard has had a few firmware updates and some games have had multiple patches to fix bugs and improve responsiveness. Having to take the baseboard and games off the floor for two to three weeks while they get shipped around for updates is time they aren’t earning their keep-a big minus for arcade owners. Ditto when the CMOS battery dies every few years. 2) if you do a follow-up video, I’d appreciate some time spent on what differences the games have versus their MAME, 360 and Steam releases. Sure, it’s spendy hardware, but so are PC gaming graphics cards these days. Are the quality improvements and Exa Remix modes worth it for hardcore shmuppers that would be willing to save several months or melt a credit card for an an Exa game?

The truth is that even with cabinet use there's still not enough games or Shmups to justify the purchase especially over something like the mister or a gaming PC.

I have a PS5 with 97 Arcade Archives, all the City Connection Cave stuff, all the Shot Triggers, 30 ACA NEOGEO, both of the recent Cotton games, all the Qute stuff, all the Darius games, the Capcom Arcade Stadiums, the Psikyo games, the Raidens, Andro Dunos 2... you get the picture. I have everything that's good on PS5 and a Razer arcade stick with Sanwa parts. Also have a Switch full of Shmups inc all the Live Wire ports so far, all the Terrarin games, Crimzon Clover, Rolling Gunner and so on, and an 8 Bitdo Bluetooth stick that's as good as the pro controller. I'm good. ExA just seems so misjudged and it doesn't have any really compelling reason to own one. Then there's they way they conduct themselves online and as you've demonstrated - in business too. I'd liked to have gotten AKA To Blue, but not for $5K. Nah. Hard pass.

To offer a partial defence of the "all sales final" you've got to remember that these are low volume items, often of limited edition designs with all the artwork and such. If customers start cancelling and sending stuff back for refunds because they change their minds it can be death to a company. Where I work we sell "prestige" things alongside our regular products, it's not arcade hardware, it's not even technology, but the principal is the same. Because they are such high ticket items you get LOADS of "tire kickers" who take time to decide, put a down payment on it, cancel, send it back for refund... if we didn't have the regular high volume stuff to help us ride that out we certainly couldn't afford to offer decent customer service on the expensive stuff. We offer it for sale because it attracts customers, but despite the high price tags, we make very little money directly on them because of the hassles. For such a niche product as this, sold worldwide to a limited market, I suspect they aren't rolling in cash and need to avoid incurring too many big expenses. Consumers tend to look at high price tags and think "that's fortunes!" but they don't realise that company overheads just to keep the lights on can be staggering. I mean, it's not our job to see their business is a success mind, I'm just pointing out the troubles they are likely facing and why they are likely thinking the way they are thinking. That said, stuff like the BIOS locking and warranty void stickers is a bit much. There are better ways of handling this stuff while still maintaining your software protection. The fact that they've done it the stupid way suggests to me the only reason they haven't been completely bust wide open for piracy is that it just hasn't hit the right people yet. I have my doubts that they've actually protected the software in any reasonable way if they are failing at the simple stuff.

I think I’m good emulating those same games via Steam Deck. The additional cost just to cut down input lag by a few frames is pretty crazy. Understandable for Arcade places but still. You think you should be able to achieve the same with much cheaper hardware.

I’m just in Tokyo and the Taito Hirose Entertainment Yard in Akihabara has a Exa Arcadia machine with DOJ on a vewlix. Was very cool to see that in the wild. Also that arcade has like every shmup you would want to play.

Just bought a trans vaginal ultrasound probe from Viet Nam. Thousand bucks. I asked the dude if he thought it was safe to ship to the US and he was like, "yea sure, no prob". Now you got me worried. Luckily it doesn't look like a super cool arcade machine. It would take a real weirdo to want to steal it.

Great points about the warranty, business practices and hardware longevity. Props to the patron for sending it to you. Might be worth it for businesses but seems like an eventual dead weight in your home. Would still like to play SDOJ Exa Label somehow.

