Tired of your kids wasting hours on games like Fortnite and PUBG? Arcade1Up is introducing a new line of extra small stand-up arcade cabinets letting kids as young as four-years-old experience the joy of retro games, minus the endless frustration thanks to updates like “Super Easy” modes and infinite lives.
Arcade1Up’s scaled-down arcade cabinets usually stand about five feet tall, allowing most adults to comfortably play them while minimising the cabinet’s footprint so it’s easier to fill a room with the machines to recreate your own personal arcade. The new Jr. cabinets are much smaller than that, standing just 36-inches tall, and are targeted at kids aged four to eight, but your mileage will vary depending on growth spurts.
Officially available starting on October 15, the cabinet features an eight-inch LCD screen paired with larger buttons and a giant ball-topped eight-way joystick designed to make playing games like Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig Dug easier for kids who have likely grown up playing games exclusively on a touchscreen or console gamepad. The best upgrade is of course the addition of easier gameplay modes and infinite lives because as anyone who cut their teeth on gaming in the ‘80s remembers, when you died, it was game over, and you restarted from the first level.
Arcade1Up also realised that Pac-Man isn’t the ideal way to sell an arcade cabinet to a four-year-old. So in addition to appealing to nostalgic retro gamers with kids, the Arcade1Up Jr. Pac-Man cabinet will be followed by an Arcade1Up Jr. Paw Patrol cabinet available on November 15 that comes pre-installed with three games: Paw Patrol Pups on the Go, Paw Patrol Chase is in a Race, and Paw Patrol Off Duty.
Unlike Arcade1Up’s other machines, both of the Jr. cabinets come fully assembled out of the box and simply need a power cord to be plugged in, and will retail for $US280 ($386) each — stool included!