By Todd Russell
Please forgive the playful undertone of the title question, because of course size matters … when it comes to pinball machines and arcades everything is just getting bigger and bigger. And look at the picture, which could be a meme. In fact, after this publishes I’m going to post elsewhere to promote this from that angle.
For those with a sense of PGM deja vus, check out: 0% FOMO – Polycade Sente To have Smaller Screen Than Lux Because They Think it “feels better to play” where I challenged smaller screens. Not that I have a problem inherently with smaller-screen (typically portable) systems, I love my Steam Deck, but it is a very different playing experience. I also have been actively gaming on my mobile phone later.
Still, “better” is subjective.
For a long time, we would see these arcade machines at Costco for like $3,000 and think: man, it would be cool owning one of those. The price and circumstances were just never really right to pull the trigger. Fast forward to pre-COVID and Atgames launched their line of home arcade multicade products and there was Arcade1up in Wal-marts with 3/4 size versions of arcade games. It really stoked the fire of buying these arcade-like games for home use.
Alas, the quality was the main problem with these lower-priced 3/4 scale games. For those that bought too many, myself not in that camp, physical space might have been the bigger enemy.
And then they got into virtual pinball. My son and I both bought virtual pinball machines too. Again, you can get one virtual pinball machine and play hundreds to thousands of different games or spend 10x as much for one real, full-sized commercial grade pinball machine.
The problem was my son never really played his virtual pinball machine. I played mine a ton. Easily 1,000 hours, maybe double or triple that. Didn’t keep track.
On 3/3/2025 my son sold his Atgames Legends Pinball (ALP) on Facebook marketplace and it got me thinking how little he ever actually played it. He’s played way more of Stern Pinball Iron Maiden than he ever played in years owning his ALP. It’s totally not fair to compare the two — until they are in a picture side by side. And then it seems to quantify just how dramatically different one is over the other.
One costs nearly $10,000, the other costs $800. So, like 8% of the cost, so give that to Atgames. One is built for commercial and home environment, very durable, the other is strictly for home and likely to break sooner than later. Point Stern. One you can put in a business and make money with, the other you can’t, another point Stern. One you can play only one game, the other you can play thousands or more, point Atgames.
And now we are comparing the two, darn it, said we wouldn’t. It’s hard not comparing them again, when they pictured side by side.
But they aren’t any longer. They never really were running at the same time. Buying the ALP came years before buying the Stern. My son also sold his Atgames Legends Ultimate and his iiRcade.
The iiRcade went bankrupt and he wasn’t playing any longer. The ALU he barely played but at one time that was his most-played of the three. He’s looking at possibly buying a Retrocade, Megacade or maybe if he takes his dad’s advice: build his own (see: OPINION: Is the Megacade a Pirate’s Haven, Retrogaming Mecca or …?), so the home arcade isn’t dead to him, but it’s definitely on life support — save for the pinball, of course.
Bottom line: bigger monitors and more powerful CPU needed for playing more modern arcade games. The Atgames and other lower-priced home arcade systems are plenty fine for arcade and classic console emulation, but they are not as good or even able to play at all newer, more modern CPU-intensive games, unless you only use the screen and controls. And the screen size for the ALU which we once believed was great at 24″ just seems too small these days.
Arcade games we’ve covered at PGM before like My Wife Wants WICKED TUNA! and Atari Partners with Alan-1 to Release Coin-op Improved Versions of Atari Recharged Games all use much bigger screens. We’ve also covered Polycade, from Tyler Bushnell, son of Atari’s Nolan Bushnell. I noticed they are offering ways to make their Polycade Sente ($2,499 USD as of this writing) commercial to accept credit/debit card and bills, plus lock down the game.
This has me wondering how Polycade is doing this with their machine? Are they charging for access to rent play of the machine by the hour or charging for coin-in on emulated games? This page (https://polycade.com/pages/industries) gets into business use cases. Apparently, the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley has a Polycade about 40 miles north of us.
