Can you get a new license to build an old arcade game?

I’m reading up on the process of building a MAME arcade machine. In a nut-shell, it takes modern day emulator technology, and sets it up inside of an arcade shell… and then you play arcade games on it. A long description of what I just said follows, but if you don’t care or you understood the nut-shell-explanation, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

Ok an emulator is a computer program that mimics the hardware that plays a video game. You can download them right now onto your computer, and then download the software from classic games (called ROMS), and play them on your computer. Emulators are mainly made by random computer guys (rarely has a gaming company made them), and posted for free on the internet. The ROM data is usually copied off of an original copy of the game….. You can put these emulators on any computer. People have made them for phones, and 3rd party handheld game systems. Well some people thought of the idea of putting the games onto computers, and then interfacing those computers with the controls/screen on an arcade machine (with the computer stored in the body of the cabinet).

Anyways, many people have made their own home made arcade cabinet (or restored an old one) and placed a MAME computer in it, and started playing arcade games on it in their home. I plan on doing this. But as I have a dream of some day opening an arcade/bar/restaurant/hangout that has classic videogames available to play…This would be illegal using this method, since the majority of those games are still licensed to the company that originally made them. I wondered if there is anyway to get a legitimate license for those classic games from those companies? None of the companies still produce the classic arcade versions of their games (several of the more popular ones are available on home console systems though), and most of the originals are badly beaten up and very expensive to get operational or outright buy.

How would one go about securing a new license for an old game, to be played on one of these MAME machines?