Mini-Review by Matthew Henzel

THE CABINET:
As with  their Centipede cab, this is also a 1/6th scale mini wooden arcade cabinet. It mimics the original USA cabinet extremely well.  The marquee, cone style player start buttons, and coin door buttons all have LED lights and are nice and bright. The artwork for the marquee and sides looks very nice with clear, vivid prints. Even the tiny game instruction text is super sharp. It even features a die-cast metal coin door which can be opened to provide a small area for storing... something?

DISPLAY / SOUND:
The LCD looks very good. I was afraid they would have used too low of a resolution and the vector graphic style would appear jaggy, but that's not the case here. The sound is super loud at its highest volume, and has excellent bass. I'm not sure what type of speaker they are using, but it's very effective here.

GAME PLAY:
The gameplay seems well represented here. The control panel contains the spinner, as well as buttons for fire, super zapper, and player 1 & 2 start. The spinner is accurate and feels OK. It's not the weighted type with momentum though. I.E. you can't give it a spin and have your blaster spin around the screen for several seconds. It's clicky, but gets the job done. If you're the sort of Tempest player that likes to move your claw with slow calculated movements, then this might be a plus.

I personally wish they had the super smooth transition weighted / momentum ball bearing style spinner which Taito utilized with their DS VAUS controller.  That feels right out of an arcade cab, and proves that it could have been done in miniature and for not too much money.
Replicade also includes a slightly larger extra spinner which can be swapped out with the 1/6th scale version to make the control a bit easier for full-sized human hands.

ISSUES/THOUGHTS:
There is a slight lag that I've noticed. I'm not sure if it's between the spinner and input, or with the software emulation itself.  I've contacted Replicade about it and they have said they are looking into it. It's possible that they can address it with a firmware update.  For such a high end product they really should have had it working perfectly before shipping them out.

I wouldn't recommend it at the current price of $159.99. I think they sometimes offer it on sale for $20 off, but even then it's still too much.
Had they nailed the arcade spinner controls that would make the price a bit more realistic. Kickstarters were able to get it for $90 ($70 savings), which should be their retail MSRP.
 

For backing their Kickstarter Centipede cabinet