Villordsutch reviews My Arcade’s Micro Player Retro Arcade cabinets…
The idea of having a classic arcade cabinet in your own home is often (for myself especially) mere pie in the sky. It would be excellent to actually own the original Pac-Man or Dig Dug cabinet and have it in our collective dining rooms, but would our significant others appreciate a 6ft high, blocker of space in their lives and homes? Possibly not. It’s due to this the people over at My Arcade have released their latest line-up of Micro Player Retro Arcade cabs, each housing a classic Bandai Namco title, and we should be saying a very big “Thank You” for this.
With five classic titles already on the shelves, you can now pick-up Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaga, Mappy and Galaxian, and there’s also a sixth one in the wings ready to land but that title’s being held close to their chests at this current moment. As you can see, My Arcade have gone for the sure fire winners. Though that doesn’t necessarily make these machines the greatest things since sliced bread though does it? Well, you may be surprised to read the those behind these Micro Players haven’t just aimed at your heart and purse strings here.
The first thing you’ll notice when you take a Micro Player out of the box is the weight of the unit; yes it is portable, but weighing in at 314 grams (without batteries) means you won’t be tucking it into your pockets any time soon. Not only this, but the weight is spread out across the base and along with the rubber non-slip runners on either side of each Micro Player, they won’t be sliding around. Now if you add the 4xAA batteries in (though it can run off a micro-USB, not supplied), the weight is bumped up to a substantial 407 grams and now you know your Galaga session isn’t going to be bothered come a ‘Challenging Stage’, because the Micro Players feet are going to be firmly placed on the ground.
The real winners however come in the form of both the display screen and the buttons. I honestly expected the screen to be the the weakest part here, but it’s absolutely beautiful for these classic games. It’s amazingly clear and you cannot help but to be impressed with what My Arcade have placed within these retro replicas. The same with the buttons – each press returns with a refreshing ‘click’, you know you’ve pressed a button here and it feels good. There is even the option to remove the mini-joystick from the D-Pad, but for the life of me I can’t think why you’d ever want to do that.
New meets old electronic gaming
Turning our attention to the obvious reason why you’d buy these units – the games themselves. Recently I’ve been playing a fair bit of Galaga, both classic and Bandai Namco’s new mobile release, so I was more than eager to see how it would appear on the My Arcade Micro Player. From the opening volley it was spot on! To say I was smiling like a Cheshire Cat would have been an understatement. Each officially licensed game is beautifully replicated on these portable devices, to the point where you may pause a few seconds to actually wonder how they’re delivering it on this hardware so well.
With the screen, buttons and decals surrounding this weighty micro-player these machines are excellent, though there are a couple of loose ends I’d like to have seen tied up. Take Galaga for instance; here you can only move along the left and right, yet I have a D-Pad with the up and down still available; if they can take the ‘fire button’ off for Pac-Man could they not make the same cosmetic change for this? It would have been nice to have a visual display when you used the volume control, instead of the “click and listen”. Lastly, there was also slight bubbling on the main panel decals, which with a bit of pushing was sorted, but with everything else looking so good to miss this bit of minor ‘finishing touches’ is a bit strange.
How big are the arcade cabinets? Well here’s 10p for scale.
This all being said these are mere minor wants and gripes, and when it comes down to it the My Acrade Micro Players are just fantastic, even more so when you know that these are priced at just under £30 on Amazon UK. If you, like myself, are a lover of the classic games or if you know anyone who labels themselves proudly as a ‘Retrogamer’ then I would serious consider picking up one of My Arcade’s Micro Players right about now!
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Originally published October 24, 2018. Updated February 2, 2020.
