RESERVER

Our Experience with JAMMA Amusement Equipment

A detailed account of more than one year operating JAMMA equipment in France

Challenge Arena is an indoor leisure centre in France.

Since May 2025, we have operated a multi-room interactive gaming attraction using equipment originally supplied by JAMMA.

We are publishing this page because operators considering purchasing JAMMA equipment deserve to know what our actual operating experience has been.

This page does not claim that every JAMMA installation in the world experiences the same problems.

It describes:

We have retained extensive documentation, including orders, photographs, technical discussions and correspondence.

Where we express an opinion, it is our opinion.

Where we report a price, failure, technical issue or statement from JAMMA, we have attempted to reproduce the facts as accurately as possible.

JAMMA is invited to identify any factual error on this page and provide supporting evidence.

Any demonstrated factual error will be corrected.

1. JAMMA, Vitality, Julien and Challenge Arena

The original commercial arrangement needs to be explained because it later became an important part of the problem.

The company Vitality, managed by Julien, originally purchased the JAMMA equipment and arranged for it to be delivered to Challenge Arena.

Vitality installed the premises and the JAMMA equipment.

Challenge Arena then acquired the installation through Vitality.

The chain was therefore essentially:

JAMMA → Vitality / Julien → Challenge Arena

Challenge Arena paid what it owed to its intermediary.

Nevertheless, JAMMA subsequently claimed that Julien still owed them approximately USD 5,000.

This separate commercial dispute repeatedly affected Challenge Arena.

On several occasions, when Challenge Arena requested software, warranty support, replacement products or commercial compensation, JAMMA responded by referring to money allegedly owed by Julien.

We repeatedly explained that:

Challenge Arena is not Julien.

Challenge Arena had paid what it owed.

We could not reasonably be held responsible for a separate financial relationship between JAMMA and another company.

This distinction is essential to understanding the chronology below.

2. May 2025 — The installation begins badly

JAMMA sent an engineer to France to configure and commission the installation.

His arrival had been scheduled approximately three months in advance.

Despite this, he arrived approximately 14 days late.

He then spent another 14 days on site.

When he left, the installation still did not function as expected.

Among the problems:

A game could award approximately 100 points after ten minutes while another could award approximately 10,000 points after two minutes.

Some Grid and Megagrid levels intended for one player were available even though our customers enter the rooms in teams of two to four (causing instant crash).

Some levels crashed so reliably that we eventually had to place stickers on the terminals telling customers not to select them.

JAMMA performed further remote corrections during approximately the following week.

Major problems remained: scoring failures, scanner issues, game crashes, inconsistent progression and severely unbalanced scoring.

Scores in particular could:

At other times, all scanners in the centre could begin returning red errors simultaneously for minutes or hours.

Restarting the equipment did not necessarily solve the problem.

JAMMA’s recurring answer was essentially:

“We don’t understand. This only happens at your location. It works here.”

These scoring and scanner problems continued from May 2025 until June 2026.

At their worst, they occurred several times per hour. These were persistent problems throughout the entire period. To avoid repeating the same failures in every section below, we will mention them again only when there is a specific development in the chronology.

3. May 2025 — V3 is coming “soon”

JAMMA told us that a new V3 version of its software would arrive “soon”.

V3 was supposed to:

“Soon” would eventually become many months.

4. June 2025 — Five hours without scores

In June, our score displays stopped displaying scores.

For an attraction whose competitive element revolves around accumulating points, this is obviously a major problem.

We contacted JAMMA support.

The problem involved JAMMA’s server configuration in China and the fact that our French installation had not been properly taken into account.

Approximately:

Total disruption:

approximately 5 hours.

Commercial consequence recorded by us:

12 negative Google reviews.

5. July 2025 — Hardware begins failing

In July alone we experienced:

During troubleshooting, we reported that four USB dongles had already burned during the tests requested by JAMMA and that two motherboards had failed. We lost these parts during tests requested by JAMMA !

One room remained unavailable for approximately two weeks while replacement equipment was obtained.

Arena was also becoming a recurring problem.

When one Arena target fails, it does not necessarily simply stop working.

A single defective target can cause an entire wall to flash apparently random colours.

Finding which target is responsible can require testing the targets individually.

In our experience, this could take approximately:

4 hours per failure. (just to identify which target was defective and needed replacing)

At this stage we were doing this approximately once per week.

