Hey, we love anything that turns your iPad into a mini arcade system. So we cheered when we learned that Ion Audio’s iCade Arcade Cabinet for the Apple iPad, passed through the FCC today. Just slide your iPad into the $100 cabinet, connect to the iCade via Bluetooth, and you’re ready to relive your arcade days.

The iCade packs in an arcade-style joystick, six numbered buttons and two “enter” buttons. And you can download free games for the iCade from Apple’s App Store. The Atari Greatest Hits app is already configured to work with the iCade, and you can download additional games through the Atari Greatest Hits app. It takes 2 AA batteries.

We’ve seen some budget versions of an iPad arcade cabinet, but the Freekade arcade cabinet is much more professional. And it’s now available on eBay UK.

Right now it’s up to £82.00. It has a nice walnut effect on the side panels and a matte black finish, for that retro look. The cabinet hooks up to your iPad via Bluetooth and if you’ve jailbroken your iPad, you can even play NES, SNES and PSX emulators.

In April we showed you an April fool’s iPad Arcade console. But now it’s real. This is a cardboard iPad arcade console created by Hideyoshi Moriya. It’s made of cardboard and has two arcade buttons and a joystick.

To connect the controller to the iPad an Arduino board sits inside the cabinet. It looks like the controllers respond nicely and can handle the iPad games pretty well. Now you just need some art on that cabinet.

If nothing else has sold you on the iPad, this thing here sure makes it tempting. The iCade turns your iPad into a mini arcade cabinet. It’s one thing to play an arcade game on your iPad, it’s another to slide that iPad into the iCade and relive the good old days. In miniature size anyway.

The iCade will cost you $150. Pretty awesome. Overpriced, but then many say that about the iPad too. You decide. We like it.