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My Arcade packs retro classics into pint-sized arcade cabinets

If you would rather not play retro games on your cell phone, but the idea of building your own arcade cabinet seems like a little too much effort, we might have just the thing for you. We caught up with My Arcade at the company’s booth on the CES 2018 show floor and took a look at its mini-arcade cabinets, which just saw a new batch of games announced.

The mini-arcade cabinets aren’t brand new, as it has been selling models based on a number of Data East games like Burger Time, Heavy Barrel, Caveman Ninja, Karate Champ, and the classic Bad Dudes. Just in time for CES, the company announced a new licensing deal with Bandai Namco that will see My Arcade selling a mini-arcade cabinet carrying the popular Pac-Man.

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In addition to Pac-Man, the Bandai Namco licensing deal will see My Arcade selling cabinets featuring Galaga, Galaxian, Dig-Dug, Rolling Thunder, and Mappy. These models are expected to go on sale in May or June, and while a price hasn’t yet been finalized, My Arcade is planning to sell the cabinets for $35 a piece.

At least some of the cabinets were handmade for the show, like the Pac-Man cabinet, which eagle-eyed retro gamers may notice doesn’t look like the original. My Arcade says when the actual product is released, it will be yellow, like the original arcade machine.

Mini-arcade cabinets aren’t the only product My Arcade sells. The company was also showing a number of handheld units. Some of these hold a single game, while others are multi-game packages. One prototype the company was showing was another product of the recent deal with Bandai Namco, allowing the company to cram Pac-Man, Pac-Man 2, and Pac-Mania, as well as possibly one or two others. There is no release date for this specific package, although the price is expected to be fairly close to the mini-arcade cabinets.

That’s far from all that My Arcade sells, so if you’re interested in retro games but maybe not interested enough to try to track down a SNES Classic, check out the company’s website.

Kris Wouk
Former Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
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