For complete information, all of these components had to be replaced at our expense. JAMMA only informed us in January that the components had actually been covered by warranty — but by then, according to JAMMA, it was “too late”.

6. July–August 2025 — Early V3 versions

At the end of July, JAMMA supplied V3 software for four of our eight rooms.

Unfortunately:

We sent JAMMA a list of required corrections and reminded them that we needed all eight rooms upgraded rather than only four.

In August, JAMMA asked what we thought of V3.

We reminded them that we had already sent the required corrections approximately one month earlier.

Our feedback was finally sent to the developer on 27 August, approximately six weeks after our initial request.

7. August 2025 — More failures

Arena was causing problems again: the wall displayed apparently random colours whenever balls hit the targets.

We spent approximately three days investigating the problem with JAMMA support.

Eventually, another defective target was identified.

Again, identifying exactly which component had failed required hours of testing.

After only approximately three months of operation, we were already ordering significant quantities of replacement components.

Prices included:

8. September 2025 — V3 still does not solve the problems

On 18 September we received V3 software for five rooms.

Every one still had problems.

Some content was in English.

We translated some of it ourselves.

A further version was promised for October.

At the same time, our Laser room developed another serious bug.

Customers could start the game and instantly lose ten lives even though all lasers appeared to work.

Approximately ten hours were spent with JAMMA support looking for the problem.

JAMMA did not identify it.

We eventually found it ourselves.

A broken button sharing the same line as the lasers was disrupting the count.

During September we also suffered:

6 failed Arena targets — the same recurring problem, representing approximately another 24 hours of troubleshooting.

9. October 2025 — The USD 5,000 dispute appears again

In October, JAMMA informed us that V3 was ready.

But its sales department said that approximately USD 5,000 was still owed and that V3 would not be sent until payment was made.

The alleged debt was not Challenge Arena’s debt.

It concerned Julien.

We again had to explain that Challenge Arena had paid its intermediary and was not responsible for the financial relationship between JAMMA and Julien.

10. October 2025 — V3 introduces new problems

When V3 arrived, scoring was completely broken. Players received no points at all. Ever.

Colour mappings were also wrong.

For example:

Some text remained in English.

At the same time, another:

6 Arena targets/components failed.

11. Replacement parts that did not match the originals

We discovered that some replacement components supplied by JAMMA used different colour mappings from our original hardware.

This meant that when an entire room was supposed to display the same colour, old and new components could show different colours. Green and blue were effectively reversed. Pink and Yellow too.

JAMMA attempted to correct this through software by reversing colours.

But software cannot solve a room containing two hardware versions using different mappings. Reversing the colours in software merely reversed the problem. It could not make two incompatible hardware generations behave identically in the same room.

We told JAMMA that the parts supplied were not compatible with our installation.

The effective response was:

“So sorry.”

No replacement shipment or reimbursement followed at that stage. Ten months later, approximately half of our buttons still display the wrong colours. The only solution proposed by JAMMA was for us to purchase the hardware again in the newer version — at an estimated cost of approximately USD 20,000.

12. Arena — at least 30 failed components and 120 hours spent finding them

Arena deserves its own section because it illustrates the difference between the price of a component and the real operational cost of a defective component.

From our records, we can directly identify:

There were also multiple Arena failures before and after these specific recorded batches.

Adding ten additional failures from those surrounding periods gives a conservative total of:

At least 30 failed Arena targets/components in 6 months

Each target cost approximately:

USD 75.

Replacement parts alone therefore represent approximately:

USD 2.250

At our expense as usual.

These components were failing during a period in which the equipment was supposed to be covered by warranty.

Nevertheless, Challenge Arena paid for replacements.

Our requests for replacement or reimbursement produced no meaningful solution.

In practical terms, JAMMA’s response to many of these problems was little more than:

“So sorry.”

But USD 75 is not the real cost of an Arena failure.

Because one defective target could cause an entire wall to behave erratically, identifying the failed target typically required approximately:

4 hours of testing.

For 30 failures:

30 × 4 hours = 120 hours of troubleshooting

Even valuing technical/management time extremely conservatively at only:

€30 per hour

represents:

€3.600 of troubleshooting time

This does not include:

Adding only the directly identifiable figures gives:

USD 2.250 in components

plus

€3.600 in troubleshooting time.

