Relive your misspent youth with this cutesified gaming equipment that actually is smaller than you remember
Evercade VS
While most retro gaming devices take the form of a console with games built into the hardware, the Evercade VS takes a slightly different approach. It isn’t devoted to a single gaming platform or company, but instead offers an entirely new cartridge-based console. That means you have to pick up and plug in a cartridge to play a game – just like back in the day. There are eight vintage arcade games included in the pack, but what the Evercade VS really offers is a chance to continually top up your game library with widely available, fairly affordable, boxed cartridge releases that typically contain several games from different publishers that defined gaming’s past. A couple of options even include modern indie games. The main unit and the controllers perform well – but we found this isn’t as physically lavish as some other options here. As the cart library continues to expand – and with the VS supporting up to four simultaneous players – it really is an amazingly distinct option in 2022.
£89.99, evercade.co.uk
Bubble Bobble Quarter-Scale Arcade Cabinet
The Quarter Arcade range is made up of 1:4 scale working replicas of classic arcade cabinets from the 1970s and 1980s. There’s just one game on each diminutive unit and the line-up includes Space Invaders, Galaga, Dig Dug, Galaxian and the greedy action puzzlers Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man. We opted to try out Bubble Bobble, however. The game itself is superb, and performs pretty authentically. But playing it on such a tiny screen with a minuscule (and good-quality) joystick and buttons is truly great fun – although possibly not the best way to master Bubble Bobble, admittedly.
What most impressed us though is the glorious detail and quality of the cabinet.
From the artwork enveloping its wooden construction and the warm, glowing light it emits, to all the amazing details (such the light-up coin return buttons on the front), as seen on the real thing. Everything about it is just right but at charming scale.
The Bubble Bobble Quarter Arcade, then, is perhaps more of a gloriously detailed, nostalgic, functional display piece than a perfect gaming machine. And we love it all the more for that.
£149.99, numskull.com
SEGA Mega Drive Mini
Recent years have seen a boom in ‘microconsoles’ and SEGA’s Mega Drive Mini is one of the best. It’s an almost unbearably cute miniaturised version of SEGA’s iconic console. Small enough to easily sit in one palm, the delightfully detailed reproduction exists to provide access to a library of classic games. When it comes to retro gaming, you can’t beat original hardware hooked up to an old TV, but that takes money and space. With the Mega Drive Mini, you pop in a power cord, connect it to a modern screen with an HDMI cable, fire it up and a library of 42 built-in games appears before you. Most are hits like Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter II, Golden Axe and Tetris, but there are a handful of brilliant, lesser-known cult titles too, such as Gunstar Heroes and Thunder Force III.
£69.99, megadrivemini.sega.com
A500 Mini
Thanks to the Amiga’s status as a home computer, many a kid in the early 1990s tried to convince their parents that owning one was the future of homework. We all knew what we were up to, though – Amigas were sublime gaming machines. And at the start of this year, the most famous Amiga model, the A500, got the microconsole treatment. As with SEGA’s scaled-down Mega Drive, convenience and cuteness also define the diminutive A500 Mini, which contains 25 games covering all manner of genres. You also get an Amiga-inspired gamepad and an amazing reproduction of the computer’s beloved, blocky ‘tank mouse’, which you can even use with a modern computer. Our highlight games included Zool, Worms, Pinball Dreams, Kick Off 2 and The Chaos Engine. Alas, the diminutive keyboard isn’t functional, being merely for show. But you do get surprisingly nostalgic packaging – we adored the ring-bound manual, the same as found in Amiga boxes all those years ago.
£119.99, Retrogames.biz
SEGA Astro City Mini
Devotees to arcade culture – and the few remaining arcades out there still offering gaming in return for loose change – will certainly know about the original Astro City. The 1993 arcade cabinet put in years of service hosting some of SEGA’s most popular coin-op games. Well, now it’s available at 1:6 scale and packed with games from SEGA’s arcade history. There are some hits among the 37 included, but we found the list of titles almost reads more like an archive of SEGA’s arcade history. Many will gravitate to the likes of Virtua Fighter, Space Harrier or Altered Beast, but you also get curios like the extremely minimal Dottori Kun; a game sold with normally empty arcade cabinets in Japan to help sidestep a curious tax law that targeted gambling machines. The built-in screen means the Astro City Mini can be played without a TV, but for us it was a bit much to try and play anything deftly in such a small space.
£129.99, funstock.co.uk