Review of Astro City Mini: an incredible explosion in the past of Sega arcades

Sega’s latest retro gaming machine, the Astro City Mini, comes with two very different products: the excellent Genesis Mini, which appeals to the public, and the disconcerting but adorable Game Gear Micro. The former was an obvious piece of the mainstream, the latter a complete swing for the esoteric.

The Astro City Mini is able to cover both approaches. A miniature all-in-one recreation of a specific type of arcade cabinet with 37 preloaded games, was probably not on many people’s retro console bingo cards. But the final product is very well executed and should be considered essential for Sega fans.

I got my Astro City Mini a few months ago when it was released here in Japan. I always wanted to write about it, but I always found excuses to delve deeper into its catalog first. Well, now is the time. Limited Run Games has just announced that it will, well, sell a limited version of the system to the US with localized packaging. Only 3,500 units will go on sale on Friday for $ 129.99.

Unlike the various consoles that were recently recreated in miniature form, Astro City was not a specific system for which someone designed games. It was a case that Sega sold with the intention of allowing arcade owners to fit on various game boards, and it ended up becoming one of the most popular and iconic cases ever produced. You can still find units today in many Japanese arcades hosting any number of games.

That meant that Sega had a lot of freedom when it came to choosing which titles to include in the Astro City Mini. Ultimately, he settled in 37 games that represent an idiosyncratic and diverse selection of the company’s arcade history, from major launchers like Virtua Fighter for lesser known titles like Dark Edge who have never received domestic releases before.

The Mini’s hardware is robust and solid, with Sega’s typical attention to detail. You can even purchase a $ 39.99 “style kit” that includes a customizable tent, a stool and a mirror with a coin slot so that it can be used as a money bank. If there’s one thing Sega has been really good at lately (besides pumping Yakuza games), is creating cute replicas of its hardware heyday. The Astro City Mini is no different.

There are some peculiarities, however. For some reason, Sega found it appropriate to use a 16: 9 screen, although none of the games ran in widescreen; most of them are 4: 3, and some are vertically oriented snipers. The only content that really fills the screen is the main menus. You can fill mailboxes with some themed borders, but choosing the panel seems like a big compromise. There is clearly room for a 4: 3 screen here, as SNK’s Neo Geo Mini, but much smaller, has a decent 4: 3 panel with more vertical height than you get on the Astro City Mini.

The Neo Geo Mini had a terrible HDMI output, however, while the Astro City Mini looked much better on a TV screen. The image quality is much cleaner, and you at least get some benefit from the larger menus, which allow you to browse through screenshots and read some basic information about each game before starting it. (I will note here that, although most games on the Astro City Mini are in Japanese, the text on most of them is quite minimal and the system menus can be switched entirely to English.)

One element that the Astro City Mini, unfortunately, shares with the Neo Geo Mini is the lack of built-in battery, which is a drag for a system with its own screen. It would be much more convenient and practical if you could use it without tying it to a wall or a USB battery. The situation is actually worse than with the Neo Geo Mini because Sega decided to go with Micro USB instead of USB-C.

But there is an area where the Astro City Mini destroys the Neo Geo Mini, and it is much more important for the overall success of the product: the integrated controls are fantastic. While SNK inexplicably used an analog-style stick for its 2D arcade cabinet, Sega equipped the Astro City Mini with a small but gloriously clickable stick, along with hyper-responsive tactile buttons. It looks like a high-quality arcade stick that has been hit by a reduction beam and, in combination with the riser, instantly elevates the Astro City Mini from “fun table toy” to “legitimately good way to play these games”.

If you plan to play Astro City Mini mainly on your TV, you may want to buy an extra $ 27.99 controller – not least because the normal USB pads I tried didn’t work. Fortunately, the models with the Astro City theme that Sega designed are very good, with a smooth circular directional and a six-button arcade-style layout. There is also a full-size Astro City arcade stick that Sega launched in Japan, although Limited Run Games is not selling it.

The selection of games for Astro City Mini is not necessarily what I expected, not least because most of the titles were released before the cabinet opened in 1993. The oldest game here is Flicky, which came out in 1984 on Sega’s System 1 card, the youngest being 1994 Puyo Puyo 2 for C2. Different from the 1993 polygonal Virtua Fighter, the programming can basically be seen as a well-organized journey through the history of Sega’s pre-3D arcades. There are notable omissions such as OutRun, although this probably has more to do with the stick-based control scheme than anything else.

All games included are the original arcade versions, instead of the generally lower doors seen in the Master System and Genesis. This means that, unlike most reissues, you’re getting canonical versions of great Sega games, like Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone, Shinobi, and more. Emulation generally looks good. The only game that stood out to me was Virtua Fighter, which has a small delay and runs at a higher resolution than I expected.

For me, the main selling point of the Astro City Mini are games that have had limited or no domestic releases. Dark Edge is a pre-polygon proto-3D fighting game that defies the limits it looks like and plays like nothing else. Cotton is a great scroll shooter that only came out on TurboGrafx-CD and Neo Geo Pocket Color in the West. Arab fight it’s a technically impressive beat-em-up that never left the arcades. Rad Mobile it is Sega’s first 32-bit game and the first to feature Sonic the Hedgehog (albeit as a toy hanging from its car mirror), but its only domestic release was for Sega Saturn and never left Japan. The Revenge of Death Adder it is the most advanced entry in the Golden Ax series, but it has been exclusive to arcade until now.

The Astro City Mini line is not comprehensive, but it never could have been. It is easy to imagine the titles that have been left out. If Virtua Fighter I did it, why not Virtua Racing, for example? And there were three Columns games really needed? What is here, however, is a strong collection that combines big names with deep cuts and should keep any fan of arcade games busy for a long time.

The Astro City Mini is a strange niche product with some strange flaws, but I can’t help but love it. The games are great and the hardware is fun to play, which is what really matters. I think it strikes a good compromise between the nostalgic appeal of the Genesis Mini and the dark charms of the Game Gear Micro, while being a better coin bank than any of them.

That is why I am happy that it is being released in the United States, although it is discreet. If you are a certain type of Sega fan, or a fan of arcade games in general, you will want to choose one.

Photograph by Sam Byford / The Verge