While Atari classics are all well and good, the X-Arcade is clearly meant to be used with MAME, an arcade emulator for the PC or Mac that will play most games released in the 80s and 90s. Of all the games, Asteroids feels the most suited to the trackball, although the hefty-looking device plays a good game of Tempest. It comes with a CD that contains two volumes of Atari classics, all of which work with the device. There were a few cabinets that used the trackball idea for analogue control, and the X-Arcade replicates this pioneering work of 80s arcade design perfectly. The X-Arcade Trackball is like one of those massive panels you see in an arcade cabinet, only without a stick. We asked the guys at Gremlin Solutions to send over this portal back to arcade's golden era.

So an arcade machine packed with classics such as Asteroids, Battle Command and Gravitar would be high on an 80s child's wishlist, up there with a home-cinema room and that life-sized Stormtrooper outfit.

Many of us will remember wasting our youth in a sweaty arcade, pumping 20p's into Tempest until some hollow victory was attained in the form of a high score.

Tempest arcade game for macbook