Atgames Legends Ultimate Review: Unifying Families
Retail Price: $499.98
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One of my personal goals in life since I was 10 years old was to have a home arcade. I never thought it was feasible back in the day, but thanks to companies like Arcade1Up and Atgames, my dreams have finally begun to come to fruition. Unfortunately for Lida, it’s also becoming an addiction to add cabinets to our quickly filling office space. This is where the Legends Ultimate multicade is extremely beneficial. Unlike Arcade1Up offerings that only offer a handful of themed licensed games per unit, the Legends Ultimate combines literally all your classics together into one full sized machine. Is this the cabinet to buy for the arcade lover in you?
Retro Flair at Home
The Legends Ultimate cabinet is a towering presence of retro flair. Unlike ¾ sized Arcade1Up products, the Legends Ultimate is essentially a full-sized machine you’ll feel comfortable playing on without a riser. While it isn’t as bulky as a cabinet located on an actual arcade floor, measuring at 2.53 x 21.65 x 66.44 inches, it is nonetheless a domineering presence in any room. A light up marquee spelling “Legends Ultimate” in what I can only describe as a 1980’s infomercial font is where your eyes take you initially. That’s usually where us old arcade players normally gravitate towards as the universal line querying system was located there. Of course, you don’t need to do that here as this 2 player system doesn’t require any monetary insertion. Just pay the $549 sticker price and you’ll get 300 licensed games to play for perpetuity.
The display is a rather gracious 1080p LCD panel that is 24 inches in size. If you’ve been playing on an Arcade1up cab with their 17 inch 4:3 displays, you’ll likely either love or despise the design choice Atgames made by widening the playfield with a wide screen aspect ratio. While this can be adjusted with in-game settings to match the correct ratio for these classic games, aesthetically I do have to admit it looks a bit strange. My ideal perception of a cab usually consists of a boxy CRT display. The Legends Ultimate then proceeds to list 15 prominent games from its roster on the lower card. This is printed on the MDF wood that the entire cab is constructed from. The side panels are plain black, however, Atgames does supply you with decal prints you have to screw onto the sides. The decal included for the cabinet consists of a mishmash of classic arcade icons in a non-disruptive design. It was most likely made this way for customers to be able to design and easily swap outside panel art. The supplied screws to pin the decal down are quite weak though and easily stripped. I would have preferred a printed design onto the wood. I’m indifferent to the actual appearance of this cabinet and if I’m being honest, I wish it looked a little more appealing. The Legends Ultimate isn’t offensive in any way and will fit in next to any furniture you have around the house, but after seeing the amazing replicate adaptations from Arcade1up over the years, I do envy those aesthetic values for my own home arcade.
Endless Game Options
This is one recurring theme that I find myself constantly going back to. It’s hard to not pit Atgames and Arcade1up against one another when they’re both offering products that every arcade geek has been dreaming about since childhood. These aesthetic things can be modded on the Legends Ultimate quite easily. Whereas Arcade1up cabinets have become a modders paradise, those units require a significant amount of effort and skill to tinker. That isn’t the case here. If you don’t like the plain marquee, you can buy the Super Pixelcade LCD modification which is essentially a first party product at this point in time as it’s heavily marketed by Atgames. The most important modification gamers are interested in (and rightfully so), is the game library of the cabinet. This is where Atgames is the undisputed people’s champion. With literally just a small thumb drive, your 300 game multicade becomes a 1,000+ games retro beast. Through the CoinOpsX app, which is officially supported by Atgames, the experience on the Legends Ultimate completely warps into that of a masterpiece. It’s so simple to do that even my tech-resistant parents could probably set it up. Speaking of which, my baby-boomer parents absolutely love playing Pac-Man and Centipede on this!