And this is a conservative calculation.

13. November 2025 — Another urgent order

We placed another spare-parts order and specifically classified it as urgent.

It took approximately two weeks merely to obtain the paperwork.

The shipment was then lost through UPS.

Total time before arrival:

approximately five weeks.

The order included:

We requested a commercial gesture because of problems with the previous order.

Again we were told about the USD 5,000 allegedly owed by Julien.

14. November 2025 — New scanner cables were supposed to fix everything

JAMMA eventually told us that the scoring problems and red scanner errors were caused by scanner cables.

They sold us eight new cables.

This was already difficult to reconcile with the repeated statement that the problem existed only at Challenge Arena.

If the problem existed only at our location, it was surprising that JAMMA had identified a cable problem and had already developed new cables for newer customers.

Nevertheless, we purchased them. at our expense as usual.

They did not solve the problem.

In our experience they made maintenance worse.

Windows regularly failed to detect them, forcing us to disconnect and reconnect them manually.

The result was:

15. Understanding the network

We eventually understood that the JAMMA installation used two different networks.

The room computers operated over Ethernet.

The bracelet scanners used a separate private Wi-Fi network with their own router.

Those scanners had to:

This separate network would turn out to be critical.

16. November 2025 — V3 still incomplete

By 11 November, V3 was operating in four rooms.

The actual games were now considerably better.

Difficulty progression finally made sense.

The games themselves were more stable.

So “soon” ultimately meant six months. But to be fair, V3 was a genuine improvement.

But scoring remained as unreliable as it had been from the beginning. After six months of development, JAMMA still had not managed to solve one of the most basic requirements of the system: simply giving players the points they had scored.

On 13 November we were told:

When we received those versions:

they crashed at launch.

17. November 2025 — JAMMA suspects our internet connection

After months of scoring problems, JAMMA suggested that our internet connection might be responsible.

Challenge Arena has a professional fibre connection with excellent performance.

We experienced no comparable network problems elsewhere.

We nevertheless continued investigating. As section 19 will show, JAMMA was partly right: there was indeed a connection problem. It just was not caused by our internet connection.

18. Late November 2025 — Major outage

During peak trading time, the entire scanner system failed for approximately three hours.

All scanners returned red errors.

JAMMA acknowledged that they were performing work on their server infrastructure.

It may have been nighttime in China.

It was peak operating time in France.

We had to refund customers.

Direct cost:

approximately €4,500

Commercial consequence:

7 negative Google reviews

19. Challenge Arena solves the scanner problem

After approximately six months of scanner failures, we installed network-monitoring tools on the scanner Wi-Fi network.

We discovered that the router supplied by JAMMA for the scanner network was dropping its connection approximately every 30 seconds.

We found the router.

We replaced it.

The result was immediate.

The apparently random red scanner errors that had affected us for approximately six months almost disappeared.

Scoring failures also reduced significantly.

Before replacing the router, approximately 90% of our customers experienced multiple important point failures.

Afterwards, customers generally experienced only one or two scoring failures per session.

And those remaining failures were particularly associated with very large scores.

So after months of:

the principal scanner issue was finally solved by:

Challenge Arena replacing the JAMMA-supplied router.

JAMMA did not identify this problem.

We did.

20. December 2025 — More hardware failures

Another USB dongle burned.

A cable caught fire.

During one week alone, we replaced Arena targets approximately twelve times. This brought the documented total to 42 Arena target failures by the end of December.

Scoring was still defective.

Points between different rooms were still badly unbalanced.

We had reported that problem in May.

Adjusting the number of points awarded by a room should take a competent engineer less than an hour per room.

21. December 2025 — Another spare-parts order

The order included:

The ten USB dongles are particularly important today.

We were not purchasing ten encryption dongles for decoration.

We were buying spare components because we had experienced repeated failures. They were repeatedly burning out.

Over approximately one year we bought around fifteen spare or replacement dongles.

22. December 2025 — We discover that there is a warranty

We then learned that JAMMA’s products were covered by a warranty.

By this point we estimated that we had already experienced approximately:

We therefore requested warranty replacement or reimbursement.

JAMMA again raised the approximately USD 5,000 allegedly owed by Julien.

