Anybody got £40,000 pound sterling (Currently about $53,271.60 USD) to lend me? I’ll totally pay you back.
That’s how much it’s likely to cost you (Perhaps more) to get this Multi Cabinet Swing arcade cabinet that has, what is likely to be, the only officially translated arcade board of SegaSonic the Hedgehog housed in it. The game and cabinet are fully functional and properly maintained. They have been since this cabinet was first taken from Sega World London after its closure in 1999.
Since then, this cabinet fell into the hands of a few private collectors and, eventually, back into Sega Europe’s hands, where it was most recently up for display at a promotional event for Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, shown above. Now, this cabinet is up for auction at the Ewbank’s auction site with a starting bid of £10,000. Bidding begins on December 19th, 2025
If you’re a rich UK resident who’s feeling lucky, you can check in past the break to learn more about this golden opportunity.
According to Ewbank’s, the cabinet is still fully operational and in prestine condition. It does come with some reproduction decals and marquees, an extra control panel with 4 joysticks along with the 3 player trackball control panel, and a back panel key attached to an official Sega logo lanyard.
Most notable is the game inside. SegaSonic The Hedgehog is the trackball-controlled, arcade-exclusive Sonic the Hedgehog game featuring the one and only Blue Blur, along with Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, in a mad dash to the top of Dr. Eggman’s deadly tower. It’s also the first of only a handful of official Sonic arcade games. Despite a few attempts to bring the game to home consoles over the years, the game remains arcade exclusive to this day and has seen very, very little distribution outside of Japan. This particular game within the Multi Cabinet Swing above in question is one of those very few and, to our knowledge, the only one to feature the game officially translated into English. It would be very nice if the winner of this cabinet could arrange for the ROM to be dumped and preserved since no such translated ROM is in circulation online.
If you feel like you could be the one to make that happen and you got the cash, you can go to the Ewbank’s auction page and try your luck. Lets get this elusive piece of Sega and Sonic history into a good, new home pronto.
Are you excited to see such a rare and valuable arcade game surface? Would you make a bid for it if you could? Are you actually going to? Did you get to play this particular translated game at any point in its life? Tell us in the comments below.
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Always wanted to play this one as a die hard sonic fan! I wish nothing more than the absolute best of luck to whoever manages to obtain this cabinet! correct me if I’m wrong but, Does galloping ghost have this game at their arcade?
Galloping Ghost does have the game in a custom built cabinet, it is the Japanese version though to be honest there’s not much of a story to follow.
I sadly figured as much. Hopefully the winner of the auction will be able to dump and preserve the english rom much like that sonic kiddie schmup a few years back. Funny enough I asked arcade monsters in downtown San diego if they could get afterburner 2, afterburner climax, Segasonic the hedgehog, and of course sonic the fighters and one of the virtua fighter games at their location some day! whether by authentic cabinet or by their pretty well dome custom cabinets by emulation or authentic arcade boards! thankfully they told me they’ll look into it! Anyways Merry Christmas!