Normally, those cold cathodes were powered in groups of 4 off a single robot battery (or arena power). The black boxes are power and ground, IIRC. If you wanted to power them off an Arduino, you'd probably need to put in an extra power supply just for them--or have the Arduino trip a transistor as a switch.
So here is the question at hand, should I bother with them? Or is it too much of a hassle