Response from Jonathan: Keith,

The 60-in-1 boards have become the most popular choice for multicade conversions lately. The quality of most of the games on the 60-in-1 board is pretty close to the originals. Some games do suffer some issues (most notably the sound in Gyruss is terrible) but overall it’s pretty good. I don’t know if it’s the best choice but it’s definitely the most popular.

Unfortunately there’s no kit that you can buy to convert your Galaga to a 60-in-1 mutlicade like there is for Pac Man/Ms. Pac Man cabinets but you should be able to find the parts you need to do it pretty easily. The biggest piece of the puzzle will be a Galaga to JAMMA cabinet adapter that will allow you to plug JAMMA boards (like the 60-in-1 board) into your Galaga cabinet. Cambridge Arcade sells one that should get the job done for you.

Of course, you will also need a 60-in-1 board but those are pretty easy to come by. Let me recommend two sellers that we’ve ordered these boards from in the past. Our friend Michael at CajunArcade usually sells 60-in-1 boards for a pretty reasonable price and has great customer service. Same goes for our friend Nick at JAMMA Parts. Both of them also sell JAMMA harnesses, power supplies, and the other parts you might need in order to finish your project.

Glad you brought up the issue of joysticks and buttons because that brings up a problem. Since Galaga only uses a 2-way joystick, you will need to replace the original joystick with a 4-way joystick in order to play most of the games. You should be able to order a new 4-way joystick from whoever you purchase your 60-in-1 board from. Of course, purchasing the new joystick is the easy part. Actually installing the new joystick is what takes some time. You will need to remove the old joystick, drill a new hole for the 4-way joystick, and mount/wire up the new joystick on your control panel. It will take some work on your part but it shouldn’t be too hard.

Now, you could wire up an additional button on your control panel but most of the games on the 60-in-1 board will work fine with just one button. In fact, only about 14 of the games on the 60-in-1 board require more than one button. Here’s a list for you: 1942, Phoenix, Super Cobra, Space Panic, Qix, Juno First, Xevious, Pinball Action, Scramble, Shao-Lin’s Road, 1943, The End, 1943 Kai, and Gunsmoke. If you don’t care about playing these games, they can be disabled in the test menu. Some games (such as Gunsmoke) can be modified in the test menu to use only one button which will allow you to still enjoy the game. Of course, the choice is up to you.

Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your future projects.