We had been eyeing up a Quarter Arcades mini arcade cabinet for some time, so when NumskullDesigns offered to send a review unit of their officially licensed Quarter Arcades Pac-Man mini arcade cabinet along to us, we weren’t going to say no. After all, we are big Pac-Man fans and who could resist?
Upon opening the outer shipping box you are met with a high quality printed box, with Pac-Man logos, coin-op side art and details of the contents. This one was also emblazoned with its ‘Collector Edition’ credentials, one of a limited run of 10,000 apparently – very nice indeed. This also meant that the contents included a Pac-Man collectible coin in its own display box and a certificate of authenticity with the units serial number listed.
Inside the box, the cabinet is well protected and safely nestled in a bag between two pieces of foam top and bottom. The top piece of foam also holds the display box containing the collectible coin. Remove the bag and foam and you get an instant ‘honey I shrunk the Pac-Man’ moment as the cabinet is revealed in all it’s scaled down, highly detailed glory. The effect of seeing such a perfectly reproduced, but diminutive cab on an arcade fanatic like myself cannot be understated – I was totally unprepared for the level of detail employed.
The Quarter Arcades Pac-Man mini arcade cabinet has a stunning level of detail, more than I certainly expected. Just look at those little screws on the marquee retainer, or the ventilation grills on the back of the cab – just lovely.
The wooden cabinet, bezel, control panel and side art are so well reproduced on this machine that if you took a photo of it with a blank background you would have to look carefully to distinguish it from the real thing. Even the t-moulding has been glued round the side panels as a separate piece!
The cabinet has a rechargeable lithium battery and once charged via its micro USB port can play for around 4 hours. Press the rocker switch on the rear of the unit and you are met with a Numskull splash screen followed by the Pac-Man game booting with authentic hardware test screens. A new game is started by adding credits – just press a coin reject button on the coin box to add 25c (or 10p if you are from the UK) then press the one or two player buttons on the control panel and away you go. The tiny 4-way stick is surprising easy to use, despite its size. This makes playing Pac-Man on here way more fun than on my full size Jamma cab using an 8-way stick which are notoriously bad for 4-way games such as this.
The 5 inch screen is bright and colourful and the sound (with volume control on the rear) is clear and plenty loud enough for most situations.
Further cabinets have been released or are due for release as listed below:
- Galaga – out now
- Galaxian – out now
- Ms Pac-Man – out now
- 40th Anniversary Pac-Man – August 2020
- Dig Dug – October 2020
- Bubble Bobble – December 2020
- Space Invaders – December 2020
- Track and Field – February 2021
In Summary
Whether you are looking for the ultimate hit of nostalgia (short of getting a full size original cab) or just want an accurate, playable model of your favourite arcade cabs of yesteryear, these are for you.
The accuracy and detail of modelling in these is simply stunning and nothing could look better on a collector’s shelves than a Quarter Arcades cabinet. The fact you can take them off those shelves and play them is just the icing on the cake. Do yourself a favour and take a look at their range of mini arcade cabinets using the link below.
See the full range of Quarter Arcades cabinets here: http://www.numskull.com/quarter-arcades/