CoolToyReview.com - Action Figure News & Photography

Posted by: Nick on January 8, 2019 at 06:14 PM CST

What We Know

The cabinets will release starting February. Nothing further on exact windows or order of release. Per official social media responses from Arcade1Up, the Mortal Kombat II cabinet will not be available until September.

The newly announced cabinets include Mortal Kombat II Cabinet (Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3), Final Fight Cabinet (Final Fight, Strider, 1944, Ghosts 'N Goblins), Golden Tee (Golden Tee, Golden Tee 2K, Golden Tee 99, Golden Tee 98), Space Invaders (nothing else observable), and Karate Champ (no further details).

Arcade1Up says that there are multiple games on each cabinet. So there must be something else on Space Invaders and the Karate Champ cabinet.

What We Have To Guess About

No confirmation on if all cabinets feature deck protectors, but we have to assume that they are included or a new manufacturing process eliminated the paint wear issue. We'll see if we can get an official comment at some point. We have received our deck protectors that we mentioned in our reviews and they all came with new graphics to address any damage. They fit great and gave us a sense of comfort that the condition will be preserved.

It's hard to say what is on the Space Invaders cabinet, but nothing else is shown on the art work. If we could base this on Pac Man, we could guess that the other game is Deluxe Space Invaders (Space Invaders Part II), Space Invaders II, or Return of the Invaders or all of them. All of these games are 1985 or older, so they would fit with the vintage setup. Now Arcade1Up did make reference to Bubble Bobble at Toy Fair in 2018 but it would be an odd inclusion in this cabinet, even though it is still Taito.

Now Karate Champ is going to be a little harder to guess, mostly because we don't have a visual on the cabinet and control set up. We imagine it would look something like the above (this is the original arcade cabinet). Keeping with the theme and the developer (Technos Japan) we could guess that Double Dragon, Double Dragon II, and Double Dragon 3 would also be included. We assume the control deck will already be capable of accommodating two players, so it would work well with the Double Dragon series. However, the Double Dragon games are more popular and probably would have headlined the cabinet instead of Karate Champ. That being said, things change. Q*bert was in the Rampage Cabinet originally, so who knows what will happen by release time.

What's Next

Keep in mind that Arcade1Up announced two exclusive cabinets later in the year. Walmart got a Galaga cabinet (Galaga, Galaxian) and a Pac Man cabinet (Pac Man, Pac Man Plus) in 2018 on top of the previously announced cabinets. So it would not surprise us to see other exclusives later in the year, either at Walmart or Gamestop. I know several of you are hoping for a Ninja Turtles, X-Men, Simpsons cabinet, so stay tuned.

CoolToyReview is heading to Toy Fair next month and so are TasteMakers with their Arcade1Up cabinets surely on display. We'll get some better pictures and hopefully some hands-on time. Check back for Toy Fair coverage in February.

That's all for now. We'll update the story as we get more information.

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