Dreams of an Old School Gamer

So I have this dream, I guess you could say, of building and owning my own video game arcade/family fun center. I want the best games in it and I want to have them all linked online for competitive as well as social reasons. I had inspirations from playing video games in arcades as I was a kid, and playing DDR at the local movie theater with a group of friends when I was a teenager. I even had the rare chance of plating 5key Beatmania 6th and 7th mix and 7key Beatmania IIDX 8th Style. The social aspect of all these games wanted me to have them in my dream arcade. I wasn't even worried about the expense because I know I'll be able to do it. That's not what has me sitting here irritated about wanting to own these arcade machines though.

I've looked around the internet for years about IIDX. Mainly to keep up with the installments and the increasing difficulty and technicality of the game series as a whole. But I've recently started looking into the cost and procedure of buying a arcade machine, and from what I've seen, it's not pretty. As I said earlier, cost isn't an issue, what's irritating is that maintaining the machines is unnecessarily difficult. The US arcade machine is in our living rooms according to us. Don't get me wrong, I DO like the home console game feeling, but the whole thing about going to an arcade was to go out and play a game for fun. Sure, you spent a lot of money, but if you could afford to do it, you did it. 

I've heard and seen all over the internet that Konami, the company that owns the Beatmania IIDX series in Japan, isn't interested in selling IIDX to America, that it would be a huge loss, and that Americans wouldn't be interested in it. Yet there is a huge community of people who either watch people playing IIDX and want to play (me), people who have previously played and are unable to because their local arcade either sold the machine or shut down, or people who play by other methods (buying their own machine, downloading the game, etc.). I've been to huge arcades like Boomers in Florida, GameWorks in Seattle, and Dave and Busters in North Carolina and I can imagine a IIDX machine there with people lined up to play just like there would in DDR.  I really am confused as to why an arcade would buy into another lame rail gun game that has guns that require constant calibration over a IIDX machine. Maybe i'm uneducated (which I am but I'm working on that.) about the whole process of being able to buy a IIDX machine for an arcade legitimately and connect it to whatever network I need to in order to join an international ranking. 

To some this sounds weird, but I want to have the US "on the map" in arcade games that involve internet rankings like we are on the home game console. There needs to be an arcade renaissance. seriously. 

And just for the hell of it, a dated video of arguably the hardest songs in IIDX. No, I cannot play any of these songs, but more power to the ones who are able to beat these bad boys. Enjoy.