Month: December 2020

Enlarge / Earl is a bit annoyed by the Astro City Mini's screen ratio, but otherwise, he seems eager to finally play a licensed version of the classic Japanese shmup Cotton—and 36 other classic Sega arcade games. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

If you want to play Sega's classic Genesis games, that's easy to do in the modern era. Grab a Sega Genesis Mini or pick through an a la carte catalog of classics like Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, and Gunstar Heroes on Steam, smartphones, and consoles. (There are overkill options, as well.) But Sega's other classic libraries can be much trickier to access legitimately, which is one reason I pounced on an official product that went on sale exclusively in Japan earlier this year: the Astro City Mini.

This miniaturized arcade cabinet is modeled after the popular modular arcade cabinet of the same name, one that you'll find at any Japanese arcade worth its weight in yen, and it comes packed with 37 original Sega arcade games—some of which have never been ported to consoles or PCs. At an Amazon JP cost of ￥13,511, or $130, that's a somewhat steep per-game cost compared to other recent miniaturized retro consoles—though it also includes a built-in screen, arcade-caliber controls, and HDMI-out capabilities.

My hardware arrived late last week, and in great news, it's a perfect fit for the primary reason I bought it—as a new centerpiece for my retro-mini console collection, to be positioned on my toys-and-dolls shelves. I am particularly fond of the Astro City cabinet's design language, and Sega's plastic reproduction gets everything right. Stickers are neatly and evenly placed, all with bold, accurate colors. The body's off-white shade is accurate, and it works as a great foil for the primarily green color motif for other elements. And even with the power off, the sheer act of mucking around with the joystick and buttons is an utter delight, thanks to responsive, loud clicking.

Enlarge / Roscosmos specialists recover the "Blok A" stage of the Soyuz rocket from Yakutia. (credit: Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter)

On Friday, a Soyuz 2.1b rocket launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, carrying its payload of 36 OneWeb satellites into space. Although Russia's newest spaceport is located in the far eastern part of the country, it still lies several hundred kilometers from the Pacific Ocean.

This means that as Soyuz rockets climb into space from this location, they drop their stages onto the sparsely populated Yakutia region below. With the Soyuz rocket, there are four boosters that serve as the rocket's "first stage," and these drop away about two minutes after liftoff. Then, the "Blok A" second stage drops away later in the flight.

Although the Yakutia region is geographically rugged and sparsely populated, the Russian government does a reasonably good job of establishing drop zones for these stages and keeping them away from residential areas. This is what happened, as usual, with Friday's launch.