Enjoyed this 👍 Especially the restaurant analogy 😊 I think it’s fair to say that some of the price of the coke is for the venue, the chair and the staff though 🍻

As for the CMOS battery, you may be able to replace one while the system is running, but yeah, sucks to be an Exa owner. BTW, it'd be a good idea to do that on my much less expensive TypeX3 - which is just a glorified 10 years old PC 🫢. Glad it's already hacked, so no worries there.

The Gimmick! remaster for the Exa is pretty fire. Overall this seems like a ridiculous product though. You could build a whole-ass supercomputer with $5000 and get way more mileage out of it, plus it would be infinitely more future-proof. Honestly you could probably get more mileage out of a crusty $30 HP laptop you found at a yard-sale lol.

The CMOS thing sounds a lot like another CPS-2 and CPS-3 suicide battery issue in the making via a missguided anti-piracy attempt.

Thanks for another great review.

Well, it is like your traditional arcade hardware after all. It is pretty cool as a collector item and for the nostalgic feeling. But it was replaced for other modern technologies for a good reason. Honestly, even though I enjoy going to the arcade every once in a while, I prefer playing in the comfort of my home.

Specs: i3 9100F with 8 GB DDR4 RAM and a GTX 1650. In other words, a $500 PC.

i miss the days when you’d find arcade machines in random locations. I work at the airport in my city and I remember back when I was a kid we had some machines in the hallways of the terminal. Just the other day I spoke to someone here and suggested we get some machines like this to have in the concourses.

Another superinteresting review...even though I probably will never see one in my life, unless it gets hacked and "ported" ;-) Too bad about Aka to Blue - it's my favourite shmup on phone and tablet. I've even managed to clear the last stage on my pixel 4 phone :-) Would have loved to hear about its bigger brother...

But thats what i like about your take is the honesty and sincerity. Exa seems neat but like you financially i cannot justify it.

Kinda ironic when those games got removed from MAME, got added into FinalBurn Neo xD

I remember when you did your interview on the podcast way back when! Oh ha you just said that…looking forward to listening to this

Wow… this whole deal sounds like a nightmare

Huge respects to the viewer that sent you his EXA. Getting this type of no bs impressions by a non buyer is great. Now I'm scared to even touch one. 😂

Do they have an arbitration clause or something in the terms of sale? Otherwise one could drag them to court/FTC for the Warranty Act violation with the unenforcable/illegal warranty stickers.

Damn, the hardware choices and preservation philosophy is exactly why I will never buy something like this and forever sing the praises of the Mister. I’ll hold out till the Mister 3 has an exa core in 2050 lol.

Don't quote me on this, but I think it's thanks to exa, you can't play DOJ, Espgalluda 2, and Akai katana on updated versions of mame. I had batocera linux on 2 pc's. one hasn't been updated in 3 years, the other was updated and no matter what my configurations were, I couldn't get it running, except for doj black label (but I think the music was off???). *kept watching your video* Yeah you brought this up lol. Imagine if Activision took away crash banidicoot from duck station...This kind of stuff doesn't really happen so mame conceding was just weird to me??? But I don't fully understand the legality of this stuff so maybe I'm missing something??? Since then, espgalluda 2 and akai katana has been ported, and doj is on the way, (port quality may vary depending on the devs) But that strike against mame still feels dirty to me.

Very cool, thanks for doing this video.

It's kind of the neo geo of today but it's really not because there's no home system version. Theoretically if you adjusted for inflation the AES would be about 1300 dollars in today's money and homecarts would be $500. If Exa decided to go this route- I would buy. And I think the collectors that already bought in with the coin-op versions probably wouldn't sweat it, because they are big tymers and big tymers don't sweat shit.

