A Raspberry Pi-powered arcade cabinet with hot-swappable control decks is titled RetroDimSum's Revocade

The Revocade's control cards are interchangeable and were created as a one-stop-shop for nearly all sorts of arcade gaming.

A crowdfunding campaign for the Revocade, a Raspberry Pi-powered small arcade cabinet with a unique feature that lets it be tailored to the needs of certain games, has been started by gaming firm RetroDimSum.

"It's nothing unusual to have a tabletop arcade machine. Typically, they have buttons and arcade sticks. Well, for the most part, it's good "says Guangsi Han, the creator of RetroDimSum. "You need to purchase another specialized arcade machine if you want the complete gaming experience and/or to utilize various peripherals (such racing wheels, trackballs, spinners, etc.), but they can only play a small number of that genre's games and will cost you add hundreds of dollars."

In contrast, Revocade strives to provide the tabletop arcade platform flexibility. The majority of the hardware is housed in the main display unit, but the controls are attached at the front and can be changed at will between a single-player six-button arcade stick layout, a racing wheel with foot pedals, and a trackball and spinner set. Additional controls, such as a potential two-player six-button control deck, are also planned.

It's interesting how the control decks serve two purposes: there is a USB port in addition to the pogo-pin connectors on the back of each one. Each may be used with any PC or gaming console that supports generic USB controllers by plugging in the appropriate cable.

The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 4GB of RAM within the display unit has the power, according to the manufacturer, "to run all of your favorite retro/arcade games properly." RetroPie manages the menu and emulation, and everything is shown on an unexpectedly huge 17" IPS screen that has been cropped to give a 1:1 aspect ratio with letterboxing and pillarboxing for landscape and portrait games, respectively.

The main device with the six-button arcade stick control deck is priced at $499 as part of the company's current Kickstarter effort to generate money for manufacture. The anticipated start date for delivery is July 2023.