You may remember hearing about iCade, ThinkGeek’s 2010 April Fool’s Day joke that showed a mini arcade console that housed an iPad. Unfortunately, at the time it was just that -- a joke -- but after months of anticipation, the iCade is finally for real, with preorders now shipping.

MacRumors is reporting that the initial preorders for ThinkGeek’s iCade iPad arcade cabinet are finally shipping, with the $99 device landing in the hands of some lucky customers at long last. The concept started as a 2010 April Fool’s Day joke, but gained so much interest from classic arcade fans that ThinkGeek found a way to make it a reality -- complete with support from one of the ‘80s game giants.

“The iCade comes packaged unassembled,” reports MacRumors sister site TouchArcade, who was lucky enough to get one of the initial shipments. “The box contains the main control unit, two side panels, a back panel, a handy flip-up top panel with instructions printed on the inside face, a lovely red joystick knob, screws, batteries, and a set of instructions. Getting the unit together with the help of the illustrated assembly sheet is about 5 to 10 minutes' work.”

Supporting the iCade out of the box is the Atari’s Greatest Hits app, which made a splash recently by offering 100 classic Atari games in one universal app. The iCade includes a key mapping “cheat sheet” to show which controls work with which function of your favorite games.

Even better, an enterprising ThinkGeek fan named Dustin Westaby has already figured out how the iCade maps its two-letter sequences for each button or joystick movement, which MacRumors claims will make it “trivial for any iOS game developer to build in support for the iCade” -- assuming, of course, that the game works in portrait mode, since that’s the only mode supported by the iCade hardware.

Now for the bad news: The $99 iCade has already sold out of its first shipment, but preorders are being accepted now for shipping by June 9, which is just a stone’s throw away. International readers, you’re sadly out of luck for now -- ThinkGeek can’t ship the iCade outside of the U.S., so it’s time to get chummy with one of your Yankee friends.

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