Putting that on my to-check-out list. Just curious how a business is using a Polycade?
Buying commercial-grade machines does help justify more cost, because these machines could earn money someday — assuming you had a business or were willing to loan out your game to a business to use. Some friends have told me they “don’t care” about bill acceptors or coin mechs, but I’m finding more and more I do care. It’s nice having games that can take money and be used in a commercial/business environment if the owner wants to.
We were never going to be able to put Atgames or Arcade1ups or any of these entry level home arcades in any business. I do like the idea of $2,500 for an arcade machine that could be put in a business, the Polycade is more interesting to me in that regard, but still seems a bit pricey for what it does. I’m intrigued and welcome any comments below that know more about how this works in a business environment.
This article has taken me down a rabbit hole. Guess what is happening, at least in our family, is we are gravitating more toward buying commercial grade games. This explains the pinball machines and we’re even looking at used arcade machines that take $$$. My son has this dream of someday owning a barcade with a friend of his and possibly some investors. This explains some of what we’re tangentially exploring (more like dabbling at this very early stage) and, unfortunately, Atgames doesn’t fit these goals any more. They did have an ES commercial version of their Legends Pinball but that sucker looked terrible. Hollywood Polo and I did this video talking about it a couple years ago:
I have never seen one of these business Legend Pinball games in any business and when I contacted a distributor asking where I might play one from one of their customers, they refused to provide any business location where one could be played. I pressed on, asking who was buying these? The answer was “private individuals.” So, people buying these commercial versions of the home version for 2.5 the cost? That’s what it seemed at the time, not sure if that’s valid any more. The trail went cold from there and I never got back to it.
Getting back to Atgames. I’ll always give them some historical credit for rekindling my interest in pinball. They introduced these lower cost home virtual pinball machines which seemed bigger than they actually were at the time. They felt kind of like real pinball machines, but at a much more affordable price. At least that’s what I thought at the time. Of course, after buying one, you start upgrading stuff on it, getting a more powerful PC to play Virtual Pinball (VPX), Future Pinball and your $800 becomes $2,000 or more. At some point a used Stern Pro at $5k or a used pin from the 80s and 90s at $1-3k looks more desirable.
They’re making fun of the size of Elon Musk’s gaming PC in the White House
This morning, right before publishing, I came across this piece in my newsreader that made me lol.
“Presumably, Musk isn’t actually using this PC to play games — after all, Musk admitted to cheating to gain levels in Pat of Exile 2 — which makes the inclusion of a gaming PC in his office all the more strange. It looks like something you’d throw together for a temporary battle station while away from home. Maybe wielding a “chainsaw for bureaucracy” includes frequent breaks to pop into a few games on Steam.” – Elon Musk brought a gaming PC to the White House, and it looks kind of puny
It’s the headline that fits today’s article more than anything and I just had to shoehorn it here. The thing is, the world’s richest man could rock a $10,000+ gaming rig if he wanted to, but he’s not doing DOGE to actively game on the side. I’m amazed the man has any time for gaming, period, which we pointed out previously in this PGM article: Elon Musk is good at (paying others to boost) his gameplay
Not mocking Musk, I’m seriously impressed by his time management skills. Still, it’s funny that people on the internet are bashing his White House gaming PC.
Epilogue
As I read back through this article one final time before publishing, I’m not sure what kind of comments to ask for to a piece like this, but it’s a fair description of what’s happened to us over the last 5 years or so with the home arcade scene. We’ve moved on somewhat. I don’t want to say “moved up” because that sounds like we don’t see value or have some kind of ego about the home arcade scene that we don’t have, but technically that is what’s happened. I’m not an active customer as much currently for buying non-commercial home arcade stuff like I was a few years ago and my sons are gravitating the same direction.
At the same time, I do appreciate the time buying the home arcade stuff and if something came along that blew me away, I could see one or more of us back in the game, pun intended.