AtGames Legends Ultimate Arcade - The Good, Bad and Ugly

RetroRalph·video·21m 23s·analyzed·Oct 30, 2019

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

AtGames Legends Ultimate Arcade offers good hardware but needs software/service improvements to justify its cost.

Summary

RetroRalph provides a comprehensive review of the AtGames Legends Ultimate Arcade Cabinet, covering hardware design, included games library (350 titles), the ArcadeNet streaming service (currently free beta), and the "Bring Your Own Game" Steam streaming feature with its $1/hour fee for streaming purchased games. The review is mixed, praising the cabinet's build quality and connectivity features while criticizing the limited arcade game selection, the controversial hourly charging model for personal Steam libraries, and unfinished features like local streaming without fees that AtGames promises but hasn't yet implemented.

Key Claims

The included game library of 350 titles contains many console games (Atari 2600) rather than arcade classics, which is not ideal for an arcade cabinet
high confidence · Direct observation of game list presentation; personal opinion stated clearly by reviewer
ArcadeNet is currently free beta with approximately 20 games available across three pages, will become $19.99/month service with five free hours of Bring Your Own Game included
high confidence · AtGames communicated pricing structure to reviewer; visible on-screen in beta interface
Steam games streamed to the cabinet currently cost $1/hour, even when streaming from a local computer on the same network
high confidence · Reviewer tested and observed timer in upper left corner charging during gameplay; AtGames acknowledged this pricing at time of review recording
AtGames plans to implement local streaming of Steam games without hourly charges in a future firmware update
medium confidence · AtGames representatives told reviewer this during discussions; reviewer notes this hasn't been implemented yet and gives benefit of doubt
The monitor brand is BOE, same as used in Wave 3 Arcade1Up cabinets
high confidence · Direct inspection of hardware components visible in video
Streaming games requires keyboard and mouse per FAQ; trackball alone insufficient for Steam app navigation
high confidence · Reviewer tested and confirmed; mentioned in AtGames FAQ
The Steam streaming feature maintains approximately 60 FPS with good latency over Wi-Fi
high confidence · On-screen display of FPS counter during gameplay demonstration
AtGames has an open API and development kit available for third-party developers to create applications
high confidence · Information found on AtGames website features list shown in video

Notable Quotes

“I was kind of hoping for less console games and more of those arcade classics... for an arcade cabinet, I was kind of hoping for less console games and more of those arcade classics.”
RetroRalph@ 2:58 — Core criticism of the included game selection; defines reviewer's primary complaint about product positioning
“They have not done this yet, but they did say that they're going to have a way to do that locally so that you are not dinged the dollar per hour that you would be right now.”
RetroRalph@ 5:38 — Documents AtGames' acknowledged limitation and promised fix; shows reviewer awareness this is current state, not final product
“If you buy more of this, if you use it all up... they are telling me that they are going to make it so that we can stream our Steam games locally without having to be charged this hourly rate.”
RetroRalph@ 11:50 — Repeats the key service limitation and promised resolution; emphasizes uncertainty about implementation timeline
“That's kind of weak... You're going to make me pay to stream the games that I have locally on a computer somewhere else. That's kind of weak.”
RetroRalph@ 5:29 — Explicit criticism of the value proposition for the bring-your-own-game feature
“I do like that it is a connected arcade. That is a plus to me. But like I said, in its current form, I think there's all these things that they want to do with it, which make it a more appealing system. It's just we're not quite there yet.”
RetroRalph@ 15:03 — Summarizes mixed sentiment; acknowledges potential while critiquing incomplete implementation

Entities

AtGamescompanyRetroRalphpersonArcade1UpcompanyBOEcompanyD2DcompanySteamcompanyLegends Ultimate Arcade CabinetproductMetal SluggameStreet Fighter IVgameMark Kimperson

Signals

$
market_signal: AtGames implementing freemium service model: free ArcadeNet beta with limited catalog, $19.99/month for expanded access and Bring Your Own Game hours
high · ArcadeNet currently free with ~20 games, transitioning to paid tier; five free hours of bring-your-own included with subscription
$
market_signal: $1/hour fee for streaming personally-owned Steam games perceived as weak value proposition, even when streaming from same local network
high · Reviewer explicitly criticizes this as 'weak' and notes it's charged even for local streaming; plans to reassess after promised changes
?
product_strategy: Legends Ultimate differentiates from Arcade1Up by offering cloud streaming capabilities, multiple storage/streaming service integrations, and connected software ecosystem
high · Review emphasizes connected nature as advantage; multiple services (ArcadeNet, Steam, other platforms) accessible; open API for developers
?
product_strategy: Local Steam game streaming without hourly charges promised but not yet implemented; awaiting firmware update
medium · AtGames representatives told reviewer this feature is coming but hasn't been deployed; reviewer notes they're 'going to give them the benefit of the doubt' but currently falls in 'bad category'
?
product_concern: Game library contains too many console titles (2600 games) rather than arcade classics, misaligning with product positioning as 'arcade cabinet'
high · Reviewer explicitly states dissatisfaction with library composition and calls this 'the part of the cabinet that i'm the least excited about'; notes 350 included games but many are console ports

