It’s Toy Wizards opinion time! Welcome to the Editorials section of Toy Wizards, where we express that thing called an opinion and we wait for everyone out there to tell us we’re wrong.
For today’s edition, we’re going to discuss the freshly announced Capcom Home Arcade. It is a plug and play system that connects directly to your TV via USB in the back of the…huge, heavy-looking, lap coaster.
Maybe I’m just being pessimistic here– forgive me, I don’t mean to be. But this lap-beast just doesn’t look like much fun compared to many other plug and play systems slipping onto the market today. From my understanding up to this point, the Capcom Home Arcade will have a European-only release in October, 2019 and will run about 230 Euro, so approximately $200. That’s a pretty high price point for something that can be build for about $50 using spare Sanwa parts you can find on the factory floor.
But of course, the main highlight should be the games. The Capcom Home Arcade is coming equip with 16 games. But here is a little problem I have with the game list– Capcom’s best games are all those that they share license with and therefore cannot include on a home console, much like the problem with the Playstation Classic Mini, which as we saw, pretty much bombed on the retail market.
The full list of Capcom Home Arcade games:
- 1944: The Loop Master
- Alien Vs. Predator
- Armored Warriors
- Capcom Sports Club
- Captain Commando
- Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness
- Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors
- Eco Fighters
- Final Fight
- Ghouls ’N Ghosts
- Gigawing
- Mega Man: The Power Battle
- Progear
- Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
- Strider
- Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Predictably, there is no Marvel Vs. Capcom or any Mega Man games that are great, because Capcom shares those licenses with Nintendo or Sony. Also, Capcom is not shy with their licenses. So awesome games like Street Fighter is already going to be on a host of virtual consoles, mini arcade machines, and other plug and play systems because Capcom has been putting that prized pony to work.
And let’s take the aesthetic design of this monster into consideration.
When this item was orally described to me, horror and shock painted my face; what I saw in my head was a hideous, heavy, poly-carbonate mess. But when I looked up the images and saw that it looked exactly as I’d imagined, I could only laugh.
I haven’t seen any reports of the physical dimensions, but I’m assuming the Capcom Home Arcade is lap sized and big enough to be balanced between two people. Two people sitting very, very close to each other.
Again– not trying to be a whiner here! You live your best Lapcom Arcade life! (See what I did there?). Personally, between the design, price point, possible Euro-release only, games available, and where the hell do I store this thing factor, I think I’ll give the Capcom Home Arcade a hard pass.
What about you? Tell Toy Wizards about it in the comments and get the conversation going!
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