Awesome review man. Never heard of this platform before! Is it emulation for some of these games? If it is, a $500 pc could do the trick with the same amount of lag probably

Hah, knew it, the game cartridges are probably PCIe x1 boards with the rom on it (the structure i dont really know) and the mainboard is probably PCIe hot-swap if you can change the games while the system is on. If they cant be changed while on its just normal PCIe x1

Man that update process...Why cant they just ship it on a USB drive or something? BTW got my shirts. They turned out great!

From what I gathered, this system is out of most people's price range, and I heard the hardware itself is actually a few generation behind modern PC hardware. They're taking that "exclusivity" a bit too literally Now I know why games like Blazing Chrome and Infinos Gaiden had extra features than the base game I heard the guy who founded EXA used to be someone who's very active in the ROM dumping community, then in an effort to prevent people from dumping his EXA games he ended up recruiting a ton of the top ROM dumpers, and now no one can threaten his games

The more I see that game cartridges the more I imagine a kid that brokes them with a karate move hit, bam! More than 10,000$ gone

These sound like pretty cool machines for niche collectors and coin ops. But for home use Mister and Fightcade / Retro arch have been good for me. Going to Taito HEY in Japan was pretty cool too.

The CMOS failure concern is a non issue. There is a video of someone with multiple Exa cabs showing that the cab with a failed CMOS takes about twice as long to boot up and play than the cab with a good CMOS. So failed CMOS doesn't brick the system. Video here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kN2qlMKSxp3Ro4U.htmlsi=y8m0Ntcpl8nL3cxp

Mark a question: how is your monitor adding 1 whole frame of input lag when most decent monitors have 5ms (or less) response time?

It's cheaper just to pay for a ticket to go to Jpn, book a hotel for a few days, and spend some money to play the EXA and all it's games... Than to buy the EXA hardware and it's games and risk being at their mercy when some shit goes wrong. Sounds like their whole selling the EXA arcade PC business model doesn't work very well in these modern times.

No man... this customer service is a nightmare. I was interested in this, but I'm not going to deal with dinosaur business practices. I was wanting to use this for a business, but hell no. I am just going to go with these new front ends available to game centers.

thanks for this video. I was anticipating the (possibly never) re-release of Daraku Tenshi on Exa when it was first announced so I started looking into this hardware to see what kind of costs I'll be seeing. Hopefully some arcade place has one that will eat the expenses on behalf of my entertainment. I could do without the updates as I hope I waited long enough for them to update the games I wanted besides Daraku Tenshi, but the CMOS battery issues is 100% a deal breaker.

The new Japanese "Revenue sharing" is total BULL S#it... If I were an arcade owner, and I purchase a game the revenue IS MINE, I am the one taking the risk. So going this way is smart.

Looks more like a PC than anything else. Neat how they implemented the arcade boards into PC slots. This thing seems like it had potential, but a couple of things like the price and the lack of online holding it back. Also not being able to service this yourself, having to ship it to Japan seems like a big hassle. The story of your patron having to buy a 2nd unit is nightmare scenario. At least the performance of the games was good. And the hardware lets you hook up to CRT which is nice. Still thats about where all the positives end.

I think that's disgraceful for a customer to pay as much as they do for this system and then when the customer reports a "mildewy smell" to the company that the company basically tells them to f*ck off rather than just agreeing to atleast look at it on good faith, especially when subsequently firing the machine up could permanently damage it. If I'd paid that much for the system only for the customer service to then treat me like that I'd want to molotov their offices to be honest. I'd expect that sort of customer service from a local yard sale not from a company that is charging over 5,000 dollars for their product.

This was an interesting review. Do you plan on following up on an input test on Progrear on Steam? I saw that you mentioned you would in the comments from the Progear analysis video. Also, it appears that the USA rom is much harder than the Japanese rom in the collection. I don't know if those two topics are enough for a new video but they might be?

