I’ve dug my heels deep into this new “home arcade hobby.” over the past year or so. (Warning : long post)
When I first saw these in Walmart around launch, I dismissed them. Pint-sized, Street fighter clones? Cool, but I wasn’t interested at all. My basement wasn’t finished either and I had no space. Fast forward a year or so to 2019, before the pandemic and TMNT dropped. I was very interested and got it at Walmart. I was dealing with my Dad and personal stuff around that time, and couldn’t put it together, so I kept it in the box for half a year or so. Flash forward to 2021, I’ve owned 9 of them in total, trading or selling 3 of them along the way. They multiply like gremlins. I own TMNT, Golden Axe, Star Wars, Burgertime, Ms. PAC Man cocktail, Attack From Mars. I’ve owned Golden Tee, MvC, and Outrun, either selling them or trading them. They take me an average of 2 hours to put them together without power tools. Think of it like advanced placement IKEA. Hard to put together, but not impossible. Their build quality isn’t the greatest, but if it’s just you and your family or buddies, it works fine. I also own a custom pi made to look like a Neo Geo with over 2k arcade games, including all Neo Geo games. It runs PGM , Cave, psikyo, and IG stuff.
Overall thoughts on Arcade 1ups:
Pros:
-Gives you the real arcade feel, even though they’re 3/4 scale
-easy to mod if you’re into that, with an active modding community (check out Kongs r us on YouTube)
-If you’re into these, you’re getting on the ground floor of a new movement in retro gaming.
-Easy to move around
-Less footprint for people with limited space
-parts are easier to get and swap out vs OG arcade games
-WiFi with stable connections, free and lots of players (on MvC at least)
-Growing community of collectors and players on Facebook and Reddit
-Quite a few personalities covering them on YouTube
-Sell fast used and for close to (or often times more) on secondary markets like Facebook marketplace, Reddit, OfferUp, and Craigslist.
-Themed cabinets with multiple games
-will probably be collectible, they usually sell out in hours.
Cons
-Build quality doesn’t hold up or compare to OG cabs
-price spikes in recent months up to 40% pricing them out of range as “affordable arcades at home”
-only a small handful have WiFi play or for updates. You have to have a PC and flash them. (Can’t use a Mac)
-4 player cabs are pretty tight for 4 adults
-Company’s terrible at communication
-Customer service used to be bad, it’s gotten slightly better.
-known issues and bugs in early gen 1 games and Attack from Mars. A patch is coming, but you need a PS4 controller cable and a PC.
-inconsistent variants with little communication about when and where to get them. (Super pac man at Costco for example).
-Pre orders sell out very fast - the FOMO is strong with this one.
-Cabs can be very limited and disappear, never to be reprinted (Star Wars, TMNT, and Burgertime are examples) and skyrocket in price
-Can be pitas to put together
Check them out, especially anything 2019 and newer. You might be surprised. Arcade purists might think they’re posuer cabs, but they’re making them better each year.
Without going too much into detail, they’re competitors are Atgames, which is more of an engineering company that makes kitchen sink products like a commercial multicade called the legends ultimate than relys on roms snd coinopsx. A 4 player deck is coming soon. And Legends pinball, which is light on licensed games, but big on value with expandibility and features like 1080p display, weekly wifi updates, DLC, and leaderboards. If you $ or space for only 1 v pin, this is the one to get.
Then there’s unico, which makes the MVSX. Think of it as if arcade 1up made a Neo cab. With 50 games, most of them fighters, and coming in at a lower price than most new 1ups, it’s s better value than most 1ups. I don’t have it, (a friend does) but it plays well, but has small real estate for your hands, and with the hylo stick hack, play the entire library of Neo games.
Then there’s the iiRcade. It’s a commercial multicade with WiFi and DLC. It has Sega and data East, and dotemu on board for licenses. It plays modern games as well as classics. It is said to be well built with sanwa sticks and buttons and 100 watt sound. It has a variety of designs, ranging from double dragon to dragons lair.
That’s about all all I have to say for now. I have X-men on order from Target and space ace iiRcade coming in the next few months.
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