I’m not even going to get into a discussion about the included games list on here out of the box because nobody who owns this machine should even bother booting any of those roms up. You’re buying this cabinet as a physical extension for CoinOpsX. With that, every classic from the golden age of arcades you can think of from Q-bert to The Simpsons, Sunset Riders to Mortal Kombat and anything in between will be at your disposal. This isn’t going to be a CoinOpsX review, but all I can say is that every single game that I’ve wanted to play again has operated in a playable and enjoyable manner. For a machine that does so much to replicate retro, the operating system sure wasn’t something that should have followed that cue. Atgames could do a lot better in mapping out a more aesthetically pleasing interface for navigation that doesn’t scream 1990’s. Luckily, CoinOps really is the only thing you should be clicking on this machine.
Without a doubt, the ease of which I was able to transform this machine played a significant factor in the purchase. Whereas on an (albeit prettier looking) Arcade1up cab I would have to open it up and remove the CPU to throw a Raspberry PI and rewire the buttons, Atgames literally is plug in play through the USB-A port. Speaking of ports, not only are there 2x USB ports to expand your library and use third-party controllers with, there’s also an HDMI port to plug in a gaming laptop (more on that later).
It’s like Ikea furniture for gaming
The Legends Ultimate was also surprisingly easy to build too. All the pieces for the cab come in one large box (unlike the Legends Pinball) and assembling it all together was easier than Ikea furniture. It was actually easier than an Arcade1up cabinet too. The actual playing board houses two sets of joysticks, six button switches along with two spinners and a 360-degree trackball (for games like Golden Tee).
Two versions of the Legends Ultimate are currently being sold. One is through Walmart and the other is through Sam’s Club. The only noticeable hardware difference is the inclusion of side-mounted pinball buttons on the Sam’s Club edition. I’m not sure what the deal is here as Sam’s Club is a Walmart affiliate anyway and there are no good reasons for a variant edition from what I could gather. Regardless of which version you have, the accessory attachment slot those switches connect to should still be constructed on the side panel for future additional products like the upcoming light gun by Atgames. As with the Arcade1up units, the switches for the buttons aren’t what professional fighting gamers would prefer on their fightsticks, but I do think they offer considerable feedback for a playable experience. The joysticks could probably benefit from having better tactile precision, but all in all, I’m quite satisfied with the build quality of my unit.
Connectivity to the Internet
As I mentioned earlier, Atgames was ahead of the curve when it comes to connectivity and internet integration. Not only do system updates (like those on your phone) push over-the-air quite frequently, leaderboards and streaming are also capable on this hardware. After making an Atgames account, you’re able to stream games from your Steam library through Atgame’s software integration. It never worked for me even after multiple vigorously frustrating attempts on my Cyberpower PC. I believe the problem lies with the fact that I run an AMD setup and this operates effectively with an Nvidia setup. There are plenty of videos online of this working, and if I can get it to work one day, the Legends Ultimate essentially becomes a big USB controller for modern games like Street Fighter 5. Even without using this wireless streaming option, HDMI access allows a laptop with Steam to connect and run on the cabinet. I can’t stress enough how different of an experience it is to play certain games on a cabinet instead of with a controller or mouse and keyboard combination.
Unifying the family
I’ll be honest, I sucked at the arcades. I was never a competitive player but I enjoyed the atmosphere more than just about any place in the world during my childhood. There’s just something very joyful about seeing kids and their parents yell from jubilation of completing a level together or screech in terror as they plummet to their demise. An arcade cabinet is the ultimate family unifier and I’ve seen that with my own. Seeing the excitement from my nieces and nephews as they experience arcade gaming for the first time to the glistening nostalgia in the eyes of my Centipede-loving parents, I’d say the Legends Ultimate was well worth the purchase.
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Alex
Caught in between the conundrum of his fascination with retro and the future, Alex has a very unique taste in technology. Never one to follow trends like his millennial peers yet constantly desiring to get ahead of the curve, he sees technology like he does his other love: comic books. Always looking for the best value or a hidden gem, his collector mindset reflects on some of his favorite gadgets: the Moto X (2015), HTC U11 and the Google Pixelbook. If there’s a good tech deal out there, Alex is on the hunt!