What's the appeal of minis?

Shavenyak

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I'm not sure I buy into the saving space. They seem to take up as much floor space as an upright. Personally I think most of them are ugly and part of the appeal for me in this hobby is the artwork.
 
mini's do save alot of space. in most cases you can place 3 mini's in the place of 2 standard size cabs. personally i hate most of the mini's though. ugly, most have no art work, smaller monitor..... but if your short on space ya get what ya can get.
 
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>What's the appeal of minis?

None. Hate 'em. Even the Williams ones with decent art work.

You nailed it in your post, "I think most of them are ugly".

If anyone hates them up in upstate NY... let me know I'll be right over to rid you of them. ;)

Needless to say I like them... even with all that wood grain. :D
 
i have two. the tempest i always liked (to me it looks almost sophisticated) same size screen smaller cab. dk cabaret. don't see them everyday. cool simple setup. and my only cabaret want, pac man. why? again, cool setup, looks almost sophisticated, and silver spoons! nuff said.
 
Truth be told, I prefer uprights, since that is mostly what I played as a kid. That being said, I only collect the mini/cabaret cabinets, if the game was made in that cabinet, since the game is more important to me than the artwork. It does allow me to get more games in the arcade and I can put the same multi-kits into them. Further, over time thy have really grown on me. Perhaps, because there aren't as many, aren't sought by everyone, etc., I don't know. Some are rather ugly, like DK, while others are pretty cool looking, like the Williams minis.

It seems Todd Tuckey and I drank the same "mini" water all those years ago and fell in love with these cabaret/mini games. The real beauty of games and collecting.... "we can like what we like and that is all that is important". "It's all about the games, man!" (who said that???).

Scott C.
 
Mini's

I alway's liked the full size uprights compared to the mini's. Most of the mini's were lacking the cool artwork on the sides. Also lacking were the extra lit marque panels, black light effects, etc. Take the full size Gorf and Omega Race cabinets for example, playing the mini cabinets of those games I felt you lost part of the playing experience. Just my take of course. Jon Hughes.
 
I do prefer the uprights as the artwork on these arcade games is great but I do own a couple of cabarets. I have my Centipede and Millipede on a small wall in my home theatre room right now (next to my Space Paranoids poster!). I also have a Kickman & Battlezone cabaret and owned a Missle Command cabaret, which is currently in my friend James Hagen's arcade. The small size makes them easy to move around, especially up and down stairs. And in the case of most Atari cabarets, they have 19" monitors just like the uprights.

In the case of Tempest, I have owned both the upright and the cabaret and in my opinion the sound in the cabaret is better. Perhaps it's the physical location of the speaker or the acoustics but it seems to have more bass to it.

Rodney
 
They don't appeal to me at all; and neither do cocktail machines. You usually only saw uprights and cockpits in real arcades. The cocktails and cabarets were usually in other places, like Pizza Hut. They always struck me as a compromise; a "second choice".
 
I agree. I love the artwork on uprights, and they were the only machines I got to play when arcades were still around. I do have one mini: Hang-On. The artwork is better than the upright, it's smaller and designed better, and it is easy to move around. So easy that I almost pushed it over the last time I moved it!

I'm pretty sure a lot of collectors also like the Atari minis...full size 19 inch monitor, smaller cab...score!

Since I can't really go down to the corner store and buy arcade games, I'm happy with the styles of the games that have come my way.
 
I think they were aimed more at the home crowd than anything though I may be wrong. I got a centipede cabaret and upright and I like em both. The upright is more appealing visually but you just dont see teh cabaret cabs alot so to me they are unique. Ive always been a functionality over bling kind of guy anyway. Cocktails, love and hate em. Those are nice when you have some friends over and you can just plop down and put your drink on top and have two player action without having to swap controls with each other.
 
I like them because they do take up less space and are much lighter to move. I have only mini left which is Battlezone. I would have loved a Tempest mini, but I have to settle with my CT. I think the best ones are the Tempest and Centipede because they have the 19" monitors instead of the 13". I guess it is personal preference though.
 
I never even knew they made cabaret's until I saw a mini Ms. Pac-Man at a laundromat about 10 years ago. I like some of them, mainly the Midway and Williams line, and I acually prefer Sega mini's over the uprights. Not too fond of Atari and Nintendo Mini's though (they just look wierd with the marquee in the middle IMO). I'm not a big fan of cocktails at all, but I would own a Midway CT.

The appeal is obvious, they save space and are easier to move around.
 
I would love to have a mini cabinet. They truly do take up less space, they weigh less (a huge plus!) and are quite unique. Plus, I think games like Space Invaders play better on smaller 13 inch monitors.
 
I too am not a big fan of mini's.. to me they all just seem like a cheap rip-off of the full size game (even if they aren't). And I agree about the art, that's part of the hobby for me.
 
I have a Donkey Kong mini and an Out Run mini. For some reason I find myself playing my DK mini more than my upright. Both mini's were buys that were too good to pass up so that's how I ended up with two DK's. The DK mini isn't terribly pleasing to the eye, but I think the Out Run mini looks great.
 
I like them now because they are unusual and more rare than the uprights. Like others have mentioned though, I don't feel any link to them because they weren't part of my arcade past. It was always standard cabinets in all the arcades I went to.

I actually don't recall ever seeing a cabaret in the 80's, and the only cocktail I saw in that era was a Ms. Pac Man at Pizza Hut. Perhaps if you were old enough to drink alcohol then, these machines were a lot more commonly seen.
 
For those saying the game is all about the art, do you honestly remember playing these games when they were new and looking at the sideart? Hell all I cared about was the game.
 
I'm wondering why the prices for them are generally so high if they're so unpopular?

That Dig Dug mini you can't stand? I'll take it off your hands for $200. :D
 
Perhaps it's a rarity thing as far as why they generally cost more. Not sure.

I love my Tempest cabaret, but it was the very first video game cabinet I remember playing on. So there's a bias there.

That said, I'd LOVE a Dig Dug cabaret too!
 
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