In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin (1999) chronicles various discourses, objects, and texts from the era in which the Paris arcades of the 1820s thrived. He presents these historical sources as constellated fragments that can be used to reconstruct the ruins of early modernity and identify the wellsprings of consumer capitalism. The arcades are treated as a relic of the moment when technologically propelled modes of industrial engineering fused with new forms of urban planning and architecture to create these burgeoning consumer environments. A key element of Benjamin's project is to reawaken the media ‘imaginary’ of the 19th century in order to see what it can reveal about the lost and forgotten ‘dream worlds’ (Buck-Morss, 1991) that once enveloped the Paris arcades. As he writes, ‘all technology is, at certain stages, evidence of a collective dream’ (Benjamin, 1999: 152 [F1a,2]).

Taking influence from Benjamin, this chapter seeks to recover the popular imaginaries associated with the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES), a ‘home arcade’ console developed by Japanese videogame company SNK in 1991. The Neo Geo AES's main drawcard is its alleged capacity to reproduce the experience of playing arcade videogames in the home. To this end, the platform is designed to support high-quality ports of software originally designed for use on arcade machines, and its controller features a joystick and button layout reminiscent of arcade-style control schemes. Videogame magazines of the 1980s and early 1990s often presented the arcade and its videogames as benchmarks against which home console hardware and software should be evaluated