Mi Arcade es Su Arcade

Hand-burger.

Heck, at the current price, My Arcade can be just about anyone's arcade! Wal-Mart is selling the Micro Player series of tiny arcade cabinets for as little as five dollars each, and while the hardware is nothing special, you can't argue with the price. Better yet, some models of the Micro Player can be modified to play six different games. Take home a Dig Dug and with roughly an hour of work, it can become a Galaxian, a Pac-Man, or even a Rolling Thunder. (Good luck playing that with just one action button, though.)

I won't lie... these teeny weeny arcade machinies aren't perfect. All of them are built with a combination joystick/d-pad that's awkward to use, and the Burgertime cabinet in particular is a mess, with off-key sound effects, fidgety control, and hamburger patties with a stomach-turning green pallor. The Data East games in general are a pass; hapless NES conversions of arcade titles that look about as appealing in 2019 as those old, cold, and so very full of mold Burgertime patties. But the Namco games, yeah, I'd take home one of those. In fact, I did, and will likely get another if I can figure out how to hack it.

While at Wal-Mart, I also grabbed an Atari Flashback 9 for eleven dollars. It's more economical than buying a real Atari 2600 and hooking that up to your modern television set, but the Flashback's price is reflected in its build quality. The joysticks are especially frustrating, adding unwanted challenge to the outer space battles in Yar's Revenge. It would be swell if you could replace the sticks with a Sega Genesis gamepad, but despite having the same 9-pin connectors, you can't... the system ignores most of that controller's input. Like how AtGames ignores the pleas of its quality assurance testers.

You can't even use the paddles designed for an Atari 2600 because the ohm values are different, forcing you to open the Flashback 9 and replace the resistors inside it to achieve the compatibility that should have been there in the first place. You bought a game system, but you took home an electronics project! Better warm up that soldering iron!

You've gotta hand it to AtGames. They're selling an eleven dollar game system that still makes you feel like you didn't get your money's worth.