Home arcade console · Designed by arcade owners
Real arcade joysticks and buttons, one Pro mainboard, and Super HD upscaling over HDMI. Pick a panel, answer the Sanwa question, then choose the GameCraZE archive cards that hold your games.
One thing up front, because people ask every week: the console ships with no games on it. Your library lives on the archive cards you pick in step three. Choose one, two or three.
Consoles from $139.90 · Single Panel, Dual Panel or Wireless Edition
Three steps · live price
Pick the console, decide on Sanwa parts, then load your game cards. The total at the bottom of the screen changes with every click, so there is no surprise waiting for you at checkout.
Straight talk: the console ships with no games on it. The games live on these cards. Card 1 is the one that matters; cards 2 and 3 are for people who want more.
Select GameCraZE High Speed Archival Card
Add Another Supported Archive Card
Go ALL Out & Add a 3rd Game Archive Card!
Select GameCraZE High Speed Archival Card
Add Another Supported Archive Card
Go ALL Out & Add a 3rd Game Archive Card!
Select GameCraZE High Speed Archival Card
Add Another Supported Archive Card
Go ALL Out & Add a 3rd Game Archive Card!
**Pandora Game Console consoles do not come with any pre-installed licensed or unlicensed software. Any Added Archive service is provided as-is with no implied warranties or licenses. Performance of archive has been tested and will work with your Pandora Platinum Pro version console. Adding an archive card constitutes your acknowledgement of ownership of original licensed hardware/software and your request of the service permits us to perform archiving for you on your behalf as a service.
Where it comes from
The people behind the Pandora Platinum ran arcades before they built consoles. They know what a cabinet costs to buy, to move and to keep running, and they know which parts wear out first. That is where this console came from: the feel of a real arcade control panel, in a box you can put on a coffee table.
You get genuine arcade joysticks and buttons on a carbon fiber style panel, plus an extra set of buttons in the box, because buttons are the part you will hammer hardest. Pick the Single Panel if you want one compact unit. Pick the Dual Panel if two players keep bumping elbows. Pick the Wireless Edition if you would rather not run a cable across the living room.
Every one of them runs the same Pandora Platinum Pro mainboard, and every one is a supported console. We build them, test them, and back the mainboard for life.
Start your build
What you are paying for
Plenty of boxes look like this one from across the room. Plug them in and the difference shows up fast. Here is what you are paying for when you buy the original.
The Pro board upscales decades of classics to sharp HD on the TV you already own, over HDMI. VGA monitors work too, and the picture switches between 16:9 and 4:3 from the menu.
The console has no built-in games. You pick high-speed archive cards sorted by genre: Fighting Masters, Neo Geo, Retro Arcade, Mortal Kombat, 3D fighters and more. Every console has three card slots in the builder, and cards swap in and out whenever you like.
Some of the best quarter munchers were built for four. Expand your Pandora Game Console and play 3 and 4 player games such as The Simpsons Arcade Game, X-Men: The Arcade Game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade, Aliens vs Predator, Sunset Riders, Dungeons & Dragons Arcade, Rampage World Tour and WWF Wrestlefest.
Picture quality
Old games were drawn for small tube screens. Stretch them across an 85 inch flat screen and the pixels pull apart. The Pro board was engineered with Super HD upscaling, so those sprites land clean and fill the screen on a modern TV.
Prefer the shape you remember? A couple of menu selections switch the picture from 16:9 to the traditional 4:3 arcade frame. The board connects over HDMI and also works with VGA monitors, so a retro PC monitor or an HD projector is fair game.
We have tested the mainboard against a long list of HDMI TVs from the past ten years and more. Once in a while an older, low-end set will not take the HDMI signal. If you get power but no picture, try a newer HDMI TV or a VGA monitor before anything else.
Under the panel
Pop the panel open and this is what you find. Arcade joysticks with proper gates, arcade buttons on a colour-coded loom, and the Platinum Pro mainboard with its own cooling fan. Nothing here was chosen to hit a price on a toy-store shelf.
Game night
The sticks and buttons on a Pandora Platinum are arcade parts, the same kind you would find inside a cabinet. Want the parts tournament players swear by? Every panel version can take the official Sanwa upgrade: joysticks, buttons, or both. You choose it when you build the console, so it arrives ready.
Wear parts are a fact of arcade life. That is why joystick assemblies and tops are replaceable part by part at a fair price instead of forcing you to buy a whole new console.
And when the whole family shows up, the console grows to four players. The Wireless Edition takes the 4 Player Expansion Hub plus a 3rd and 4th player set of arcade sticks or controller pads, and the wireless 3rd and 4th player set works with the Dual Panel too. Then load up the 3 and 4 Player Arcade Games Archive Card and settle who really carried the team in Turtles in Time.
From the people who play it
Machine prices keep climbing into the thousands, and that makes keeping a local retro arcade open a real struggle. The Pandora Platinum consoles, made for retro arcade play at home, let us put out a bigger variety of cabinets and still keep costs sensible. Our retro players are happy.
Reviewing retro games is my full-time job, and as a woman doing it, pulling together everything a review needs has never been easy. That is no longer the case: my favorite games from the arcade, plus NES, Super Nintendo, Genesis and even NEO GEO titles, now all play on a single console. It handles every one of them, and it handles them well.
The Pandora Box Arcade was a gift I bought for my boyfriend and his children. I still remember the arcade days, and I wanted that same feeling to become part of life at our place. This box can do just about anything. Okay, nearly anything. Ha.
Speedrunning retro games is my thing, and I have done a ton of runs. Even so, with the Pandora Arcade Box Platinum I have run games I had never heard of. So many classic games and retro gems are out there that nobody knew about. Right, time for the next game!
Lights off
Kill the lamps and the panels glow. It sounds like a small thing until it is midnight, the pizza is gone, and nobody in the room wants to be the one who goes home first.
Watch it played
No studio tricks. These are the console, the panels and the games, filmed the way you would play them. Each one opens right here on the page.
The lineup
Same Platinum Pro board inside all three. What changes is how you sit, and how many friends you can fit around the TV.
Two separate panels, one mainboard. Sit where you like and keep your elbows out of the fight.
$159.90
One panel, two joysticks, HDMI out. The console everything else is built on.
$139.90
Separated wireless panels, no cable across the living room, expandable to four players.
$199.99You will see clones that promise 30,000 games or Wi-Fi downloads. Most of those games do not run right, and nobody answers the phone when they don't. The original Pandora Platinum has a tested Pro mainboard, archive cards we check for performance, a Lifetime Mainboard Warranty and US SUPPORT out of Las Vegas. If it did not come from us, none of that comes with it.
$89.00
$149.99
$169.00
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