If you grew up when I did, you may have dreamed about owning your own arcade. I certainly did. This was back when people actually went to arcades (they were everywhere) to pump quarters into games like Missile Command, Major Havoc, Tempest, Robotron, Defender, and Pac Man. These days, anyone can have arcade-quality games in their home – by buying either a PC or one of the many consoles out there. Heck, you can even buy a joystick that contains one to a dozen old arcade hits.
But something’s missing from these games, good as they are: the old stand-up arcade experience. I was in Target today and I saw one of these. It’s one of the 12-in-one arcade games that you could buy in joystick form, but it’s in its own arcade cabinet!
Target had it plugged in, though it was sitting a bit precariously on a shelf with some televisions. It’s got a built-in monitor and speakers, two joysticks, and an assortment of buttons. And it’s got a price tag of $499.99 (which I didn’t actually discover until getting home and looking the machine up on Target’s web site).
![[Little arcade machine!]](http://rickandpatty.com/blogfiles/littlearcade.jpg "Little arcade machine!")
I had a little time to play with the unit before my wife dragged me away, kicking and screaming.
The machine is a little … small for adult players. Its size is about the size of one of those mini Neo-Geo arcade systems you might find in a Pizza Hut. The monitor, though, is tiny. The cabinet is the right proportions for an arcade cabinet, but in a real arcade machine most of the space is taken up by the screen. In this cabinet, it’s almost as if the screen is hiding out at the bottom, hoping you won’t notice it. Also, almost all old arcade games have the screen mounted so that the long side of the screen is vertical and the short axis is horizontal. This cabinet has the screen mounted as if it’s a television, which means that most of the games included in the unit would have to be modified to fit the screen size. One of the big pluses of having an arcade cabinet is supposed to be playing the games as they were meant to be played – or so I thought.
The quality of the screen was also disappointing. It didn’t have that crisp look that a real arcade machine would – or even that a television hooked up with an S-video or composite cable does. Some of the displays looked blurry and were hard to read. Whether the machine was improperly assembled or whether tht’s just the quality of the machine I don’t know.
The buttons felt flimsy. They would have felt more at home on a game of Simon than on an arcade machine.
That “Big Electronic Games Limited”logo on the front is also very cheesy. Less self-promotion, more game art, please! (After all, the folks this is aimed at will track down the product!). I wonder if that is a sticker that can be left off or removed.
The actual games seemed pretty faithful to their original arcade versions, aside from the screen issue. I tried out Sinistar (at which I still, after all these years, suck) and Rampage and they at least looked familiar. The small blurry screen hurt Sinistar more than Rampage. The games included are Joust, Defender I and II, Robotron, Rampage, Splat, Satan’s Hollow, Tapper, Bubbles, Wizard of Wor, Timber, and Sinistar.
As much fun as the nostalgia factor is, though, I’d have to say that a better experience can be had by just buying a onsole and a couple of the classic game collections that are available for the Playstation, PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube. You’ll get more games and, provided you don’t hook your console up to a Watchman, you’ll actually be able to see them. Five hundred dollars will buy you a console and all the classic game collections (much more thn twelve games) with money to spare.
Now when these go on clearance and are half off, it might be another matter entirely. But for now, having a stand-up arcade cabinet in my house will have to remain a childhood dream.
These are NOT the original arcade versions of these games, although “Big Electronic Games” is representing that they are indeed the ‘arcade versions’. This fact is glaringly obvious when playing Rampage & Tapper (these barely look better than the NES versions).
Again, these games are not emulated (like MAME), they are poorly reproduced.
Some reviewers are blaming the poor graphics on the sub-par monitor, but this is not the case. The game sounds are pretty cheesy, too.
The only game that passes for the original arcade version is Robotron.
These games don’t look OR feel like the original games. Very disappointing, as I was looking forward to getting one of these. The games feel even less authentic than the remakes that you’ll find in those 20-in-1 joysticks.
Unless you’re buying this thing just for the diminutive arcade cabinet-shaped case and tiny monitor, beware.
I only had a chance to play with the little arcade machine for about five minutes, and part of that five minutes was moving it back on the shelf so it didn’t fall down.
I played Sinistar for a few minutes (enough for Sinistar to kill me), and got through the title screens in Rampage before I had to leave.
I don’t remember hearing Sinsitar actually say anything, but the part of the store I was in was blaring Target commercials so loudly I couldn’t hear much of the game sound anyway.
The main thing that gets me about the machine is that it feels so cheaply made – and for games that any classics enthusiast already owns about ten times over, I cvertainly don’t think it’s worth $500. (In addition to MAME, how many systems have these games come out for?)
I guess I should have tried Robotron, but I’ve always preferred Jeff Minter’s remake to the original anyhow. 🙂
Well, I was back in Target again today and had a chance to play Robotron for a couple of minutes. The machine was on a more swtable spot this time and the volume on the “great wall of TVs” was turned down so I could actually hear the sound.
Robotron seemed to be a servicable port of the game, and the two-joystickl play worked well. The sound was okay, though you certainly wouldn’t mistake it for a machine that sat in an arcade in the eighties (there was little bass). Small unit, small sound, I guess.
The controls on the machine might be more durable than I thought. Before I got there, a kid was hanging off of the joysticks much like little kids tended to do back in the eighties. The machine appeared undamaged by this. THat’s a good sign.
I was wrong on the price. In-store, at least, the price is $449.99. A little better, but still quite pricey.
My comments on the small screen still stand – it’s small, low quality, and turned in the wrong direction for an arcade machine. Classic arcade games shouldn’t be blurry and show visible dot crawl. (I wonder if, internally, the system is a “console” hooked up to the television via a composite cable?