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.064

0:00

In this episode, we're gonna check out the Legends Ultimate Arcade Biography. I thought you said you weren't gonna get it! Ugh! Ah, this guy will never learn. Classic Kim is gonna kill you. all right the good the bad and the ugly no one said she was pretty guys so here it is this is the at games legends ultimate arcade system it does have a lit marquee that looks pretty nice for the most part, so kind of cool. The control panel has a plethora of controls. You've got spinners, you've got joysticks and buttons, and a trackball, so a lot going on here. It is a little crammed, but not too bad. The side art is, well, kind of just okay, so if you're Tyler Goodman or Joe Sabo or Escape Pod, you know what to do. So here it is. You'll notice on the side there's some chrome T-molding. That looks really nice and gives it that authentic arcade look, which I do appreciate. There are stereo speakers on this thing and for the wattage they don't sound half bad so not bad. The bezel is uh you know the bezel and it surrounds the 24.5 inch screen. I removed the back panel so you guys can see what's going on back here that is the video board so all of the connections that go from the control panel go into this and that's actually your LVDS connection that goes to the back of the monitor and then everything else is plugged in at the time of installation. I did notice while poking around that this monitor is the brand name BOE. That's the same brand name that they're using on the Wave 3 Arcade 1UP cabinet, so kind of interesting. The speakers are 4 ohm 5 watts, and there's two of them. They sound pretty damn good for, you know, smaller speakers that are kind of low wattage, so that's pretty neat. And then above that, you'll find this LED strip that's actually mounted toward the front of the cabinet, and that's actually to light up the lit marquee that comes with the system. All right, guys, here we are. We are logged on to the AtGames Legends Ultimate Arcade Cabinet. So we're doing things a little bit different because I'm going to grab the footage right from the cabinet. So we're not having to record, you know, a side of the screen and get all that glare and all that nonsense. So we're going to dive right in. This video is the good, the bad, and the ugly. So I'm going to give it all to you straight as far as I see it as it sits right now. So let's dive right in. I'm going to kill the music. All right. So first things first, when you log in, you're going to get the games folder. This is going to be the initial games list, the 350 games that were included. I'm going to leave a PDF that has links to all of the games that are in on this list. Now, I was a tad bit underwhelmed with this list. There's some decent games, you know, like Disney's Aladdin. There's some Asteroids and things like that. There's Centipede, Breakout, you know, there are some arcade classics, but I was kind of hoping for more modern, you know, arcade hits. And there really are not a lot of those. So a lot of this is comprised of 2,600 console games and things like that. So you may like some of these games, and I'm not saying I don't like them, but I guess for an arcade cabinet, I was kind of hoping for less console games and more of those arcade classics. Now there are several on here, and there's some really fun things you can do with the cabinet because it has two spinners. You can play games like Pong. I mean, very old school, so talk about nostalgia. I don't think I was even born when Pong came out, but I do remember playing pong in various different forms you know throughout my you know youth but anyway so you know you can cycle through these and i won't i won't bore you with the whole games list but this is the part of the cab that i'm the least excited about now keep in mind those are the 350 that are included so you're not paying anything extra for those that's just included on the cabinet when you get it so we're going to go up to arcade net because that's pretty interesting so arcade net is the 20 service right now as of the recording of this video this is actually in beta and you can see that on the left it says arcade net free beta so this is in beta for right now and there's only three pages worth of games however there's some pretty good games on here um you know shock troopers is one i really like metal slug 2 metal slug x um akari warriors uh you did know i will notice that sometimes the game art takes a little bit to load so you can see there's some decent decent games on here there's some king of fighters and things like that fatal fury so you know some pretty decent games but keep in mind this is only three pages worth of games so you figure there's what six 12 I don't know, it's maybe like 20 something games on here. So not that many, but I did talk to the guys at AtGames. They said this service is going to continue to get better. As of right now, it's free. And I think that makes sense because there's not a lot on it. So I wouldn't really pay $20 for something that I'm not getting a lot of. So when you do, when this is ready to be a purchasable service, you will get five free hours of what I'm about to show you next. So what I'm about to show you next is bring your own game. So you'll get five hours of streaming gaming from these services. Now, the only one that I actually have an active account on is Steam.