We also identified approximately USD 1,404 of components or orders that we considered unusable because they were incorrect, incompatible or unsuccessful attempted solutions.

For example, we ordered a 1.8-metre cable and received seven approximately 40-centimetre cables.

After considerable argument, the commercial compensation we eventually obtained was:

5 free Arena targets

23. Challenge Arena solves the Arena problem

At the end of December, we made two changes ourselves.

We permanently disconnected one target position because we had noticed a disproportionate number of failures at that location.

We also replaced the projectiles with a softer alternative.

The difference was spectacular.

Before our modifications, target failures could occur repeatedly within the same week.

Afterwards:

approximately three targets failed over the following nine months.

We cannot state scientifically which of our two modifications produced the improvement because we did not perform a controlled experiment.

We strongly suspect the softer projectile was the principal factor.

What we can state with certainty is that:

the Arena failure problem became dramatically smaller after modifications introduced by Challenge Arena.

It was not solved by JAMMA. We later discovered another JAMMA customer who had simply closed his Arena room after becoming frustrated by the repeated failures.

24. JAMMA finally identifies the scoring problem

At the end of December, JAMMA finally sent us the following explanation:

“After extensive testing regarding the point system, we discovered that the card reader limits the point values. Score exceeding 6000 points in a single transaction cannot be uploaded.”

This was extremely important.

For approximately eight months:

JAMMA had now identified a technical limitation inside its own scoring/card-reader system.

And yet:

JAMMA never corrected it.

The scoring defect remained until we moved away from JAMMA’s software in June 2026.

So the three major technical stories were ultimately:

Arena: Challenge Arena found a practical solution.

Scanners: Challenge Arena found the defective router and solved the major network problem.

Points: JAMMA eventually identified its own technical limitation — but never fixed it.

25. March 2026 — Another major outage

In March, our location again suffered a complete scanner failure during Saturday peak trading.

JAMMA acknoledged they had performed work affecting its server infrastructure.

Customer refunds:

approximately €3,500

Commercial consequence:

6 negative Google reviews

We requested compensation.

None was provided.

JAMMA told us the incident would not happen again.

26. The following Saturday — It happens again

The following Saturday we experienced another major scanner outage.

This time JAMMA denied that its engineers had performed another server update.

But it was exactly at the same hour (midnight in China) and exactly the same scanner behavior.

Whatever the precise technical cause, the financial result for Challenge Arena was:

approximately €1,900 in customer refunds

and:

3 additional negative Google reviews

Across three major incidents alone:

approximately €9,900 was refunded to customers

This does not include future revenue lost because of negative reviews.

27. May 2026 — Another JAMMA centre in Luxembourg

For almost a year we had repeatedly heard that our problems appeared unique to Challenge Arena.

Then we came into contact with another JAMMA operator in Luxembourg.

His centre had been equipped approximately five months earlier.

Importantly:

the installation had been performed by JAMMA’s Chinese team.

The operator contacted us because he was experiencing significant technical problems.

We subsequently travelled to Luxembourg ourselves.

We personally inspected the installation.

We personally observed and discussed the problems with the operator.

The similarities with our own experience were remarkable.

The Luxembourg centre had experienced:

The scanner system was so unreliable that the operator was manually telling customers when their one-hour session was over.

Perhaps the most extraordinary element was this:

another JAMMA customer had contacted Challenge Arena for technical help with his JAMMA installation because JAMMA was not able to solve his problems.

This was a recent installation.

It had been installed by JAMMA’s own team.

And many of the problems were the same problems we had spent months reporting.

We do not claim that visiting two centres allows us to make statistical statements about every JAMMA installation worldwide.

But after personally seeing another recent European installation suffering many of the same failures, we could no longer accept the suggestion that Challenge Arena’s problems were simply unique to Challenge Arena.

28. June 2026 — Challenge Arena changes software

By June 2026, more than a year had passed since opening.

Some of the fundamental problems reported in May 2025 had still not been solved.

Most importantly:

JAMMA had identified its own scoring limitation in December 2025.

Six months later:

it still had not corrected it.

Challenge Arena therefore moved to independently developed French software.

Challenge Arena did not develop this software.

29. August 2026 — Julien approaches JAMMA

In August 2026, Julien contacted JAMMA regarding the independently developed software.

He explained that he had access to a software solution that he considered significantly better than JAMMA’s existing system.

