If you're a gamer over the age of 30 with a decent amount of disposable income, then you've almost certainly heard of the Quarter Arcades range. As the name suggests, these are 1/4-scale reproductions of famous coin-ops, and the company has collaborated with some of the biggest names in the business to expand its lineup over the past few years – including Namco, Taito, and Konami.
With the likes of Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Bubble Bobble in its ranks, the Quarter Arcades family can already lay claim to possessing some serious big-hitters – but the arrival of Konami's 1989 coin-op Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will arguably take things to an entirely new level for players of a certain age.
Released just as the world was falling hopelessly in love with the heroes in a half-shell, this side-scrolling fighter was a savvy piece of licensing by the Japanese company; it quickly became one of the most popular coin-ops of its time and would find its way into many an amusement arcade, leisure centre, and pizza parlour (or fish-and-chip shop, if you're in the UK).
The Quarter Arcades replica aims to reproduce the arcade feel but in a slightly easier size to get into your house. As has been the case with all of the company's cabinets, the TMNT version is a painstaking recreation of the original – right down to the four-player control deck, illuminated marquee, and colourful side panel artwork.
In fact, Quarter Arcades has gone into so much detail that it has accurately reproduced how the 1989 cabinet functions when it comes to inserting credits; depending on which coin slot you popped your money into back in the day, you'd control a different turtle. Quarter Arcades has replicated this system so closely that it has even included four colour-coded stickers, which were actually used back in the day to denote which coin slot was for which character.
Like the other Quarter Arcades units, the game is running via emulation. A scanline filter is applied by default, which looks decent enough – although there's some odd distortion towards the bottom of the display, which results in darker lines appearing – thankfully, you can enter a settings menu by holding down Player One and Two's attack buttons during boot, and this allows you to turn off the CRT scanline feature.
While the TMNT cabinet does include four sets of fully functioning controls, getting four people huddled around such a tiny unit is tricky, if not impossible. Quarter Arcades has thought of this, however; it has included four USB ports on the front, hidden behind flaps which, on a full-size unit, would be where the coins are stored.
While the company sells its own two-button NES-style USB pad (complete with removable joystick), the unit will happily accept pretty much any USB controller – including a Switch Pro controller. Therefore, finding three pads around the house for a four-player session shouldn't prove too taxing. It's just a shame that the option to connect the cabinet to a TV via HDMI wasn't included, as it's quite hard to see the screen when you've got four full-grown adults crowded around the machine.
When you consider that Konami's arcade game can be played on modern consoles via the excellent Cowabunga Collection, the notion of splashing £250 on a small facsimile might not be all that appealing to casual fans – but that's never been Quarter Arcades' target audience.
This is a product aimed at collectors with plenty of cash to spare, and they will almost certainly have several other Quarter Arcades cabs in their gaming den already.
In summary, this is just as good as previous units from the company, boasting amazing attention to detail and a fantastic eye-catching design – whether or not it's going to be for you depends really on how much affection you have for TMNT and how much you love having tiny arcade machines dotted around your abode.
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