I see, the bleeding is not too much or a problem but I'd love to get those buttons swapped. Watching the etaprime video on youtube a few times has me feeling confident and like you said, I'll have to replace the stock controls if I go the retropie route anyway

I do have a spare laptop hanging around with a broken screen and with the way PIs are priced these days I think I'll end up doing some weird frankenstein mod where the laptop just hangs out somewhere outside of the partycade (I couldn't imagine fitting that in the cab), I just need galaga in my life

The LCD board part kind of worries me. I was just going to grab the one from the video and assumed it worked for every arcade1up but I'm glad you warned me. According to this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Arcade1Up/comments/pnuy9b/driver_board_for_super_pacmanpartycade/ the super pacman partycade's screen is M167XGBN30-01A. I see a few ebay postings from china with an lcd controller matching the screen number, glad it's not too hard to find.

As far as usb encoders/button and joystick sets go are those pretty interchangeable and not specific to each arcade1up model or anything like that? I had my eye on this one https://www.amazon.com/EG-STARTS-Joystick-Illuminated-Raspberry/dp/B0762CZBZH/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RMV9Z825QA3O&keywords=1+player+arcade+buttons&qid=1673406446&sprefix=%2Caps%2C198&sr=8-1