His intention was to explore a possible commercial partnership with JAMMA.

This discussion concerned Julien and JAMMA.

Challenge Arena was not negotiating a software partnership with JAMMA.

We include the event here because it is part of the chronology.

30. September 2026 — Key replacement prices change dramatically

The following month, in September 2026, Challenge Arena was confronted with dramatically different prices for important replacement components.

A motherboard that had previously cost approximately:

USD 285–300

was subsequently quoted at approximately:

USD 1,150

The blue USB encryption dongle that we had purchased in December 2025 for:

USD 14

was now quoted at:

USD 1,500

We state the chronology.

We do not claim knowledge of JAMMA management’s internal motivation for every price change. However, we have retained a copy of a conversation stating that JAMMA wanted to prevent its blue USB key from being used outside Challenge Arena to open new venues using another software solution.

The sequence is simply:

August 2026: Julien presents independently developed software to JAMMA and discusses a possible partnership.

September 2026: Challenge Arena is quoted dramatically higher prices for certain key components.

31. September 2026 — JAMMA’s USB dongle policy

Following our objection to the USD 1,500 replacement price, JAMMA provided us with an internal instruction issued by its management concerning the blue USB encryption dongles.

The instruction describes the dongle as:

“the exclusive software encryption key and the only verification tool to activate our system software.”

Employees are specifically instructed:

“If customers inquire about purchasing the USB encryption dongle separately, do NOT quote it as ordinary hardware.”

The instruction continues:

“The dongle is bound to the complete game software copyright.”

And:

“All quotations for the USB dongle must be calculated based on the price of the corresponding complete game software.”

For a lost dongle, JAMMA’s internal instruction states:

“the replacement fee will be charged according to the full price of the complete software package.”

This explained the USD 1,500 price that had just been communicated to Challenge Arena.

For comparison, in December 2025 Challenge Arena had purchased these exact blue USB dongles from JAMMA for:

USD 14 EACH

Nine months later, the price communicated to us was:

USD 1,500 EACH

More than 100 times the previous price.

32. After our protest: USD 1,500 becomes USD 150 — under conditions

We strongly challenged this new pricing policy.

JAMMA then replied that the USD 1,500 quotation had been a mistake.

However, its clarification is particularly interesting.

JAMMA informed us that replacement USB dongles would now be available under the following conditions:

USD 150 with video evidence that the dongle is defective

and:

USD 1,500 without video evidence

So even after JAMMA acknowledged an error in the quotation initially given to us, the standard price without the required video evidence remains USD 1,500.

And even the reduced replacement price is:

USD 150

For a component that JAMMA sold to us for:

USD 14

in December 2025.

After reviewing this page and our complaints, JAMMA wrote that it hoped to find:

“a fair solution for both sides”

and added:

“Business should be a win-win, not a zero-sum game where we hurt each other.”

We completely agree.

Under the solution proposed to us, our experience indicates that Challenge Arena would effectively have one room permanently unavailable, while paying approximately USD 300 every time another dongle failed.

Without the required video evidence, the same USD 14 component would cost USD 1,500.

Prospective operators can decide for themselves whether they consider that arrangement:

“a fair solution for both sides”

and whether this is their own definition of:

“win-win”.

We therefore went from USD 14 to USD 150 even under JAMMA’s new defective-component procedure.

That is still more than ten times the price we paid nine months earlier.

Why this policy matters beyond Challenge Arena

There is a broader issue with this policy.

JAMMA became aware that independently developed French software could operate its rooms without using JAMMA’s own software.

As documented in the previous sections, we have retained a conversation stating that JAMMA wanted to prevent its blue USB keys from being used to open new venues with another software solution.

JAMMA’s internal policy now states that the USB dongle — the component required to connect the software to the hardware — must not be sold as ordinary hardware.

Instead, JAMMA states that the dongle is bound to the complete game software and that its price must therefore be based on the price of the complete software package.

The practical consequence for a future operator is straightforward.

An operator may wish to purchase JAMMA hardware while using an independent software solution.

But if that operator needs JAMMA’s USB dongle to make the hardware operate, JAMMA’s policy effectively requires the operator to purchase JAMMA’s complete software package in order to obtain that essential component — even if the operator has no intention of using JAMMA’s software.

