Taito announces mini arcade cabinet with rotating screen and trackball controller

Taito is the latest Japanese video game publisher to resurrect old hardware in mini form. The company behind Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and many more arcade classics has just announced the Egret II Mini, which like Sega’s excellent Astro City Mini is a shrunken-down version of a popular arcade cabinet.

The original Egret II was released in the ‘90s, and its key feature was the ability to rotate its screen 90 degrees so that games with tall aspect ratios — like Space Invaders and other shooters — could be played in tate (vertical) mode. Appropriately enough, that feature is present on the Egret II Mini, which has a 5-inch 4:3 LCD that can be played in either orientation.

The Egret II Mini’s primary controls include six...

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