MARCH OF THE MINIS
What does the year ahead have in store for Quarter Arcades?
Ever since it was introduced in 2018, the Quarter Arcades range of quarter-scale classic coin-op replicas has been a hit with collectors, thanks to a potent combination of great games and attention to detail. To find out more about how the range has evolved and where it’s going in 2024, we spoke to Matt Precious of Numskull, the company behind the range.
Releases planned for 2024 include the Taito trio of Qix, Elevator Action and Zoo Keeper, games that Matt says are quite far along. “We made the wooden samples, we put them on the Facebook group to show everyone, and someone said, ‘It’s brilliant, but obviously the instructions are gonna light up, aren’t they?’” The detail had been missed as the bulbs in the machines that Numskull used for reference had blown long ago, so the company had to retool the replicas to account for the lights. “As soon as we’ve got what we call a T1 sample we’ll go through that, then go to a T2 sample and put it back on the group,” says Matt. “As long as everyone’s happy those three will probably be coming out at the same time, so they’ll be a bit like London buses.”
Pong and Lunar Lander are also both planned for the future, and will see the company tackling non-joystick controls for the first time. “We often make these decisions with our hearts, not our heads. I want to make Lunar Lander because it’s one of my favourite games of all time, but Lunar Lander’s rubbish unless you’ve got the thruster,” Matt tells us. “We’re doing the thruster and it’s gonna have the spring back and everything in there as well. Obviously we’re going to have to tool these pieces especially by hand, but what we’re trying to do now is to save costs. We’re trying to use tooled internals for stuff like what holds the battery, what holds the screen. Then we can spend the money on the thruster, or the metal knobs on Pong. I’m hoping that these will be coming out cheaper than Space Invaders and Turtles.”
Indeed, the prices of Space Invaders and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinets raised some eyebrows. Matt tells us that Turtles
was a matter of being a larger machine with more parts, while Space Invaders was driven by its complexity. “Obviously nothing’s off the shelf, it’s not that we went, ‘Let’s get a quarter-sized moon that people have used before.’ No one really has attempted to try and do the Pepper’s Ghost effect since the original, and I understand why now, but that’s what we wanted to create.” However, some of it is simply inflation. “If you go back to when we first did Pacman, it came out at £149 – if we
As long as everyone’s happy those three will probably be coming out at the same time, so they’ll be a bit like London buses MATT PRECIOUS
made that today exactly the same, that would be £199,” explains Matt. “That’s us not making even as much profit, but that is just how much everything’s gone up, mainly the parts – screens, electronics, plastic. It’s just a crazy world that we live in.”
But what of machines shown long ago, like Track & Field?
“The deal was signed. Where Chariots Of Fire plays at the end, we actually got the deals signed separately with the music company to be able to play that. It was all ready to go,” Matt explains. “Konami had to send it to Japan for sign off and they went, ‘Not a problem, you can do it – oh, by the way you can’t use the artwork.’” Konami doesn’t actually own the artwork, so a deal also needs to be struck with the artist, but the Numskull team is committed to making it happen. “If you look at our machines, on the back they all have a plaque that’s numbered.
Number seven is missing, and the reason for that is I’m leaving number seven for Track & Field.”
Data East games are also on the way, including Bad Dudes Vs Dragon Ninja. “If you had one game that encapsulated the late-eighties, it’s this – I mean just the name alone,” says
Matt. Robocop and The Real Ghostbusters are also on the way, and the former is indicative of just how tricky the licensing situation can be. Since Orion Pictures,
Data East and Ocean Software no longer exist, it was necessary to identify the current rights holders – MGM, D4 Enterprise, and Atari – and negotiate with them. By comparison, the Pepsi and 7up vending machine USB hubs designed to power Quarter Arcades were much simpler to arrange, resulting from a prior deal to manufacture Pepsi Perfect bottles. These are due for release as a one-off run in February. “You put these tiny cans in the back and the button on the front dispenses them. They look fantastic because they all light up as well,” says Matt.
As always, we’ll keep you updated as the various Quarter Arcades projects progress.