Readers can form their own opinion of that commercial model.

And what would the USD 150 “solution” mean in practice?

There is an even more immediate problem for an existing operator such as Challenge Arena.

JAMMA now proposes to supply a replacement dongle for USD 150, provided that we first submit video evidence proving that the previous dongle is defective.

USD 150 may initially sound much more reasonable than USD 1,500.

But based on our actual experience with JAMMA, this is not a workable replacement procedure.

Throughout our commercial relationship, approximately one month would typically pass between placing an order and receiving the parts in Europe.

The delays did not only come from international shipping. Processing an order through JAMMA itself could take considerable time, usually more than two weeks.

Apologies, however, generally arrived much faster.

“So sorry.”

became one of the most familiar expressions in our conversations with JAMMA.

Shipping was another issue.

Even for very small orders, JAMMA never offered us shipping below approximately:

USD 150

And our USB dongles have failed, on average, approximately once per month.

So let us apply JAMMA’s proposed replacement procedure to our actual operating experience.

A dongle fails.

One room stops operating.

We provide video evidence of the failure.

We wait for JAMMA to process the order.

We pay:

USD 150 for the replacement dongle

plus at least:

USD 150 for shipping

We then wait for the replacement to arrive in Europe.

Based on our experience:

approximately one month.

Meanwhile, the room cannot operate.

And by approximately the time that replacement arrives, statistically, another dongle is due to fail.

With approximately one dongle failure per month and approximately one month required to obtain a replacement, the practical consequence is extraordinary:

Challenge Arena would effectively have one room permanently out of operation.

And maintaining that situation would cost us approximately:

USD 300 per failure

(For a failure that, after opening one defective dongle, we traced in approximately 30 minutes to two incorrectly connected wires inside the dongle. This apparent wiring issue had not been identified or corrected by JAMMA after approximately 20 months and numerous failed dongles. Whether there is any commercial benefit in allowing such a recurring failure to continue while charging USD 150 — or USD 1,500 — for each replacement is a question we will leave to the reader.)

before taking into account a single euro of lost revenue from the closed room.

The alternative is even more remarkable.

If we cannot provide the video evidence required by JAMMA:

USD 1,500 for the replacement dongle.

For a component we purchased for:

USD 14

nine months earlier.

The concept of “fair business” has been invoked in discussions surrounding this situation.

We will leave prospective operators to decide whether a replacement policy that would have left Challenge Arena effectively operating with one room permanently unavailable — while paying approximately USD 300 for each recurring failure — meets their own definition of fair business.

33. And somehow Julien is involved again

There was an even more surprising part of JAMMA’s response.

JAMMA wrote to us:

“Julien and my boss Nini have reached a solution regarding your USB key order.”

This sentence perfectly illustrates a problem we have been explaining to JAMMA for more than a year.

Julien does not represent Challenge Arena.

He is not the owner of Challenge Arena.

He is not our manager.

He is not our purchasing department.

He has no authority whatsoever to negotiate an order on behalf of Challenge Arena.

Challenge Arena and Julien’s company are independent businesses.

Nevertheless, JAMMA explained that the special USD 150 price for our first replacement dongle was connected to two completely separate matters involving Julien:

Neither matter has anything to do with Challenge Arena.

After more than one year of repeatedly explaining that Challenge Arena cannot be held responsible for Julien’s commercial relationship with JAMMA, JAMMA was therefore still negotiating the conditions of a Challenge Arena spare-parts order with Julien.

We refused this arrangement.

34. The final USB dongle contradiction

JAMMA also questioned the number of USB dongles that we said had failed.

Their argument was essentially that this number of failures was not normal and that these dongles are not easy to damage.

We completely agree.

It is not normal.

That is precisely the problem.

Our USB dongles have repeatedly failed or burned.

JAMMA’s own engineers were informed when these failures occurred.

The failures are documented in our technical conversation history.

In December 2025 alone, we purchased ten spare blue USB dongles from JAMMA.

We did not purchase ten encryption dongles for decoration.

We purchased them because we were experiencing repeated failures.

There is another interesting development.

After the latest discussion with JAMMA, we opened one of the defective USB dongles ourselves.

In less than one hour of investigation, we identified an apparent electrical/wiring issue that provides a plausible explanation for why our dongles have repeatedly been subjected to abnormal electrical conditions and failed.

