After launching in the US and Japan, the SEGA Astro City Mini V Cabinet is now available in Europe.
If you’re scratching your head, wondering what the heck the SEGA Astro City Mini V Cabinet is supposed to be, don’t worry. As cool as the full size SEGA Astro City cabinets were, they tended not hit Western arcades. All the arcades we went to had either full-size sit-down Outrun style machines, or boring old generic cabinets which, luckily for us, had the likes of Street Fighter II shoe-horned into them.
And now, the SEGA Astro City Mini V Cabinet is bringing that to Europe, complete with 20 vertically-oriented SEGA games. It’s much smaller than its original Japanese counterpart but, perched on a table, it should still be fun to. And it looks set to be much less scarce than Sega’s Mega Drive Mini 2.
The 22 titles on offer, which are actual arcade games rather than Mega Drive versions, are as follows:
- Moon Cresta
- Zaxxon
- Super Zaxxon
- Terra Cresta
- Cosmo Police Galivan
- Action Fighter
- Truxton
- Wrestle War
- Fire Shark
- Raiden
- Out Zone
- Sonic Wings
- Truxton II
- Dogyuun
- Desert Breaker
- Batsugun
- Grind Stormer
- Samurai Aces
- Kingdom Grandprix
- Gunbird
- Strikers 1945
- Armed Police Batrider
- Battle Bakraid Unlimited Ver.
Not all of these are first party SEGA titles, some were just published by SEGA. We’ve played a good few of these and if you’re a shoot-em-up fan you could be in for a real treat. Truxton II, in particular, is a top-notch sh’mup, as is Armed Police Batrider. Though, future or not, we’re not convinced the police should be issued with heavily armed sci-fi biplanes.
It sports a 4.3 inch screen though you can use an HDMI cable to put it on a TV. That’ll mean putting up with black borders, though – it’s down to your preference. It runs off USB power though you’ll have to provide your own. We doubt it’d last long guzzling AA batteries, even if it could.
The cabinet is available from various retailers, such as Amazon, priced at £229.99/$€249.99. That’s a little higher than its $159.99 US price tag, though that’s presumably to cover the cost of Game Outlet Europe importing these.
