Cosmotrons Now Available As A Kit Purchase For Commercial Or Home Use

arcadehero October 30, 2021 1

It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned the indie game Cosmotrons on the blog, but today there’s some news about it to share with you.

Having launched in 2018, Cosmotrons takes the idea of Atari’s Gravitar, and greatly builds on it to create a different kind of retro gaming experience. The concept creator, Shane Gutbrod, took the game on a nationwide tour back in 2017, which I participated in, hosting a couple of the game cabinets at my location for a couple of days:

After being on the market for a couple of years, they did reach 50 total sales, which is solid for an indie-made game (particularly with the pandemic disruption to all things arcade). Due to those ongoing issues, Arcadeaholics has decided to discontinue production of the cabinet version, but have come up with another solution for anyone interested in the game, by making it available in a couple of kit forms. While these will work for arcades to add the game to their selection at an affordable price, this will also allow those who have been wanting the game at home to enjoy it too – although the pricing won’t be on the same level as a game on Steam.

The first form is the game available on a SATA SSD hard drive that the buyer can put into an existing PC to be able to play the game. The purchase page mentions that you’ll need your own PC as well as setting up your own “Controls & Interface (Arcade buttons) OR Game Controllers.” A guide is included to help of course, but if you don’t want to deal with all of that, then the second option will probably be of interest. The first 50 of these drives also come with a Mini Deluxotron model; The hard drive is available right now starting at $499.

Option #2 is what Arcadeaholics is calling the “Cosmotrons Console.” It’s a plug-n-play setup of a PC in a custom case and with the Cosmotrons software installed that again, can be used in a commercial arcade setting, in a home arcade machine, or you can just use it connected to any display at home and play the game with Xbox controllers. This comes in at $1500, but then you don’t have to build your own PC for it, and the case is customized with the Cosmotrons logo and such on the side.

Per the website, the PC units should ship out by December 15th, while HDDs are available right now. It will be interesting to see if more arcades end up grabbing the game and convert something over to it. Of course, it’s tough to beat the sweet fiberglass Delux-o-tron cabinet, but still, this is one reason that kits can be a boon to the business, as the game will become more available to the public, and it’ll cost a lot less than the full dedicated cabinet.

What are your thoughts on this?

One Comment »

  1. Nomax November 1, 2021 at 6:57 am - Reply

    It’s a good idea, but it’s strange to have an arcade kit that uses USB and not JVS. I wonder if it works in Sega’s ALL.Net p-ras MULTI cabinets which support both USB and JVS through its I/O card…

Leave A Response »