Arcade Mini Cabinets Got Playable In the Last ~5 Years

When I was younger, they were always trash...they had crappy screens and even less usable controls; they were sized stupidly; they ran on batteries and had abysmal run time...more of a novelty than something a person can play.

That changed in the past several years, apparently. The first one that I bought that felt playable was the SNK Neo Geo Mini; I now have three variants of this mini cab, each with slightly different game load outs offering a combined total of 65 unique Neo Geo games. Way more than I own for actual Neo Geo, but I digress. It didn't take long to be able to play through Fatal Fury or Samurai Shodown on the controls pictured. Plus, this one has HDMI out and ports for control pads, so a person can play it on their TV/desktop monitor.

I picked up a Sega Astro City Mini from Limited Run Games when those were still available. I bought it for Virtua Fighter, because apparently I like fighting games, and it was worth it for that alone. Several other games on it are a lot of fun, too, but it's mostly games that I never played. Guess that's what I get for being both American and too young to have really gone to arcades. The controls on it handle as well as a full size cabinet, though, which is impressive. This also has HDMI out and ports for control pads, however, the pads are expensive so I don't have one.

Earlier this year, I bought the first (of a few - I may post a family pic later) cabinet from My Arcade, their Atari one. Was impressed enough with the controls that I gambled on their big Street Fighter II Champion Edition mini cab and...fuck, I'm glad that I did. It's nice looking, and it's a lot of fun to play. Right down to the frustrating af CPU-controlled characters spamming the same move constantly (I'm looking at you, Ryu, and your Hadouken.) The stick on the SFII cab looks a little flimsy, but it holds up fine under use and the buttons are spaced just right for actual playing. You can hook two of them together, so if you happen to have a buddy with one, you can go head to head on the arcade controls, which is a cool feature.

All of the My Arcade ones will run on batteries, but they also run on USB power, which I strongly prefer. The Sega and SNK ones will only run on USB power, which is fine by me.

Next on my list, assuming I can make it happen, is a Taito Egret II Mini. Worth the price of admission for Volfied alone, in my opinion. I'm going to skip the Sega Astro City Mini V, though - not enough games on it that I want to play to justify the purchase price. And My Arcade still has a couple things I want as well.

I'm really committed to having better arcade games at home than my employer has in their break areas, not gonna lie.