Forget that fistful of coins – you won’t need them, as we’re checking out the best home arcade machines to buy! Every video game obsessed kid, who grew up in the 80s and 90s, wanted their own arcade machine. Now those kids are adults, many of whom have enough disposable income to make that dream a reality.
Home arcade machines are big business now, with plenty of fully licensed machines on offer alongside others that offer emulation-based solutions. They come in various sizes, but most try to replicate the authentic arcade experience (take a look at our list of the best arcade games for thoughts on our favourite cabinets of all time!) as closely as possible. Which are the best though?
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1. AtGames Legend Ultimate
We have had the AtGames Legends Ultimate Arcade Machine since July 2023 and we’re not kidding when we say this gets played on every single week.
With 300 pre-loaded games to play on straight out of the box, and being equipped with some incredibly high quality controls, there’s a reason why we rated it a 9/10 in our dedicated review.
The arcade machine features a 24″ HD LCD display, wrapped in a premium wood shell with a mini-PC hidden inside. It sits 170cm high and comes dismantled in a single box, a bit like an IKEA flat packed box, making it easy to get through your door, or even in the back of you car.
At first we were worried that a flat packed arcade cabinet would feel cheap, but its very much the opposite and comes with a bunch of cool graphics on each side too.
When you turn on the device you will be greeted with a simple UI to access the pre-loaded arcade games. Because it’s a PC there’s WiFi to and Bluetooth capabilities which opens up cloud streaming, real streaming (Twitch, Facebook & YouTube) over the internet updates, and the ability to sync up bluetooth controllers.
You can even install your own games too! The buttons are beautiful too play on across many different arcade games. The stick itself is strong, yet flexible, the buttons bouncy, clicky yet responsive, and the metal spinners… hot dang they are fun! This is an incredibly well-round modern day arcade machine that’s perfect for game rooms, garages and any general home.
2. Bitcade Arcade Xtreme
We had the opportunity to test the Bitcade Arcade Xtreme for almost an entire month. We put it to the test playing classic games and we experienced what the delivery process would be like for an ordinary customer.
To my surprise the delivery was incredibly easy. The Bitcade Arcade Xtreme is designed to fit through normal sized doors, even when completely wrapped in protective bubble wrap, and because the cabinet has wheels on the bottom, it simply wheeled into my living room with ease.
The Bitcade Arcade Cabinet plugs straight into any normal wall socket, and after turning it on, all you have to do is wait 30 seconds for the internal Windows PC to boot and automatically pulls you into the cabinet’s custom operating system.
This OS is fairly easy to understand, even if I do think it needs a modernised overhaul, but that said all of your games are easy accessible, and can be favourited and organised to make access a little quicker the next time you boot it up. Gameplay is close to flawless and loads quickly. 90% of games are playable as soon as its setup, allowing friends and family to jump onto the cabinet with zero “training”.
Some games do require you to map some keys, or access a link on your computer/mobile for specific instructions, because remember this is running on a Windows PC, so key mapping, gun calibration and more is required for some games to function properly. The Bitcade Xtreme features a large 27″ display, official Sanwa buttons and joysticks to give you an authentic experience, it also has a very loud and basey 80-watt sound system alongside two arcade guns with recoil to completely immerse you!
The display has a great brightness to it, and features a matte finish (so face it away from windows), the buttons are incredibly high quality and I had no issues with them at all, they felt incredibly nostalgic, the same goes for the Ultimarc Trackball.
The overall quality of the materials used is sturdy, I tried picking at corners, smashing buttons, and pushing the screen aggressively but nothing would budge, so I can confidently say that this is child-proof should you be looking to use it as a family entertainment system.
It’s close to perfect, but I do have some negative comments to make. One of them is regarding the low quality controller that comes with it to manoeuvre around the Windows OS and to do simple things like turn up/down/mute the volume.
This should be built into the cabinet, or feature extra buttons on the cabinet to adjust the volume controls, it looks bad that this £2,000+ comes with a £15 controller to assist with this. I get it, there’s no simple way to get around the WIndows OS with arcade buttons, but this one does have a trackball so you’d think some software engineers could have got that to work?
The same goes for the on/off switch, it’s located at the back of the cabinet near the floor, so if you want to turn off your cabinet the right way, you have to pull out the entire unit or turn it off by the wall which can’t be good for the computer over the long run, and feels unnatural doing so.
A cabinet of this price should have a easily located on/off switch… A part from that, I loved every day with this thing, it’s a beast, it just needs a little extra work to be perfect.
3. Quarter Arcades
These gorgeous mini-replicas are exactly what they’re named as: arcade machines at a quarter of the size of the real thing. As with the Arcade 1up machines, these Quarter Arcades take the original designs of the actual cabinets and shrink them down to a more manageable size.
However, unlike the Arcade 1up Collectorcades, for example, they are correctly scaled – which means the controls can feel a little fiddly in practice due to their minuscule size. There’s no denying just how good these machines look though. We’ve been able to test the Dig Dug machine here at Retro Dodo Towers – and it’s made us feel warmly nostalgic to catch a glimpse of it, even when it isn’t turned on!
They also play the original arcade ROM via an onboard emulator – which also allows you access to dip switches for flexibility over the game’s settings. Though, yes, we have focused on the Dig Dug machine, Numskull have produced quite a wide range of machines, many licensed by Namco – including Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man and Galaga – but have also branched out to Taito titles including Bubble Bobble.
Bubble Bobble features in a beautifully designed, bespoke cabinet, created especially for the Quarter Arcade version, as a dedicated Bubble Bobble design never actually existed upon release!
Space Invaders machines – which mimic the clever ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ mirror illusion screen setup of original cabinets – are also on the way in the second half of 2023.
Read our full review: Quarter Arcades TMNT Cabinet.
4. SEGA Astro City Mini V
As Yoda says to Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back: size matters not.
Though not intended to replicate the experience of owning a full size arcade machine, the SEGA Astro City Mini V does faithfully reproduce the look of their iconic 90s Astro City cabinet, albeit at ⅙ of its actual size! Not only does it look the part, but this portable device contains a superb selection of stunning SEGA titles – 37 games overall!
There’s both 2D and 3D games from the 80s and 90s, with classics such as Space Harrier and Shinobi alongside what is probably the headline inclusion: pioneering 3D fighting game Virtua Fighter. There’s a really good number of more obscure titles that you may not have heard of too – puzzle games Tant-R and Ichidant-R, for example – with a good selection of genres on offer.
Perhaps best of all is that the SEGA Astro City Mini V also has HDMI out, so you can play these SEGA classics and hidden gems on the biggest screen you own! These are now hard to get, so we advise checking eBay for the best prices.
