I was asked recently, again, why I prefer real hardware over any type of emulation. My answer as always was varied and detailed, pertaining to mostly the look and feel of say a controller or the feel of the media one plays on all the different types of systems I own, Tapes, CDs, Floppys etc. One medium however stands out from the rest in many ways, the Arcade PCB.
I suspect that like any Art, shape or form factor it is a very personal choice but to me the PCB is such a delight to visualise, touch and explore. I cannot explain why I enjoy seeing the paths etched into a printed circuit board with its raw Copper snaking through conductive and insulating layers but to me, it is simply Art. Yes, I could put some in frames, cleaned and gleaming in dark green perfection.
It isn’t just the look that strangely inspires me. I admire that pathways that magically connect to various Silicon, inputs and outputs that then push something wonderful onto our screens that you can interact with. I do not claim to understand how most of this works, and perhaps if I could I would feel less about them. It’s as if I am a man lost in the past seeing something we take for granted in our time and marvelling at it all, perhaps fearing this “magic”. Imagine a Victorian seeing an iPad and being baffled by what it can do. I’d hope they feared it and loved it in equal measure and this is how I see your humble PCB. I know its not magic but that does not stop me feeling magical about it.
I also love the duality of an Arcade board. This is not just hardware, this is software too, combined to give a mostly one off experience that whilst you can get it elsewhere these days just feel right, at least to me, when experienced this original way. I have also found that I have no desire to collect software, just hardware and yet as described above with this I get to do both. I get to sort, store, protect something of infinite value in my life that maybe I only take out once a year to play.
Its, special. A word we don’t get to use often in our modern times. This is why I like my hardware, and in this case my software, in oversized big green boards with electricity flowing through them.
They do take up way too much space though 🙂
