Now You've Got It Made... With Pro-Play Home Arcade!

It was 1988, and the Nintendo NES and Sega Master System were the state of the art in home videogaming.  They were solid systems, but were not really capable of replicating the latest arcade games, aside from Nintendo's own VS. coin-op line based on slightly beefed-up NES technology.

But that didn't stop Eclectic Products from marketing this $250 cabinet (includes delivery; TV and game console not included) called the Pro-Play Home Arcade:

It's not a bad idea, really -- the built-in arcade-quality controls would have been a big step up from the NES and Sega control pads, and with only two buttons to deal with nothing would have been lost in the translation gameplay-wise, at least until the next generation of systems came along a few years later.

One real problem is that the console has to remain accessible, just in case the owner wants to change the game from time to time.  So the Pro-Play Home Arcade's smooth, sleek arcade contours are necessarily interrupted by a gaping hole on the front panel, where the heart of the system sits exposed.

Another big problem is the price -- the cabinet costs considerably more than the console that provides the bulk of the actual value here, and it's not really accurate to say that it "transforms these systems into a real arcade machine at home!"

But the company does its best to sell the idea with its enthusiastic sloganeering -- except, perhaps, this awkward statement in the lower right-hand corner:

Now You've Got It Made Because We've Made It For You.

Now I feel bad -- apparently Eclectic Products made one of these for me, and I never bought it.  Sorry, guys!