Honestly, not surprised at how locked down the hardware is. After they C&D'ed MAME for Akai Katana and SDOJ, I already knew Exa was the kind of company that is crazy about maintaining control over their own products, even though you already paid (a large sum) for it. Couple it with the awful customer service, they're just the same as pretty much any big company out there nowadays. The first part of the video feels so reminiscent of watching Louis Rossmann, just without the (very much justified) rage. And heh, a Singaporean company. Of course the customer service is awful. In fact, having someone reply to you is already a pretty good outcome. The amount of times I tried to support a local company only to get myself burned at the end... Well, that's what you get living under a pro-business government; there is zero consumer (and labour) protection here, so expect to get screwed over. And the funny thing is, even with Exa situated here, none of the local arcades are running an Exa machine as far as I can tell. Whatever, it's lame. Gonna side with the pirates here. I didn't care about the exclusive modes on the Exa before and still don't. But they decided to C&D MAME to screw everyone else over, so they deserve to get a taste of their own medicine.

Thanks for highlighting the risks with the hardware. I've surely been tempted at times to get an EXA but not at the expense of it simply stop working one day when the company isn't around anymore.

Arcade machines use "IPC" boards not consumer motherboards. That is they have plain green or blue solder mask, no overclocking features, the various heatsinks are off the shelf not fancy custom stuff for viewing in a glass sided PC case. The BIOS setup is text and looks like something from the 90's Basically it's no frills PC hardware designed for an industrial setting not something that's to be sold to consumers. ASUS, Gigabyte etc. all have IPC product lines that they never advertise on their main product pages but if you don't care about overclocking they are a much cheaper option. Newegg and Amazon both carry them even though they aren't supposed to be sold to the public.

i'm gonna be totally honest, within finishing the video i am divided between feeling it's scam, and saying it's a scam. this review is pretty thorough, though i feel like you give exA patience they haven't deserved. that being said, i want to point out an expression used in this review that may propagate exA's narrative : this is NOT a high-end system at all. this (essentially) PC is running an 8th gen i3 and 8GB of ram. the average computer sold today would beat this, needless to say both major current consoles (ps5 and xbox) blow it out of the water, and quite frankly the games that this thing needs to play could run on cheap old hardware, and for comparison the switch has no shortage of good shmups to play despite high input lag. on the topic of input lag, i would rather applaud the software side than whatever exA did. a PC has always been capable of at least 2 frames, and this is basically that. i wouldn't be too harsh on this if it was sold at, say, a tenth of the price, but at this point the average consumer will never play these games, unless they're lucky enough to be close to one of the very few arcade owners that would actually spend this much money on a potato computer. even then, the arcade operator would never (and shouldn't) buy this for business, it is simply put way, way, waaaay too expensive to get even, you probably wouldn't make it in the green even if you were to run it for like 10 years. to me, the exA arcadia is not a savior of the arcade scene, but a perpetrator, no better than those scalpers selling saidaioujou PCBs for thousands of dollars. the idea that it is, somehow, a neo-geo of modern times is a marketing slogan they want you to propagate to sell their ludicrously overpriced tower, but it is substantially very flawed. make no mistake, i do think the neo-geo wasn't worth it either, but the neo-geo was, in fact, a high-end machine when it released, basically a full gen above the 16-bit consoles of the time when it came to 2d games. it also came out at a time where arcade was still relevant (or at the very least in japan) and so demand could actually justify such a price, not to mention the actual price we're talking about is still a fraction of the exA today. the modern arcade market is super restricted, a niche of other niches (shmups/rhythm games/arcade racers enjoyers) that has not been doing good in the one place it was before because of covid (mostly), and in that way i can understand supporting something that could help on that front. but you shouldn't support this. exA is selling a low-end PC and passing it off as a high-end arcade machine. i feel like this alone can justify claiming it to be a scam. please save your money on more honest ventures, like PC ports, or supporting the indie shmups machine. (zeroranger blows most of these games out of the water btw :p) rant over lol. thanks for the video, hopefully you understand my position as a (now currently casual) shmup fan that wants people to be reasonably able to play these

Awesome review!

