iMP Gaming Mini Arcade Pro Cabinet

Written by Joseph Moorer on 12/1/2025 for SW2  

If you know anything about me, you know I will always have a hesitation with playing with third-party controllers. There's something about the original controller that will always feel better. Double all this if we're talking about fight sticks. I own Arcade 1UPs for the feel of having my own arcade, but I know where they cut costs. The controllers and buttons aren't the best in the world. I am well aware that mod kits exist. I'm even more aware that there are people who will mod your arcades for you for a nominal fee. But let’s be real. Money doesn't grow on trees. Still, if I'm going to crossover into reviewing hardware, I should give the new blood some unbiased attention. So here I am, to give iMP Tech's Mini Arcade Pro a fair shake.

UK-based iMP Tech's website shows what they already dabble in when it comes to accessories. The company has been around for 39 years, and 29 of those years have been spent on accessories. They essentially manufacture controller charging and cooling stations for all the latest consoles. If you have a cooling and/or storage station for your Xbox 360, it was probably made by iMP. They also have USB Rock Band-esque mics for sale and steering wheels for the Switch 1. So iMP Tech has produced a variety of accessories for everything, this seems to be the first arcade stick of its kind for the company.

I had to make myself remember that, at its core, the Mini Arcade Pro is adding an arcade stick to the Nintendo Switch (and Switch 2) and nothing more. Keep that in mind as you're reading through this review. The box it came in is a little wider than a Nintendo Switch 2. Inside the box is the Mini Arcade Pro in seven pieces, and a set of instructions in different languages. Once I unfolded the instructions, it resembled one of those glove-compartment road maps you had to use before Google was in your phone, back when MapQuest ran your printer ink dry. Once I found my small, eight-panel section of the instructions, I pulled out the seven nicely packed pieces and got right to work. And yes, that's an exaggeration.

I took the base and snapped the two pieces on the side until they locked in place. I did this backwards the first time, which was okay, because on the bottom of the base are unlocking mechanisms on each side. Then you slide the “marquee” into the slots, which was super easy to do. You can then slide the back piece on, which doubles as a cartridge holder. 

Then came the most difficult part: figuring out how to slide my Switch into the piece that then slides into the base and connects to the USB-C. There are two of these pieces—one for the Switch 1 and OLED, and one for the Switch 2. Once you put the Switch into its designated base, you then secure that with a magnetic closing and slide that whole thing into the front of the assembled arcade. In summary: put the two red side pieces on until they click in place, then put the back cartridge holder on, then slide the marquee in, and then the folding console holder slides into the assembled cabinet. The joystick and buttons are already assembled for you. Easy peasy.

If you're using a Switch 1, you can turn on your Switch while holding the home button. If this doesn't work, the top of the cabinet leaves enough space for you to turn the power on. There are a few things to consider. For both Switch 1 and 2, go into your settings, then Controllers and Sensors, and toggle the Pro Controller Wired Communication to “On.” This way, the Switch will communicate with the joystick and buttons. With the Switch 2's latest firmware update, you'll need to update the base of the Mini Arcade Pro with a patch from iMP’s website. Fortunately, this does not affect gameplay of any sort, but it does impact the wake and chat button functions. 

Unfortunately, the sour note is that you can only do this using a USB-C male to USB-C female cable. I don't think many of us have that just lying around. From the website, iMP will send you a free cable in the mail. I still have yet to receive mine, so just know this in advance. On that first wake-up, I had to tap my screen three times to unlock it, but then I was off and running.

The first game I pulled up was Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection. I just played against the computer, because there was no way I was ready to take this online. I have a pretty good record on the Switch, despite all that silly latency talk. The buttons on the Mini Arcade Pro are smaller than arcade buttons and not concave, but they are bigger than controller buttons. After setting my buttons closer to the arcade setup, it was time to try some novice difficulty out. 

The good news is, this is a controller directly plugged into your Switch. This means that all that latency that people couldn’t stop talking about—along with the updates MKLC patched in—is gone. The buttons were very responsive. I was typing in combos earlier than they were being finished on the screen. But then, the first problem happened. The joystick, also smaller in comparison to an arcade stick, would not let me jump forward or backward. For those of you who don't know, jumping in a fighting game is crucial. Jumping in Mortal Kombat is the key to success. And I could not.

I gave this the benefit of the doubt. It's a new controller. Maybe it needed to be broken in. Maybe my medium-sized hands on a small ball joystick weren't pushing it in the right direction. After losing to the computer opponent, I quickly switched to practice mode. I did a little test: if I pushed the controller diagonal up-right ten times, how many times would the character jump forward? The answer was three. 

Another thing about fighting games is that to pull off certain moves, you need to do motion inputs on your controller. A fireball in Street Fighter is down, down-forward, forward, and a punch button. A teleport punch with Scorpion in Mortal Kombat is down, down-back, back, and high punch. I couldn't pull either of these off with any frequency, because the diagonals weren't working. Then I remembered that there is a special toggle switch on the actual controller.

This toggle switch allows you to switch the joystick to any corresponding control setup on the Joy-Con. You can switch between the directional buttons, the left stick, and even the right stick, for some reason. Maybe I was having problems because I had the joystick set to the directional pad. I'll just pop it over to the left stick. That'll fix everything. I'm optimistic. 

It didn't fix anything. 

I'll leave the door open to the possibility that I got a bad unit, but then I played Pac-Man 99 (Score Attack) and Pac-Man Championship Edition Plus. Pac-Man in these games has a lot of speed to him, and with this controller, I was getting around the mazes and avoiding ghost monsters with no problem. But Street Fighter II Turbo wouldn't allow me to crouch and block. I got decimated in Samurai Shodown II because I couldn't pull off any moves. I played the Super Nintendo version of Earth Defense Force, a game I know like the back of my hand, and lost all my shields in the first level.

The inability to use diagonals is the biggest downside to this stand, but it just magnifies more blemishes. On the back of the stand, there is a storage plate that holds up to 12 cartridges. I wouldn't walk around with this cabinet expecting them to be held in. It's a piece of plastic. While the rest of the ABS-material stand was easy to put together, the flimsiest part of the whole thing is this storage plate. Do not trust it. You’re going to lose all your games.

In fact, I had trouble trusting a lot of the parts on here. This joystick looks as if it will snap off at any second. The holder that I put the Switch 2 in slides into the USB-C connector, and for some reason, I trust the Nintendo-issued dock WAY more than I do this. I trust a lot of other things more than I trust this. 

To sum up, let’s play a little game of true and kinda-true. 

The website tells us that it's an Arcade Mini Style Cabinet. This is true. It features an 8-way joystick with digital and analogue emulation. This is only partially true, because I can't jump forward or backward diagonally. It features eight fast-action buttons. This is true. Home and C buttons work with an update, at no fault to iMP, unless you count that you cannot just USB-C this to your computer. The claim that storage for games and SD cards is true, but I wouldn't trust this to hold a conversation, let alone my games. The non-slip base is very well done, but the bottom line is that there's no way I'm playing with this Mini Arcade all the time. 

If you have hands any bigger than mine, this is not the peripheral for you. The person who put together the press release deserves a raise, because though it says the Mini Arcade Pro is ideal for shooters, fighters, retro, and so much more—for the price of this thing, spend an extra $50 and get you an arcade fighting stick. I'm bumping this up a half-point because my 5-year-old is playing it right now, and she absolutely loves it. Maybe if it got an update for the diagonals, I could teach her how to play Street Fighter on it.