10:23

It's really hard to do without being in front of the cabinet, but let's see. I thought it'd be easier. All right, remote play, no. remote play okay so in remote play there's a thing called advanced host settings make sure that you check play sound on host on both sides both your laptop or desktop you streaming from and your client on the AtGames I don know why but if you don do that you're only going to have sound on your host. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's the only way to get around that for that to be fixed. And it was interesting because at E3, they actually told me the sound wasn't working, and I half wonder if they actually just didn't know how to troubleshoot it. I don't really know. But anyways, so the streaming service is kind of one of those things it falls between the good and bad because it's good that it's fun that I have access to this game. It's bad right now because I have to pay an hourly rate. Again, giving them the benefit of the doubt. They say it's going to be fixed in a firmware update. Let's hope they actually do that. So that stream locally is supposed to be resolved. Anyway, that's essentially how that service works. We're going to go out of here for a second because I want to talk about a couple more things. So let's go back and quit out of this. So when you go back to the main menu, you will see in the left-hand corner, it does remind you of how much time you have left for streaming. And if you go to purchase time, it allows you to buy additional time. So you can buy this in 10-hour chunks. So $10 is the minimum. So if you buy more of this, if you use it all up. Now, keep in mind, I will say again, they are telling me that they are going to make it so that we can stream our Steam games locally without having to be charged this hourly rate. Now, what I did notice is I disconnected the system from a network connection to see if I could put the system on a private network and access my games without having that ticker charge me. It looks like it goes and looks for that D2D server. If it doesn't find it, it doesn't open the Steam app. So it is using that D2D server as like a tertiary site to play your game. So because of that, it's a no-go on that. But it looks like they're going to fix it, so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. But as it is right now, I'm going to fall into the bad category. So there are other applications on the system that you can use to stream games. I don't really use any of the other services, so they're less important to me. My son happens to play Fortnite, but I don't know why you'd want to play Fortnite on an arcade cabinet. Now, you can hook up a controller to it, so maybe that's a reason to do it if you had this in a room and wanted to multipurpose use for it. The other thing I thought of, if this cabinet is in a room, it does have other HDMI ports. You could use those to put a fire stick on it and use it as a TV if you had it in a room. But I don't know. That's not really, to me, one of the more appealing qualities of it. So yeah. So as it stands right now, ArcadeNet is free for now in beta. Again, you get these three pages worth of games. And once it is available, when you pay the $19.99 a month, you are going to get five hours of the bring your own game service. Outside of that, there's some basic settings. It does have a Wi-Fi connection, so you can connect it to Wi-Fi, or you can connect it to Ethernet. There's actually an Ethernet port on the back.

