I saw one of these at Costco last weekend, but it was the $2000 Ultimate Arcade (basically MAME Arcade). But the smaller and relatively cheaper “My Big Games Arcade Cabinet” would work out nice as a Christmas gift or such. I spent much less, mind you, building my own full size cabinet. But mine has been taking forever for lack of time, and still isn’t done yet. And this size would be perfect for say a young child who currently needs a step stool to play correctly. Costco had a number of different ones… but under $500 they had ones for Konami, one for Midway and a Midway Bar Top one.
While it might be a tad early for our annual Holiday Gift Guide, this seemed interesting enough to merit a post. Big Electronic Games has begun to sell what looks to be “4/5″-scale or so arcade cabinets, each containing a mix of classic games. The company began selling two versions in October, in both Target and a few specialty stores: a Konami classic cabinet, and one that includes the beer hall favorite, “Golden Tee”. The Konami cabinet includes: Frogger, Blades of Steel, Green Beret, Contra, Gyruss, Castlevania, Hyper Sports, Time Pilot ’84, Shao-Lins Road, Jungler, Scramble, and Super Basketball. Each cabinet — the Konami combo cabinet and the “Golden Tee” cabinet — will be sold individually for about $499 (less at Costco). In today’s world, where MAME cabinets and (illegal) game ROMs mean that playing older games is relatively trivial, the appeal here is the cabinet itself, with a genuine joystick and buttons. Obviously, there are ExtremeTech guides available for building your own MAME cabinet, but if you’re the type of person that doesn’t really want to spend Christmas Eve with a hammer, jigsaw, soldering gun, and a really big vat of eggnog, this might be for you.
powered by performancing firefox
Tags: Gaming, Interesting, MAME, Toy, Wishlist
I can’t wait until I can afford to get one of these cool arcade systems for myself. I wasted so much time as a kid on them, and just love to relive those memories.