Most people hate going to the dentist; it’s not something that you look forward to in the calendar, and I’ve never heard anyone say ‘I can’t wait to get a root canal’ ever in my life. Still, one patient recently discovered something extraordinary when they went to their local practice, happening upon an old N64 Kiosk from McDonalds.
That would have been fantastic enough for a retro gamer feeling a little nervous about having some metal tools poking around in their mouth, but it gets more puzzling. The cabinet has since been fully converted into a bona fide Xbox 360 arcade station with controllers and games at the ready. It’s like the gaming crossover we never knew we needed!
Asleep-Tumbleweed-99 who found the cabinet wrote on Reddit “Pretty cool. [Doritos Crash Course] is what I see on one of them and the other just has the scoreboard up,” explained Asleep-Tumbleweed-99. “It was for little kids in the dentist so I didn’t want to actually play it as I’m almost 30 and don’t want to seem like a creep LOL.”
‘Filling’ In The Gaps
So what’s going on here? Reddit users were confused, and to be honest so am I at this point. This thing looks like the McDonald’s N64 game cabinets but seemingly isn’t. So why is there an N64/Xbox crossover cabinet in a random dentist waiting room? Is it homemade? Has someone created gaming inception and removed all of the N64 branding, modding it themselves?
Reading in Kotaku, it seems this whole unit is something that a company called KidzPace used to sell. They made the old McDonald’s N64 units back in the day and still make games for the company today.
So there you have it; that’s the mystery solved. What Asleep-Tumbleweed-99 found on their trip to the dentist was a purpose-made cabinet from KidzPace that, while taking homage from the old cabinets they used to use, is actually a bona fide Xbox 360 cabinet designed for playing Xbox 360 games in a variety of different environments.
A rep from the company told Kotaku that an Xbox Series S cabinet will cost a business around $3,395 to buy today without shipping. I guess you’ve really got to value your customers if you want to spend that much money on your waiting room; one of these cabinets would make me run to the dentist every month!