13:42

All right. Let's go through and upgrade it. Literally, I didn't even know this was available, so we'll see if anything changed. They did tell me they were going to update a couple things, so let's see. hopefully it doesn't brick the unit. Well, it looks like it just rebooted. So let's hope it comes back up. There it is. So that's what it looks like when it boots. It says Legends Ultimate. I don't know if anything's going to, that's really weird that this happened to happen while the video is going on. I guess you can now see the upgradability of the system for more updating. Okay. Well, we'll let that go. And I'll talk a little bit about some of the other things that I have concerns about it. So if we want to talk about the good, they had talked about potentially being able to add your own ROMs. So bring your own ROM. I know it's kind of a gray area, but they are potentially thinking about doing that. They did talk to me about that, and they said that is something that they're going to offer at some point. So again, that's one of those things. I think that this would make it more appealing to some to be able to play whatever games they want, but as of right now, you can play the games that are on there and then stream games. There's no way to add games outside of accessing through a streaming service or the games that are on there or the games they offer through ArcadeNet. So it looks like it's going to reboot. I'm going to say reboot automatically. So that's kind of cool. I didn't actually plan on showing you guys what a code update looks like, but it's pretty straightforward. So I do like that it is a connected arcade. That is a plus to me. But like I said, in its current form, I think there's all these things that they want to do with it, which make it a more appealing system. It's just we're not quite there yet. So that may deter you from purchasing it right now because you kind of have to evaluate it for what it is right now, not what it might be so anyways all right before we jump over to gameplay i did want to go check out the website with you guys the reason why is that people don't read anymore and there's actually quite a bit of information on the website that's valuable the first thing that i would advise you go take a look at is the included games list so there's 350 games on the system so the reason why i bring this up is that if these 350 do not interest you and you have no desire to pay monthly fees for additional games and services, then that's going to weigh heavily on your decision whether or not this is a system that you would want to purchase. So just go check these out, see if these are games that you'd like. Now keep in mind my personal opinion is there way too many console games for a system that called an arcade So console games don translate to arcade in my opinion but that going to be up to you The games list itself is pretty instrumental to whether or not I want to buy a system or not for me personally. Okay, the other thing I wanted to mention is there's a support FAQ. It does answer a lot of questions that I actually went over today, but just want to let you know that that's there. And there's actually a video to help you assemble it. But again, this is really easy. It's actually a lot easier to assemble than an arcade one-up. If you go to the features list, it gives you a little bit more information about the system, what's included and things like that. It tells you a little bit about the online services and stuff like that as well. Now, there is an open API and development kit for this for third-party developers. I have no idea whether they'll adopt it or not, but that would be kind of interesting if you start having third-party developers write applications for this thing. That is the beauty of it being a connected system. Now, whether or not people do that is, you know, that's to be determined in the future. We don't have any way to predict that. Okay, I'm going to run over to the cabinet real quick. We'll do a little bit of gameplay, and I'll give you my final thoughts. We'll wrap up. All right, the first game I'm going to show you is Metal Slug. So this is available via ArcadeNet. All right, you can see that the game is actually presented in the proper aspect ratio, which is much welcomed from my respect. I wouldn't want to stretch this game out it looks really good at the standard aspect ratio but you can see the plays pretty well the controls are filled nice and so you know anyone's gonna love some Metal Slug but keep in mind ArcadeNet is right now a free service but will be a paid for service eventually so this game probably won't be free forever. Alright let me go back to the main menu you're gonna hit the menu button and then at the top you just hit quit

17:45

So I did play multiple ArcadeNet games and they play really well. Let's go over to Bring Your Own Game and I'll show you how Steam works. Okay, so Steam is all loaded up. I'm going to do some, I think, Fight and Rage. That sounds like a good game to do. Again, I'm going to stream it from my desktop. I'm going to hit Stream. Now keep in mind, if I go back to that menu, you will see it is ticking down on my time that I have left. So it looks like it detected one of my controllers, but I don't want to use that right now, which is really cool. But anyways, yep, it's costing me money right now, so I better hurry up and play. So keep that in mind. If you're sitting on this screen and you can't decide what you want, as soon as you're on the Steam app, you are being charged money. Now, I don't know if that's going to change or if they have any control over changing that in the future, but that is something to be aware of. So let's click on Fight and Rage and start this thing up. So if at any time during the setup your joystick becomes unresponsive, just move it around and you'll see it'll go back to joystick mode. So notice I just hit the mouse and it says mouse mode. If that happens, you won't be able to do anything. So just move the joystick around and it'll say game mode and get you back to where you need to be. So that can sometimes be one of those weird things that if you're not paying attention to it, it could happen to you and it'll seem like the system's not responding. But anyways, right now if you look at the top right corner it says 60 frames per second so I'm operating at a frame rate that looks pretty good for a system like this, especially because I'm streaming this game. So I find it pretty cool to be able to play, you know, modern games like this, you know, modern retro throwback types of games. You'll notice the latency is pretty good, sometimes you'll see some slowdown here and there. connected over Wi-Fi in my house and I am a little further away from the router than I would like, but it seems to work pretty well for the most part. So anyways, that's Steam. And if you want to exit Steam, you can hit the menu button, scroll over to the right and hit quit. And I'll bring you back to the Steam main menu. So I've tested a couple different games. This game is not on their compatibility list. There is a compatibility list. I'll put links in the description of that. and then it brings you right back. So guys, that's, that's kind of all I wanted to show for at least this video. Um, I did mod this thing. So actually from an actuality, I have this, the ability to run a pie on this and I'm going to do a longer video on that, but that's not what I wanted to show today. So if I plug the pie in, I actually have it on one of these HDMI connections. I'm able to run a pie at the same time. So kind of cool. Um, there's some caveats to this though, but I have, I'm still working on this, but it's kind of neat. I can use the actual arcade controls and be able to play games from a Pi build as well. All right, guys, I want to play out to some turtles. So if you like this video, please like it. Please consider subscribing. It really does help us out. We do lots of fun stuff with retro games and arcade gaming and at-home arcades and mods and all sorts of fun stuff. So definitely check the channel out, turn on notifications so You can be informed of future updates. And as always, guys, thank you for watching, and we will see you on the next one. Take care.