The Arcade 1Up lets you enjoy the Simpsons afresh

Owning your own old style video game arcade is now reality.

For gamers of a certain age, memories of visiting a video game arcade bring back fond recollections – lights, colours, and of course the rows of arcade game cabinets themselves.

Owning your own video game arcade was a fever dream back in the day, but as the children of the 80s and 90s became established in careers and TV shows, there’s been more interest in acquiring arcade machines for home use.

Buying original arcade machines is an expensive and time consuming exercise, but there are now companies, notably Arcade 1Up, who have stepped in to provide a more practical solution for people wanting a video game arcade experience at home.

The Arcade 1Up system is basically a ¾ sized arcade cabinet, with a modern LED display screen and running officially licensed versions of classic arcade games from the 1980s and 1990s.

There are several machines available at present; the latest one, and subject of this review, is The Simpsons, a 1991 side-scrolling beat-‘em-up game developed by Konami and considered one of the great arcade classics.

Arcade 1Up Simpsons game

The Arcade 1Up units are of wooden construction sent flat packed and can be easily assembled in around an hour with a screwdriver and an allen key. When fully assembled, the cabinet measures 150cm high x 81cm wide and 64cm deep, and comes with an optional riser to add about another 30cm to that, for playing the game while standing instead of sitting. It weighs about 27kg so it can be moved around without too much trouble.

I’m not going to review The Simpsons Arcade Game itself. It’s a 30 year old arcade game; the plot is basically that Smithers has kidnapped Maggie after a jewel heist and it’s up to Marge, Homer, Bart and Lisa to rescue her. But I will say it’s still as fun now as it was when I was a teenager.

Setting up the cabinet itself was pretty straightforward. The instructions were easy to follow and if you’ve ever assembled your own furniture from anywhere like Ikea or Officeworks, you will find it a familiar experience. The build quality is good, it looks great when assembled, and the unit was solid with no wobbling or noticeable gaps when I put it together.

There was also a tin sign in the box, along with a stool which can be assembled for something to sit on.

Unlike the original arcade cabinets, which had a CRT monitor, large circuit board, and the coin operation mechanism in them, the Arcade 1Up cabinet has a 17in LED display screen and behind that is the CPU and Wi-Fi equipment. The marquee on top lights up, which is a nice touch, and the fake coin slots also really add to the excellent presentation of the unit in generally. An On/Off switch, volume control and headphone jack round out the modern additions to the cabinet design.

Arcade 1Up Simpsons game

The screen is bright, the image is clear, and the speakers in the cabinet do the job quite well; there’s a slightly better audio experience from plugging in headphones.

The Arcade 1Up cabinet almost perfectly recreated the experience of playing The Simpsons game in an actual arcade, and gave me a serious nostalgia hit in the process. While the joystick and buttons are more “clicky” than I remember, the actual gameplay remained unchanged.

One caveat is that because you have infinite lives if you want them – you can just keep adding credits by hitting the start button. It’s pretty easy to power through the game in around half an hour or so, since you’re not limited by the number of coins you have access to.

While the game itself has controls for four players, purchasers may not have anyone else physically available to play with, so the cabinet includes an option to connect to the internet via Wi-Fi and play with other Arcade 1Up The Simpsons cabinet owners.

The cabinet also comes with The Simpsons Bowling, which was originally released in 2000 and is an arcade bowling game which uses a trackball controller on the control deck to work.

There are nine fully voiced characters in the game and it’s a lot of fun – not to mention providing a lot more replayability than the main Simpsons game; it’d be great for parties or other social gatherings.

While the cabinet is well made and the games are fun, there is the small matter of the $1399 price tag. While you are essentially getting two games in one, it’s still a lot of money for what it is.

Yes, it’s cheaper than the multi-thousands of dollars an original cabinet could go for, and takes up slightly less space, but it’s still not an impulse purchase either.

For a serious Simpsons fan or arcade gaming enthusiast looking for something to round out a game room, study or large living space, the Arcade 1Up version of The Simpsons arcade game has a lot of appeal, but the high price tag keeps it strictly in the enthusiast realm rather than being an interesting curio for the casual gamer.