Wonderville's new cabinet Step Right Up! crosses a Zoltar machine with vector graphics

The credit block on Step Right Up! reads like a theater program: game by Ben Sironko and James Earl Cox, cabinet by Mark Kleback and Gus Boehling, UI by Lillyan Ling, voice acting by Black Andrews, animatronic head by Will Cogley, trackball design by Dr. Tom Tilley, funded in part by the Brooklyn Arts Council and Arcade Commons. That's six disciplines and a public-arts grant converging on one machine, unveiled in Wonderville's reel and playable now on the floor in Bushwick.

The cabinet is modeled on Zoltar-style fortune tellers—an animatronic barker behind glass, all red paint and carnival menace—but where Zoltar spits out a card, this one plays. The screen runs glowing vector graphics, the controls are a custom trackball and a fan of red buttons, and the head reacts to what you do in the game. The comments split neatly between admiration and fear: chiptune artist nullsleep praised the vector style, one visitor found the barker "terrifying for kids," and another mourned that "the industry gave up on vector graphics in the mid 80s."

The venue matters here. Wonderville, founded in 2019 by Kleback and Stephanie Gross, is the permanent home of Death by Audio Arcade, and kleebatron on that cabinet credit is Kleback. The bar doesn't just host independent games, but also fabricates the furniture they live in. It's the same instinct we've followed for years through alt.ctrl.GDC: when the controller and the cabinet become the artwork, the game stops being software and starts being sculpture. Step Right Up! just adds a face that watches you play.

Playable at Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn.