We build a retro arcade machine for the home
Arcade Classics is a small family business, and a retro arcade machine for the home is the only thing we make. Four heights, licensed boards, controls that feel right.
What we make
We are Arcade Classics. We license arcade games from Atari and WWE and build them back into cabinets with real controls: a trackball on Centipede, a spinner on Tempest, a flight yoke on Star Wars, a microswitch stick on Pac-Man. We make them in four heights so a machine can be a piece of furniture, a bar-top fixture or something in a coat pocket, and the arcade is the same behind all of them.
Why the control comes first
Most retro games sold today are emulated on a pad or a touchscreen, and that quietly changes what you are playing. Centipede on a stick is a slower, duller game than Centipede on a ball. We would rather build fewer cabinets with the right control than many with a single generic one, which is why our panels differ from model to model.
What we leave alone
The boards. Each title plays its original release, with its own waves, music and attract loop. Where a licence forces a change, we print it on the card instead of hiding it — the two wrestling roster notes on our WWE cabinets are there for that reason.
How this floor works
Our cabinets are sold through partner stores, and the listing is where the price and the shipping date live. Those move; our pages do not pretend otherwise. If a machine is between runs, we leave it on the floor and say the price is set at checkout rather than printing a number we cannot stand behind.
Talking to us
Write to floor@arcadeclassics.pages.dev about the machines: which height fits a room, what a panel holds, how a control feels, whether a game is the arcade release. Anything tied to a shipment or a receipt belongs with the partner store that took the order — they hold both, and we hold neither.
What a retro arcade machine for the home has to get right
Three things, in this order: the control, the board and the height. The control is what your hands touch, so a trackball has to spin freely and a joystick has to click into its gate. The board has to be the licensed original rather than a rewritten lookalike, because the difficulty curve is half of what makes an arcade game an arcade game. The height has to match the room, which is why we build the same cabinet at 61 inches, 37.5 inches, 16 inches and 6 inches instead of insisting that everyone has a basement.
Why none of our machines are coin operated
A coin door is a piece of theatre we decided to skip. Every cabinet we build runs on a wall adapter or on three AA batteries, the attract loop starts by itself, and the first credit is free and so is the thousandth. Nobody has to keep a jar of quarters on top of the machine, and nobody has to explain to a seven-year-old why the game stopped. Free play is the default on every height, from the handheld to the full size floor cabinet.
Where the order lives
We are not a shop and we do not take payment. Each cabinet page sends you to the order page of the partner store that stocks it, and that order page is where checkout, delivery dates, the warranty and any return are handled. If something arrives damaged or you change your mind, that is the page to open, because it is the only place with your order number. Ask us about the cabinets instead, and you will get an answer from one of us.
What we got wrong before we got it right
Our first prototypes were a lesson in the difference between a classic arcade cabinet and a screen in a box. We built a modern-looking machine with a cheap stick, and it was a featured gift that year and a disappointment by February: the panel felt loose and the nostalgia evaporated the moment a player touched it. So we changed the order of the work. Now the control comes first, then the licensed board, then the height, and the cabinet is designed around those three things rather than around a price. Everything in the collection is a durable premium build with its own marquee lighting, whether it is a 6-inch mini machine or a 61-inch ultimate floor cabinet, and every edition uses the same quality of parts. We do not take custom orders and we do not build pinball, because a small fixed collection is the only way we can keep that promise.
What we are building towards
The thing we are chasing is the memory, not the museum. An original arcade game from the 80s or 90s had a difficulty curve tuned to take quarters off people, and most home editions flatten it until the excitement is gone. We leave it alone, and then we remove the coin box, so a player gets thousands of turns instead of three. That combination — the original curve, endless free play — is the experience we keep testing for, and it is what we mean when we say the fun should be endless rather than metered. The rest is space: four heights so the same arcade fits game rooms, home bars, bedrooms and bags. Explore the three aisles, check the surface you have, and turn one of them into the corner of the house where everyone stops on the way past.
Who builds these Arcade Classics cabinets
Arcade Classics is a small family business that makes one thing: the arcade cabinet, in four heights, with licensed boards and authentic controls. We started because the machines we grew up on were being sold as furniture with a screen glued in, and the gameplay was an afterthought. Our first cabinet was a tabletop build with a real trackball, and the rule has not changed since: get the control right or do not ship it. Today the collection runs from a 6-inch handheld to a 61-inch floor cabinet. Pac-Man, Centipede, Asteroids, Tempest, Galaga, Dig Dug, Tetris, the Star Wars trilogy and the WWE fighters all sit on licensed boards, and every machine ships ready to play with no coin-operation to feed. Find the height, pick the title, and the action is at your fingertips in the room you already have. What we are not is a shop. We build the cabinets and we answer questions about them: what is on the board, how tall it is, what the panel feels like. Orders, delivery, warranty and returns live on the order page of the store you bought from, and that is the fastest place to get a real answer. Write to us about the machines themselves and you will get one of us, not a queue.