We will not publish the technical details here.

At this stage, Challenge Arena no longer considers itself responsible for diagnosing and correcting JAMMA’s engineering problems.

35. The true cost of the installation

The purchase price of amusement equipment is not its true operating cost.

During our first year of operation, Challenge Arena experienced failures involving:

This resulted not only in replacement costs, but also in hundreds of hours of troubleshooting, room downtime, customer refunds and negative reviews.

Arena alone: 42 documented target failures by December 2025

The Arena problem is particularly easy to quantify.

By the end of December 2025, our records show that we had already reached:

42 failed Arena targets/components

A replacement Arena target was sold to us by JAMMA for approximately:

USD 75

The replacement value of those 42 targets alone was therefore:

42 × USD 75 = USD 3,150

But the cost of the targets themselves was only a small part of the problem.

When one target failed, the entire Arena wall could begin displaying apparently random colours.

The defective target therefore had to be identified by testing the installation.

From our experience, locating a single defective target typically required approximately:

4 hours of troubleshooting

For 42 documented failures:

42 × 4 hours = 168 hours

Valuing that time at a deliberately conservative:

€30 per hour

gives:

€5,040 of troubleshooting time

And this is only the time spent identifying defective Arena targets.

It does not include the time required to order, receive and replace them, nor the commercial cost of operating a room with a recurring technical problem.

USD 4,300 actually paid to JAMMA for spare parts

There is another figure that should not be confused with the USD 3,150 theoretical replacement value above.

Challenge Arena actually paid approximately:

USD 4,300

to JAMMA in spare-parts orders and associated shipping costs.

This is not an estimate.

It is the total amount of the spare-parts orders we placed with JAMMA, including shipping.

Many of these parts were purchased to replace components that had failed while our installation was still supposed to be covered by warranty.

Even more frustratingly, approximately half of the replacement components supplied to us could not be used correctly in our centre because JAMMA had changed the colour coding of the hardware.

The new components did not behave like the original components.

For example, depending on the hardware generation:

This meant that old and new components could not simply coexist correctly in the same room.

We therefore found ourselves in the extraordinary situation of having paid approximately USD 4,300 to JAMMA for spare parts and shipping in order to maintain equipment that was still under warranty, while a significant proportion of the replacement hardware supplied was not properly compatible with the installation JAMMA had originally sold.

And the direct customer losses

On top of the hardware and troubleshooting costs, three major system-wide incidents resulted in approximately:

€9,900 in customer refunds

This still excludes:

So the figures that can be directly identified include:

42 documented Arena target failures by December 2025

USD 3,150 — replacement value of those 42 Arena targets

168 hours — troubleshooting those Arena failures

€5,040 — conservative value of that troubleshooting time

USD 4,300 — actually paid to JAMMA for spare parts and shipping

€9,900 — customer refunds following three major system failures

The USD 3,150 and USD 4,300 figures must not be added together, because the USD 4,300 in actual spare-parts orders already includes some of the Arena replacement parts.

And even these figures represent only the costs that can be quantified relatively easily.

They do not attempt to put a financial value on the damage caused by downtime, dissatisfied customers and negative reviews. One final figure may put the impact into perspective:

Before we opened our JAMMA installation, Challenge Arena had a perfect 5.0 Google rating.

It does not anymore.

Thank you, JAMMA.

36. Who actually solved the three biggest technical problems?

After more than a year, one aspect of this story is particularly striking to us.

Arena

JAMMA supplied repeated replacement targets.

Failures continued.

Challenge Arena modified the installation and the projectile.

Failures then dropped dramatically.

Challenge Arena solved the practical Arena problem.

Scanners

For approximately six months, we were told that the problem could involve cables, our installation or our internet connection.

Challenge Arena monitored the private Wi-Fi network.

Challenge Arena discovered the unstable supplied JAMMA router.

Challenge Arena replaced it.

The red-scanner problem almost disappeared.

Challenge Arena solved the scanner/network problem.

Scoring

For approximately eight months, we told JAMMA that large scores were being lost.

JAMMA eventually identified the 6,000-point limitation in its own card-reader system.

But despite identifying the problem:

JAMMA never corrected it.

We stopped using JAMMA’s scoring system in June 2026 with that defect still unresolved.

