The Story Of My World Of Nintendo Cabinet

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

I told the beginning of this story on Nintendo Age already but today there were some new developments so I thought I would share them.

All prices CAD.

In 2015 I was visiting my parents and my girlfriend wanted to go into this tiny electronics store at the end of downtown in the capital city. Right in the main show room I saw he was using a 6-7 foot tall PlayStation 2 cabinet to hold the electronics, it even had the marquee in the top. I asked how much he would sell it for and he said he'd sell it for $150 and had another one upstairs just like it. I initially passed on the price tag but a month or two after I returned back home, I changed my mind and tried desperately to call him and get my dad to pick it up. For months I tried with no luck, I couldn't even get him to pick up the phone at all.

A year later (2016) I went back to visit my parents again and went back to visit the store again. When I walked in, the cabinet was still there but when I asked about it this time, it was no longer for sale. He once again said he had another one just like it upstairs but I assumed it was in worse condition. I reluctantly said I would go upstairs to check it out and as soon as I crested the top of the stairs, I saw this glorious beast being used to hold fabric and jewelry and I realized it wasn't just like the one downstairs at all. This is a World Of Nintendo cabinet.

He said he may have the marquee somewhere but I never did get it. We haggled on the price for a few minutes and eventually settled on $250 as a purchase price. I paid him and the next day I returned with my dad and a trailer to haul it away.

When I got it back to my parents' house, I saw a sticker on the back of the cabinet with a manufacturer in Ontario which I thought was odd. I always thought one day I would reach out to them to ask some questions but never did........until today.

Today I looked up this company online to see if they're still operating and to my surprise, they are still operating, under the same name, in the same location, with the same phone number! All of this information is still unchanged on their website. I filled out their contact form to ask if they still have any surviving materials from these builds and they sent me back some interesting information. They didn't actually have anything remaining but they did send me these images of all of the gaming related cabinets they were contracted to build over the decades.

It's very interesting that they were contracted to build these because I presume a different company was contracted for the USA cabinets. That means the different manufacturers may have built them slightly differently and there is probably some sort of schematic documentation which was sent out to each manufacturer to which they needed to adhere.

[DarkTone | 986]

Thanks for sharing. 

[Awoken | 275]

Great story!

Any pictures of how the cabinet is now used by you?

[croagunk | 798]

Nice! I’d love to have one of those displays. Glad you got one!

[Funky_brewsta | 42]

Great stuff! There’s a display and kiosk group on Facebook that would love this info. 

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

3 hours ago, Awoken said:

Great story!

Any pictures of how the cabinet is now used by you?

For the last 5 years it has been sitting in my parents' garage 5000 kilometres away from me on the east coast. I decided 2 years ago I would finally ship it next time I visited and I haven't been back there in 2 years now because of Covid. Hopefully I'll be visiting them this Christmas so I'll figure out something to ship it out here.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Code Monkey

[Gloves | 11,790]

This is super cool man, especially with the photos and all. Thanks for sharing!

[LaC | 104]

That SNES Interactive looks like it is taking a dump.  I'm gonna say that one did not get a huge production run.

Edited August 17, 2021 by LaC

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

48 minutes ago, LaC said:

That SNES Interactive looks like it is taking a dump.  I'm gonna say that one did not get a huge production run.

This, as well as the other stuff that they produced that didn't specifically hold product, look like they were made for game/trade shows versus the traditional "demo in the corner" stations we see in GameStops today.  Sure, that specific design is arguably ugly, but I'd say that the production run was likely short because of their brief intended use versus any sort of mass "Oh God, WTF is that?!" reaction from the public.  If you think about it, being ugly would get it *more* attention, which is precisely what folks displaying at a show want, so perhaps they specifically went in the aesthetically displeasing direction.