Midway BigGames at Big Lots - $249

[Flack]

Some of you may remember those Midway cabinets that were being sold in Target last year for $500. Apparently they didn't go over so well -- this year they're showing up at Big Lots for $249. I can confirm this, as I saw one in person today.

For those of you who haven't seen one, the cabinets are upright, but slightly scaled down. They come with a 14" monitor, which doesn't help the situation. The review I read on RetroBlast basically said the thing has a shitty monitor with shitty joysticks, shitty buttons, in a shitty cabinet. Other than that, they liked it. Here's a link to the review:

http://www.retroblast.com/Hardware/Midway-BigGames-Arcade-Cabinet.php

[Maxx]

Well... That's... Shitty...

[otaku]

bleh. I'd rather have a neo geo cab

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

a shitty monitor with shitty joysticks, shitty buttons, in a shitty cabinet
But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? :p

[diskoboy]

Stay FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR away from those things.

You have to assemble them yourself, and they are made of poor quality materials.

[vgc]

Total Garbage and made for kids. A buddy of mine bought a couple to sell last year and we put 1 together. Not bad to put together but the monitor sucks, Controls are cheap, Some games were a bit different than the originals and the cabinet is made for midgets. Do Not Buy !!!

Mike : )

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I have the Konami version, so I can't speak for the software on the midway version - but in the Konami one, it's essentially dumps of the arcade PCBs running on a Mame-on-a-chip type thing. Probably block blobs and some type of compact Pentium core.

As far as the emulation/games go - they're all highly playable and passable.

The shape and size of the cabinet reminds me of the Mr. Do mini cabinets.

And yes, all the parts and materials are "cheap" ... yet somehow sturdy and functional.

I've had mine for about a year, play it with friends on a semi-regular basis, and nothing has broken under normal button mashing games of Contra, or Hyper Sports (AKA Track & Field 2). And while the joysticks and buttons are hard-wired and there isn't much a novice can do with replacing them - the monitor on the other hand is just a standard RGB CPU monitor ... so if you want to, you can pretty easily swap it out for a nice flat screen or something bigger with minimal modifications.

$250 is a nice price IF you have NO ability and/or inclination to build a for real MAME cabinet and you're just looking for a playable "showpiece" for a game-room.

I suppose it's justifiable for arcade cabinet enthusiasts to hate on these - but, seriously, you can't find a brand new 12 game multicade cabinet for $250, can you?

[Captain Wrong]

Save yourself a lot of money: buy a Jakk's plug and play, get an old portable TV and mount it in a refrigerator box.