Sega’s Astro City Mini is a tiny arcade cabinet
We may soon be reaching Peak Mini Retro Console. After the excellent Genesis/Mega Drive Mini and the baffling Game Gear Micro, Sega has unveiled an even more improbable product: meet the Astro City Mini.
For those unfamiliar with the original Astro City, it wasn’t a platform per se but a specific sit-down arcade cabinet that operators could buy and install one of a huge variety of game boards inside. Sega developed a whole range of “City” cabinets, with 1993’s Astro City proving to be by far the most ubiquitous and iconic. They’re still a very common sight in Japanese arcades.
As such, the Astro City Mini comes preloaded with a bunch of Sega arcade games. There’ll be 36 in total, and here are the confirmed titles so far, via Game Watch:
- Alien Syndrome
- Alien Storm
- Golden Axe
- Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder
- Columns II
- Dark Edge
- Puzzle & Action: Tant-R
- Virtua Fighter
- Fantasy Zone
- Altered Beast
The Astro City Mini looks like a shrunken-down arcade cabinet, similar to the Neo Geo Mini. Unlike that system, though, Sega says that the stick uses proper microswitches, so it should be a lot more satisfying to use. There’s an HDMI-out on the back as well as two USB-A ports, a Micro USB port, and a headphone jack. Unfortunately, there’s no word on whether it’ll have a built-in battery.
The Astro City Mini is set for a release in Japan around the end of the year, and it’ll cost 12,800 yen (about $120.)
We may soon be reaching Peak Mini Retro Console. After the excellent Genesis/Mega Drive Mini and the baffling Game Gear Micro, Sega has unveiled an even more improbable product: meet the Astro City Mini. For those unfamiliar with the original Astro City, it wasn’t a platform per se but a…
