If you’ve been patiently waiting for a chance to buy Sega’s Astro City Mini, you’ll have a small window of opportunity to grab one. Limited-run games sell 3,500 units of the adorable micro-console (via Polygon). It goes on sale for $ 130 on March 26 at 10 a.m.ET. It’s that Friday, so set a calendar reminder if needed. Limited Run Games will also offer a selection of accessories, including a matching controller for $ 28.
Announced last year and only available in Japan at the time, the Astro City Mini comes with 37 classic arcade games, including highlights like Extraterrestrial syndrome, Modified beast, Golden ax and Virtua Hunter. The majority of the games included are localized in English. Some have sections of untranslated text, but the menus are all in English. The device itself has an LCD display, HDMI output, headphone jack, and two USB-A ports. This means that you can connect the console to an external display if you find that the included display is too small. In another quality of life concession, the Astro City Mini lets you save your progress at any time.
Engadget Japan publisher Ei Ito tells us the Astro City Mini disappointed on release, with a great game selection hampered by inconsistent emulation, poor quick save, and lack of button mapping. It is apparently already reduced by around 30% in the country. Hopefully Sega fixed some of these issues for its western version.