37. What concerns us today

Our principal concerns after this experience are:

Hardware reliability

We experienced failures across many different categories of components.

Software reliability

Major problems remained unresolved for months.

Technical diagnosis

We repeatedly had to diagnose problems ourselves.

Support

Some basic issues took weeks or months to progress.

Warranty

We purchased large quantities of replacement components while equipment was supposedly under warranty.

Commercial separation

Challenge Arena’s requests were repeatedly affected by a financial dispute involving another independent company.

Dependence on infrastructure outside Europe

Changes or outages affecting JAMMA systems could interrupt our activity during peak French trading hours.

Replacement pricing

A component we previously purchased for USD 14 was initially quoted to us at USD 1,500. Following our protest, JAMMA offered a replacement price of USD 150 subject to video evidence of failure, while maintaining a USD 1,500 price without such evidence.

A motherboard previously costing approximately USD 285 has subsequently been quoted at approximately USD 1,150.

For an existing customer who has already paid for the software, we consider this replacement model economically unsustainable — particularly since, as documented in section 30 above, we have retained a conversation stating that JAMMA wanted to prevent its USB keys from being used to open new venues with another software solution.

38. Would we buy the same installation again?

That is probably the most important question for anyone reading this page because they are considering purchasing JAMMA equipment.

There are elements of the concept that we like.

If there were not, we would not have spent so much time trying to make it work.

But if we had known in May 2025 what we know today:

we would have made a very different purchasing decision.

That is the reason this page exists.

We wish a detailed account like this had existed when we were evaluating the equipment ourselves.

NEW => 39. JAMMA’s “win-win” solution — 78 hours later, still no proposal

After reviewing this page, JAMMA told us that it wanted to find:

“a fair solution for both sides”

and added:

“Business should be a win-win, not a zero-sum game where we hurt each other.”

Until this page was suspended, communication was certainly not a problem.

During the preceding discussions, JAMMA and Challenge Arena were typically exchanging messages two to four times per day, with more than ten exchanges over a comparable 78-hour period.

Challenge Arena then made the first concrete move.

As a gesture of good faith, and to give JAMMA the opportunity to propose a genuine overall resolution, we temporarily suspended this page.

Then we waited.

48 hours passed.

No proposal.

It was only after Challenge Arena contacted JAMMA again that we were informed that JAMMA’s director personally wanted to discuss the situation and would give us their “best solution.”

We were given her WhatsApp number.

Once again, Challenge Arena took the initiative and contacted her directly.

Then we waited again.

More than 30 additional hours passed.

No response.

No proposal.

No “best solution.”

The chronology is therefore remarkably simple:

Before the page was suspended: regular communication, typically 2–4 exchanges per day.

Challenge Arena suspends the page → 48 hours → no proposal.

Challenge Arena follows up → JAMMA announces its director’s “best solution” → Challenge Arena contacts the director → 30+ additional hours → no response and no proposal.

JAMMA had repeatedly asked us to remove this page, explaining that it was causing “severe negative impacts” on its reputation and “continuous harm” to its business.

Yet once Challenge Arena actually suspended the page, the pace of communication changed immediately.

Before its suspension, more than ten exchanges could take place within 78 hours.

After Challenge Arena gave JAMMA what it had repeatedly requested, more than 78 hours produced no concrete proposal whatsoever.

Challenge Arena provided its part of the proposed “win-win” immediately.

JAMMA provided nothing in return.

The temporary suspension has therefore ended, and this page has been restored.

Our position remains unchanged: JAMMA remains free to make a genuine proposal for an overall resolution. JAMMA also remains free to provide an official response, which we will publish here in full and without modification.

JAMMA’s right of reply

This page describes Challenge Arena’s experience.

We have retained extensive documentation relating to the events described here.

JAMMA may disagree with our interpretation of some events.

We therefore invite JAMMA to respond.

If JAMMA identifies any factual error and provides evidence demonstrating that it is incorrect, we will correct it.

If JAMMA wishes to provide an official explanation concerning any technical incident, commercial decision or pricing policy described above, we are willing to publish that response alongside our account.

Our objective is not to prevent anyone from purchasing JAMMA equipment.

Our objective is to allow other leisure operators to make that decision with information about the real operating experience of an existing European customer.

This is the information we wish we had before making our own investment.

Résumé de la politique de confidentialité

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