gamesitescript has resently been updated which means it does have some good features which other scripts dont have.
On the other hand gamescript has been under develpoment for the last few months.
These are the two main contenders i would say.
gamescript was the first game arcade script brought to the market and therefore is the most well know, it has had 3 owners and is under ownership of iamnotageek now. I would say that gamescript has by far the most features and is always under develpoment which is a good thing (you get a years worth of updates). The meathods of support are through a forum (which is posted on daily and so is active), PM on the forum , email and through a ticket system. I have been wating the develpoment of gamescript sinse version 1.0 and i know a LOT of work has gone into it.
Gamescript have also got over a 1000 games for sale to boost your arcade up.
Version 2.1 is out soon , this should bring lots of new feature rich part to the script.
On your $20 budget you could get Rented version of the script
This would seem to be a good option fo you.
But like i said before gamesitescript has just brought out a new version of there script which sugests that development of gamesitescript may have started again. The support is through a forum ans email. The update of gamesitescript has brought about a very good ,easy to use admin pannel which is good if your just starting out.The forum is not as active as gamescripts but it does have post from recent times.
One last thing about gamesitescript is that it does with with a 90 money-back garentee.
Gamesitescript dont do a leased version the script so you will have to get the owned vesion if you want to use it.
There are other script you could consider like:
www.playcms.com
This was updated last month so does have some activity around it, this could be another choice but the admin pannel isnt the best and it lacks a lot of features compare with other scripts.
www.phparcade.net
This hasnt been updated in a while but is a very good script. The admin pannel is very easy to use and features a back-up system as well which is good. I would recomnd this if you dont go with gamescript or gamesitescript.
www.arcadescript.info
This is a nice script, a fair amount of of features but ownership change there have been multiple people saying that they are not getting the script sent to them even though payment was sent so i would recomend staying away from this script untill things get sorted out.
I would personaly go for gamescript because it has by far the most features and is easy to use. I also would recomned it because the owner is keeping it alive with updates coming out regualy and the supoort is good too.
thanks for reading this and if you found it helpfull would you please give me some rep as it took quite a while to write this.
