Right! The carton has been delivered to your door, the truck has driven off and you know there’s a massive treat in store within the cardboard walls of that package. Forgive me for being a tad romantic but judging by feedback received from proud owners, there is a bit of sensory overload involved in taking delivery of your brand new Arcade Table!
- Smell – Inhale deeply. You’ve just unpacked your stunning new Arcade Table from its carton. Do you smell that? That unmistakable aroma of brand new electronics equipment. If you were blindfolded, you could be mistaken for thinking you’d just received a massive widescreen TV or a rockin’ surround sound system. Even better – though you may not know it yet if your Arcade Table is a gift – this is not a big lump of AV equipment that you sit and watch happen. This is a totally interactive piece of 1980’s gaming wizardry that will transport you back to a more innocent time.
- Sight – Take it all in. Behold the gleaming stainless steel of the consoles, the elegant retro lines of the full-figured cabinet and the almost pulsating, bulbous red joystick that begs to be throttled. A glint reflects from the glass table top and pulls your eye in to the graphics … just like you remember them. Colourful, animated and compelling, and you can’t wait to manipulate the characters or spaceships to your highest scores ever.
- Sound – There’s a slight hum from the fan that sits concealed inside the cabinet, designed to keep your spaceships cool. If you chose the coin mechanism option, you’ll be poised and ready with a couple of coins, and as you insert them in the slot, that old familiar sound fills the immediate environment. Ca-chink, ca-chink! Scroll through the games on the screen, choose your favourite, click the button and you’re off! Remember Space Invaders and the “uh-uh-uh-uh, uh-uh-uh-uh”? Remember PacMan and the bleep blurp bleep blurp soundtrack? It all comes flooding back when you crank up Galaga and start firing off into a distant universe. Concentration, BEGIN! And heaven forbid anyone should try to start a conversation with you at this point!
- Touch and feel – The first thing you’ll notice is how small the joystick knob feels in your hand. You were a kid when you used to play, after all! The second thing you’ll notice is how instinctive it all feels. We don’t say “assume the position” for nothing! The second you sit at the Arcade Table, you’ll be instantly transported back to a time when good posture was something Nana used to constantly prod you about and for the girls, when sitting ladylike was not applicable. You simply can’t sit side-saddle to play arcade games! Go ahead, hunch your shoulders, sit with your legs apart for best leverage and get stuck into those fire buttons and the joystick. You never really left the 1980’s, did you?
Taste – Oh, I know what you’re thinking. “How’s she going to come up with something about taste for the Arcade Table?” Come on!! You know you can’t wait to taste victory against your components. You know you want bragging rights over the Highest Scores in Galaga, Frogger and Donkey Kong! And if you’ll let me push the taste issue a little further, let me tell you this. The minute you start playing, you will experience cravings for cold Chiko Rolls and warm Coke and the only thing stopping you from going to the shop to get them is your all-consuming desire to play hard for as long as you can!