As soon as I saw my first arcade game, there was one thing I wanted to do: take it home. I wanted to have my own arcade game so that I could play for free as much as I wanted without people looking over my shoulder. Okay, I also wanted to have my own arcade game so I could be like Ricky Schroder in Silver Spoons. There was no way I was going to get one. I knew that. But I could get one of the Coleco Mini Arcade games.
Coleco Mini Arcade games were tiny arcade cabinets featuring conversion of the best video games around: Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Galaga, and many more. They weren’t perfect copies, of course. They were LED conversions. But to my grade-school eyes, they were close enough.
Donkey Kong
Pac-Man
Today, these seem like poor alternatives to arcade games. The graphics aren’t right and the joysticks are just too tiny. But I thought they were a great home option back in the day, and maybe it is just the quasi-arcade cabinet design, but they still have a lot of charm.