I'll never forgive EXA Arcadia for their ripoff prices while gatekeeping the Mr Gimmick remake.

Yeah the cmos thing is ironicly the reason why I would be legally allowed to hack it in my country.

This entire time, I thought the EXA was just another arcade board🗿

EASY PASS. No Thanx. God bless anyone who buys this E-Waste

regarding PIRACY : "IF You own it, WHO CARES, what you play it on."

I'm late, but just saw this. My main question is, and i can't find an answer online, what type of cartridge are the games stored on? They are enclosed, but are they flash carts, or sd cards, or eeproms, or? Eeproms were used in the old 8-bit and 16-bit cartridges and almost last forever. Would be nice to see a return of this for something like the MiSTer, but then in a smaller sd card form. The only drawback is you can't alter eeproms afterwards, it's read only. The good thing is, well actually the same reason, they can't be altered and will store the game(s) almost forever, until the materials themselves start to decay at least. Having the MiSTer software plus only the cores and games you need on an eeprom would be great!

I've read a lot of discussions revolving around the Exa guy, the whole purpose of this project and the debacle with Exa guy "bothering" the Mame guys regarding SDOJ. The story about the patron having some issues with Exa fits so well into the whole picture. Also, 500 bucks for "repairing" a CMOS mistake? This ultra low spec PC system was aimed from the beginning to the big tymers because of the Cave licence. You can also buy some mobile games for this thing for only 400 bucks. Seriously, how on earth will make an arcade owner profit out of a 4600 bucks Akai Katana? By the way if I'm correct those M.2 SSD sticks have no encryption at all. Also, most of these stickers are quite easily removable with a heat gun without any traces. The whole "spirit" surrounding this thing and the boss is so repulsive to me.

I didn't know this existed. $500 for a Nt Mini Noir... Sure, $500 for an aluminum cased MiSTer FPGA....Sure. $5K for an EXA Arcadia console... NOT on my budget and I doubt that will ever change.

Hold up, what truck do you drive, and is it manual or automatic transmission?

I have a Vewlix Diamond Orange and a Atomiswave SD, I might consider getting this in the future.

This just makes me wonder. Who pushed for the port of Touhou FDF 2 (and 1 later) to EXA?

I think for home collectors the Exa makes very little sense. Their new ARC-1 cabinet is around $7,500 and loading it up with 4 games brings the total up to around $12k. For a home gamer that could be more than you would spend on console or PC games in a lifetime. Makes no sense from that perspective. But as an arcade operator I think this system makes a tremendous amount of sense. For $36,000 we can get 3 cabinets and 12 games which is as much as we would spend to buy 1-2 games from the large manufacturers like Raw Thrills and Sega. And with the Exa we can cycle in new games into the system for about $1,500 each, which again in the arcade industry is really affordable. My arcade is about to buy 3 or 4 of these machines and we are really excited about it. Will I buy one for my home? Absolutely not. Also I don't think Exa will release a more affordable home console version of the system because if they did their core business of selling to arcade operators would dry up because why would people like me invest in a system that is no longer arcade exclusive and that can be played at home? Bottom line: this is not a home consumer product it's a commercial product designed for arcade operators.

Just the thought of being in the same room as this thing makes me feel anxious.

great video

Terraonion ( maker of FPGA products) have the exact same unfriendly consumer policies

Damn, this whole Exa Arcadia thing is not worth investing at all.

Oh man, the fact that they've made it impossible to maintain the base machines by its users, with parts that are destined to fail within a few years is more than questionable, especially at that price point... Thanks for this informative video, it is still hard to find thorough reviews of the hardware online after all.

