I don't think hotrod will give you a purely authentic arcade feel for older pre-90s games, but it does a very good job (much better arcade-feeling) than a keyboard or joypad could never do. The hotrod is an 8-way joystick, this means that you send a distinct input when a diagonal is pushed, this makes many older 4-way joystick games difficult to get used to because you have to train yourself to NOT hit diagonals if the game interprets the diagonal ambigously. Which is certainly not an authentic arcade feel.(posted 9191 days ago)For neogeo games and later it is authentic, primarily because i think they use a very similar (if not the same) joystick.
The buttons themselves are the best thing about the hotrod, wonderfull spring action and a illustrious feel.
I ordered my SE a few months ago and had a big problem with it not working and not being able to get a new board because support is very sluggish. however they finally got around to shipping me a new motherboard (for the hotrod), after unlatching 12 screws i installed it and now everything works very nice.
The only complaint i have (and it's not really a complaint) is that i still don't have a good (tempest) spinner. But i do have a very good joystick in the hotrod. I would recommend learning the differences first hand of 4-way and 8-way joysticks before you buy though.