Arcade1Up started the current home arcade machine craze a few years ago when it released slightly scaled-down, stand-up arcade cabinets at relatively low prices for home play. They were a bit shorter than necessarily comfortable, which is why the company eventually included risers that lifted the machines to a height that could let most adults easily play while standing. Arcade1Up’s Deluxe line is the next obvious step, a one-body cabinet that stands slightly taller than a standard cabinet with a riser. They’re a bit more expensive than non-Deluxe cabinets, but the extra height is worth the cost. We tested the Mortal Kombat Deluxe model, available for $499.99, and enjoyed the look of the machine and the cavalcade of classic Midway games on it. That said, it’s a lot of money for a handful of old games, which is why, like all arcade cabinets, it should be seen more as a piece of furniture and a nostalgic collectible than a piece of modern gaming hardware.

Easy Assembly

The cabinet ships unassembled in a flat pack, like a piece of Ikea furniture. Also like Ikea furniture, it comes with step-by-step illustrated instructions with no words. A separate user manual is filled with text, however, on how to use the cabinet after it's complete.

Assembling the cabinet isn't a complicated process, but it is involved enough that you should be ready to spend a bit of time working on it. It took me approximately two hours to assemble it, though it will likely go quicker if you get someone to help you. Assembly consists almost entirely of connecting particleboard panels to each other with dowels and screws. The electronic components including the screen, lighted marquee, speakers, and controls, are all their own preassembled panels and sections, and putting them in the cabinet is almost as simple as joining the plain panels. You use smaller screws and plastic brackets for some parts, and you need to make sure the wires are properly dangling inside the machine and not caught on anything.

The electronics that run the cabinet.

Once the cabinet is ready, you then connect the wires from the lighted marquee, speakers, and power extension cable to the metal box behind the screen, and attach the ribbon cable hanging from that box to the joystick assembly. The power extension cable has a plastic plug that fits snugly in a hole on the back panel of the cabinet, with a connector a few inches past it for plugging in the power adapter itself; it keeps the cable from directly pulling on the machine's electronics when you're trying to plug it into an outlet and provides a much safer disconnect point in case you trip over the power cable.

A Tall, Attractive Arcade Cabinet

The assembled cabinet consists of an electronics-filled upper half and an empty lower half. It feels solid, with all of the screws in place along with small steel plates that keep the halves bolted together. The machine measures 61 by 23.5 by 19.8 inches (HWD), which is a little taller and wider than the non-Deluxe Arcade1Up cabinets we've seen (57.8 by 19.8 by 20.5 inches with a separate riser). It isn't nearly as big as the 67-inch-tall NBA Jam Shaq Edition machine with its 19-inch screen and four-player controls, but that's its own special Shaq-centric case. Still, the Deluxe cabinet has an edge over the non-Deluxe version due to it being close in size to a true arcade machine and not a mini cabinet that needs to be boosted up on a box so it's playable while you're standing.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

The electronics for both the Deluxe and Midway Legacy Mortal Kombat 30th Anniversary Edition cabinets are identical, with the same internals, 17-inch LCDs, and stereo speakers, though the Deluxe cabinet’s speakers have much nicer-looking metal grilles. The controls are also the same, with an arcade-sized joystick and seven buttons each for two players. Essentially, the only difference between the two models is the Deluxe’s one-piece design and just a few extra inches of height.

The cabinet has top-notch presentation, looking almost like an official Mortal Kombat II machine that would be found in an arcade. Its colorful, glossy side panels show Raiden calling down lightning, and the marquee lights up with the Mortal Kombat II logo. The downward-facing speakers below the marquee are covered by circular metal grilles, looking much nicer than the punched holes of the non-Deluxe cabinets' speakers.

Mortal Kombat Deluxe Games and Online Features

Arcade1Up is much more generous with games on both the Deluxe and 30th Anniversary Edition cabinets than it was with the original Mortal Kombat cabinet we reviewed in 2019. The first version only included Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3; the new models have those four games plus 10 more Midway classics: Bubbles, Defender, Gauntlet, Joust, Klax, Paperboy, Rampage, Rootbeer Tapper, Toobin, and Wizard of Wor. It’s a good collection with some excellent non-Mortal Kombat titles such as Gauntlet and Rampage.

The games are emulated, with a few options available for each one. Most games let you set the difficulty settings, along with some variables like how much health you get per “coin” (pressing that player’s start button) in Gauntlet. You can also toggle an aggressive scanline filter, but that’s it.

The cabinet can connect to the internet over Ethernet or Wi-Fi , though it had some problems keeping a wireless connection in testing. Arcade1Up has an online system for its games, with support for drop-in/drop-out multiplayer for people who own the same cab. You can make your games open for anyone, or just for people on a friends list, and manage all that for your entire collection (if you have more than one cabinet) with the Arcade1Up app. Multiplayer is nice in theory, but we were unable to find any open games available during testing. The online system keeps leaderboards for each game, though, so you can indirectly compete with your friends or everyone with a connected Arcade1Up cabinet.

Nostalgia vs. Reality

The cabinet has what Arcade1Up describes as “real feel joystick and buttons” but without specific manufacturer origins, so you shouldn’t expect the kind of crisp feeling that comes with a fight stick equipped with high-end arcade parts. Physically, the joysticks and buttons are shaped just like arcade controls, with spherical heads on the sticks and classic circular buttons with concave faces. The sticks are a bit wiggly, though, and their circle gates make precise directional inputs a small challenge. The sticks can register eight directions (up, down, left, right, and the diagonals between them), hitting clicky mechanical switches for each, but they sit in circular mounts so they can still be physically tilted at any angle. This makes navigating in Gauntlet or performing special moves in Mortal Kombat trickier than if the joysticks had octagonal or square gates for more precise movement in the cardinal directions. Meanwhile, the buttons are responsive, but they feel a bit spongier than ideal; neither the sticks nor the buttons have strong tension.

The games are emulated, but look and feel just as they did in the arcade. That means Mortal Kombat feels a bit stiff and Toobin has odd paddling, and that’s just fine. This is a nostalgia machine, and if you’re interested in it you know you’re getting into 30-year-old games with all their flaws and quirks. They’re still fun experiences, whether you're trying to perform a fatality on your friend in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, grinding through floor after floor in Gauntlet, or serving root beers in Root Beer Tapper.

A scanline filter can’t really reproduce the look of a CRT monitor when showing old games. Still, the cabinet’s 17-inch LCD offers a bright, colorful, and crisp picture, with arcade graphics upconverted to 960p on a 1080p screen sharply through emulation. It doesn’t add any detail, but it doesn’t make the huge pixels look fuzzy or blotchy, either.

A Cool Collectible and Conversation Piece

Home arcade cabinets are an acquired, specific taste that appeals to nostalgic gamers, and Arcade1Up is the biggest name with the most readily available options. Its Deluxe cabinets are a step up in height and game selection from the early cabinets we looked at a few years ago, and the riser-less construction is a better design than pairing the smaller models with clunky bases. $500 is a fair chunk of money to shell out for an arcade system in your home, but if you have fond memories of the games that are included or those on the company’s other cabinets, it’s a good option that requires less investment and upkeep than an authentic arcade cabinet.

Gauntlet

That said, the controls could feel a bit better, and while the online features are nice to have, they aren’t reliable outside of leaderboards. And for the same price, you can pick up a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X and get a much more robust and powerful gaming experience with far more available games. Consider Arcade1Up cabinets to be collectibles and furniture more than game systems; they're products for Gen X and Millennial gamers, or younger people curious about why their parents keep waxing poetic about arcades.