So crazy

The same Tendak HDMI->VGA converter you tried worked for me when I was borrowing an exA unit a couple years ago. I think I used one of the covered up HDMI-ports. Kinda mixed feelings on exA. But since an arcade nearby has these installed I default to the supportive side since my wish to support the Arcade is bigger than the hope of seeing arcade exclusives die out & going to steam, etc. (exA being part of that equation among other arcade exclusive games). Would never buy games at this price for personal use. I do think Aka & Blue Type-R is on par as a game with SDOJ so that's still the biggest exclusive IMO not being a port. Ofc there's some good people working on the software and hardware. Like the input lag fiasco of Aka & Blue launch later turning into the platform having really low input lag was a positive surprise I didn't see coming.

It's cool how respectful you were of the other guy's Exa

Thanks for the video! Ran into your channel thanks to finding the Gimmick! EXACT☆MIX game from exA-Arcadia. It's a remaster for Mr. Gimmick for the NES, which I cherish. I was so excited to look into how to play it...but then I learned more about exA-Arcadia and how...that's just not gonna happen. :( I have nothing against people making and selling modern arcade boards, but exclusifying the games to only those with a lot of money and interested to collect arcade boards (whether to put in an arcade, or for personal use) is just such a toxic decision that feels very...anti-game. I saw some arguments that the exclusivity encourages those arcade board sales, and those sales are key for recouping the development (and especially licensing) costs; even a few boards make a large profit, and that does make some sense given their prices. I could understand that argument, that offering alternative ways to play the game would hurt board sales... ...But it still doesn't explain why they couldn't just release the game more widely 1-2 years down the line, after everyone who has been incentivized to purchased the boards have already done so. Heck, it would mean additional profits on top of the projected earnings, and likely create a new rush of interest to the game and thus, maybe some additional board sales that otherwise would be missed-out on. It just doesn't make sense. Aside from personal desire to play some of these games, I also look at this from a game-preservation perspective. What happens to these games when exA-Arcadia closes? I imagine they will all be lost, except for from the handful of people out there who have purchased the game boards...who I imagine wouldn't have a lot of interest in removing their exclusivity and sharing the data. That's just a damn shame. I don't encourage piracy, but I think it makes total sense to dump games into roms, ESPECIALLY arcade games as they are some of the most vulnerable games to becoming lost over time. I figured this was more of a historical issue with the modern arcade market being more limited, but clearly exA-Arcadia wants to keep perpetuating this risk. Heck, other companies making new arcade boards DO usually have other means of obtaining these games. I'm also reminded of companies who make brand-new classic console games, and many of those have roms you can purchase as well. I think this classic-modern fusion market for releasing new games on old systems is totally cool!...but only if it actually is being done for the love of games. In my opinion, exA-Arcadia aren't selling games. They're selling status symbols. Because none of this really feels like it's for the love of games. It's building and incentivizing an exclusive club for the love of money. I am curious though! I'm not really part of the arcade crowds. I wonder how many people more hardcore into this scene do treat it like an exclusive club? I imagine some buy arcade machines/boards simply because they have the money and simply have a passion for the content and the games. While others largely do it to be part of that club. But I wouldn't know, myself...I can only guess.

You have successfully talked me out of buying one of these. I thought about getting one for myself as a big present, but I already have an Xbox 360 in my cab which plays all these games.

Has anyone opened a game cart yet? I bet they are either onboard SD or a USB stick with a proprietary connector. This isn't anything I'd be interested in playing, either in the home, or in an arcade/D&B setting. Most of it seems like PC/Console released ported over with very little improvement.

Hey Electric Underground, are you going to make a game review on Advance Wars series?

I already had the impression that was a overpriced PC. Any premium product must have quality, exclusivity and a unique and beautiful design. Unfortunaly exclusivity is the only thing that they offer. I had a relativ expectation for Exa but your vídeo just destroyed (never knew it was só bad).hardware and Game carts that have a suspicious quality, bad client service. What a mess. I may bê wrong , but i think that you could have spoken about different experiences. The arcades that i miss more have gimmicks/controllers that were hard to have at home. Trackballs, wheels, etc. Also they fail in not having the best or more popular (different than best) games on som genres. Not having a Tekken or street Fighter is a major Turn off.