Gaming

Taito's new mini arcade has a flippable screen

The Egret II Mini will have a trackball and a screen that rotates 90 degrees.

Retro game enthusiast or not, you might flip for this new tabletop-sized arcade cabinet — literally.

The Egret II Mini from Taito.

The Egret Mini II is a household-sized version of a classic arcade cabinet made by Taito, a game and hardware company currently owned by Square Enix. In addition to harnessing the retro glory of titles like Space Invaders and Violence Fight, the Egret II Mini will come with a couple of features that make it unique among retro minis, including...

A flipping, flippable screen

The Egret Mini II — like the ‘90s cabinet for which it’s named — will allow you to pull out and swivel its LCD screen 90 degrees to play games in a flipped alignment. The idea here is that the longer aspect ratio will offer a better experience for the more vertically-oriented action of games like Space Invaders.

There’s also a purchasable controller extension with a trackball.

The $110 extension controller with trackball will enable games like Strike Bowling and Arkanoid.

Or there’s this $30 gamepad you can buy.

As well as an additional $80 arcade-style joystick.

In all, the Egret II Mini will have 40 playable games built into the machine and 10 that can be purchased separately. An HDMI port will also allow you to connect to an external monitor or TV, and a headphone jack for when you need to do some more mindful gaming.

Confirmed games:

- Space Invaders

- Lunar Rescue

- Qix

- Elevator Action

- Chack’n Pop

- Bubble Bobble

- Rastan Saga

- Rainbow Islands Extra

- New Zealand Story

- Don Doko Don

- Violence Fight

- Cadash

- Liquid Kids

- Metal Black

- Kaiser Knuckle

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Trackball games:

- Strike Bowling

- Arkanoid

- Plump Pop

- Syvalion

- Cameltrys

- Arkanoid Returns

oxygen/Moment/Getty Images

$170

The Egret II Mini won't come cheap.

While the Egret II Mini will cost $170, there are also two bundles — one for $450 that includes all the extra hardware and some additional soundtrack CDs, and a $300 bundle that foregoes the gamepad and the arcade stick but still includes the extra music and the trackball extension.

Preorders are open now, but you’ll have to wait a while to get your hands on the Egret II Mini.

Mar 2022

That's if this thing doesn't go the way of the Analogue Pocket and get delayed.

Boooooo.

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