WWE Counter Series Arcade MachineRetro arcade machine for the home

A retro arcade machine for the home that lives on a counter

Sixteen inches tall, an 8-inch colour screen, a lit marquee and a real stick. This is the wrestling cabinet for a house with no wall to spare: it sits on a kitchen island, a home bar or an office desk and plays the same four licensed boards as the full-height machine. Countertop arcade machines are how the original cabinets reached bars and chip shops, so this is a revival of a format rather than a compromise on one.

The four titles and the single stick

WrestleFest, SuperStars, The Big Pro Wrestling! and Super Dodgeball run off one microswitch joystick with its buttons grouped for a thumb rather than a palm. Four arcade games on one board is the reason this machine holds a room: when someone loses at WrestleFest they usually want Dodgeball next. The stick clicks loud enough that the person beside you knows exactly when the pin went wrong, which is most of the fun of a counter cabinet.

Surface, height and setup

Give it something level at elbow height, not knee height, and leave an inch at the back for the adapter lead. A low coffee table turns a good game into a backache, so check the surface before you check the width. Assembly is a screwdriver and a few minutes, the marquee head bolts on, and the LED lighting is bright enough to read across a dim bar. No coin-operation, no tokens, just the plug.

Who this countertop arcade machine is for

Sixteen inches of cabinet on a counter, built for two players and designed for the room where people already stand around: a home bar, a kitchen island, a games corner in an office. The controls are authentic arcade parts, the board is the official licensed WWE line-up, and the whole thing is a compact, durable build rather than a toy with a screen glued in. Because it is a tabletop machine, the height of the surface does the work the cabinet would otherwise have to do, so check the counter you have in mind: waist height or a little above and the ergonomics are the same as a full size arcade cabinet. There is no coin-operation to feed, which matters when friends are in the house and nobody wants to go looking for change. For a player who wants competition without surrendering a metre of floor, this is the edition that fits.

How it fits across our collection

Our counter row is four machines, and the difference between them is the board, not the build. Above them the Ultra Series is a 61-inch floor cabinet for a dedicated game room; below them the Handheld Series is a mini arcade for a bag. We keep a small collection on purpose — licensed titles only, no custom orders, no pinball — so that the quality of the panel and the stick is the same whatever size you pick. Nothing we build runs on quarters, so play is endless and free for everyone in the house. The high point of a counter machine is that it is upgrading a surface you already own rather than asking for a new one, and that single fact is why this is the most popular height on our floor.