But you'd be wrong, because the complex thrills of arcade videogame hardware can now be yours for barely the price of a cacky old Mega Drive and a subscription to Coin Slot magazine. The weekly trade newspaper of the arcade business, Coin Slot is a supplement to World's Fair magazine (a more general tome covering carnivals, market traders and the like), but can be subscribed to separately if you don't want to know which rides will be operating at this year's Kirby-in-Ashfield Civic Fayre.

The first half of the paper reads like any other trade mag, fill of incomprehensible in-jokes, sinister features about how unlikely you are to win from fruit machines and gibbering nonsense from crusty old seaside arcade owners bemoaning the downturn in profits from their What The Butler Saw machines. But reach the ads at the back and you're in a shady inner-city arcade of the mind, with only the distinctive smell of adolescents smoking glue missing from the total picture of urban decay. Why? Because there are loads of second hand video games for sale.

This isn't just a nostalgia trip. If a complete vintage Gauntlet machine for £75 or a Rolling Thunder for £125, or even a full-size sit-down Space Harrier complete with hydraulic chair for £250 doesn't light up your 1-Player Start button, why not fork out £1100 and get a spanking new Mortal Kombat 2 PCB instead?

You see, almost all video games made since 1981 comply with the JAMMA standard. What this means is that if you buy the simple box of tricks known as a Supergun, you can then buy the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) of almost any video game, plug it into it, and play. Not a lot of people know about the Supergun yet, but they're becoming more popular - you can get a good one, complete with game controller and all the cables to plug into a domestic SCART TV for less than £100.

With PCBs costing from as little as £10-40 for vintage (and not-so-vintage) coin-ups like Mr. Do, Sky Kid, Shadow Dancer or Time Pilot, right up to £1000 and above for brand-new state-of-the-art jobs like MK2, you can easily build up an impressive arcade in your home exen if you don't have room for a load of bulky machines.