When I was in Omaha, Nebraska visiting a friend, she took me to Beercade. It had my favorite pinball machine, ‘Arabian Nights’. They also had a 3rd Strike machine which got a lot of play from me, Marvel vs Capcom, House of the Dead 2 if I remember right. Pretty cool place.
In northern Colorado somewhere near Boulder I went to a place called Tilt Pinball. No fighting games but many fun pinballs and old old classics like Galaga and Dig Dug. They had a Capcom pinball machine called Pinball Magic which was the highlight for me.
I saw @antillese mention Ground Control in Portland. I went there back in 2013. Played some 3rd Strike and Ninja Turtles. I went there by myself and during afternoon so it was functioning as just an arcade at the time.
Lastly, in my town of Rapid City, South Dakota, we have a pretty cool spot called Press Start in our downtown. It started as just a basement of a bar with it‘s own bar and arcade cabinets, but then expanded into the upstairs part too. The upstairs is all kids stuff and ticket games, but the dungeon is where the great stuff is. Sunset Riders, a line of pinballs from old to modern, Killer Queen, MvC, Soul Calibur, Galaga, a Play Choice 10, Donkey Kong, just lots of great stuff.
I bought my first arcade cabinet from the guy who opened this place years before he started it.
It’s a fun place, they used to sell 40‘s too, so you could be playing 6 player X-Men sipping on 40’s with the boys.
@Karnovski ahh Tilt, up in Loveland, CO. I’ve been there once but didn’t actually play anything or order a beer. I’ll have to go check it out fully and report back.
i am actually pitching a piece where i review every arcade cab at my local barcade so uhhh guess i‘ll post that if i ever get it done! i don’t write about games very often, and not as eloquently nor expertly as many on here, but i think i can have a crack at it and not embarrass myself TOO much!
@antillese Quarterworld is still open 4pm-1am Thu-Sun and remains mostly pinball but they did just fix the 1p stick on the MVS so SamSho4 is playable. I live near it so I tend to go there more often.
I work next to Ground Kontrol, which has a much better selection of vidya games that rotate often enough. They still have 3rd Strike, no CVS2 tho.
Wedgehead is a flat cover now, but idk how much it is, haven't been in since pre-covid. At the time, tho, they had a killer selection of late 70s Bally tables.
Next Level is fuckin' huge and could totally occupy a full day but the food situation is dire (food truck) and it's at the ass-end of Hillsborough farmlands which provides only the finest of suburban chain restaurants.
I used to work at one of the … very large Farms (if this means something to you as a local) in the pre-Covid times and I completely disagree with your assessment. There are fantastic Indian, Mexican, Japanese, Pho, etc restaurants in that neighborhood and some are walking distance. Don’t eat at the chains. I mean, unless you need a Hot N Ready pizza. I won’t judge.
Went to Free Play in Richardson, TX, today (first arcade in 2.5 years-ish – we‘re finally back at a 189 seven-day covid average in DFW and we got there at 3PM, nearly had the run of it). I won’t do a number, but I had a pretty great time as a matter of scale – I just did not expect to find many of these machines in Richardson, TX. I did not expect to finally see the credits on Dolphin Blue or credit feed my way through a DoDonPachi cab today.
Cons: the music drowned out too much arcade sound, the food is basic, a dumb family bogarted the table that had a Saturn & PVM on it without even touching the Saturn, Crazy Taxi was down
Pros: $12 after tax for unlimited free plays on all machines, focus on local beer, some cabs I didn't get pics of include Power Stone 2, Melty Blood, Killer Queen, Soul Calibur II, Psyvariar, Gate of Doom, a mid pinball selection, and Bishi Bashi
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edit: got on my PC and added more than one pic cause my phone was being a phone
@tokucowboy I like that photo of the Dolphin Blue cab for a few reasons, but one that I feel like calling out presently is what looks like an interesting combination of mechanics producing a cool rolling shutter effect here. The refresh of the CRT and the vertical scanning of the shutter in the digital camera‘s CCD have conspired to make it seem as if the CRT beam is diagonal. I reckon that’s pretty neat.
...now I wait for someone to inform me that this particular CRT really does have a diagonal beam and I'm just a big dumbo
@rejj I was contorting myself to get decent CRT pics on a dang phone camera all afternoon & then my sister who doesn't know what a CRT is takes this pic & makes art
@tokucowboyThis reflects my experience in arcades in the south. Really impassioned owners that have an impressive and shocking selection of games. I knew some guys in Knoxville that opened a vape shop with an arcade in the back where their childhood Aladdin‘s Castle arcade used to be. They had crazy stuff like Pop’n Stage, Drummania combined with guitar freaks, future tom tom, Virtual On, Pop'n Music, Initial D, etc. No one playing games also reminds me of the barcade in Gainesville from my OP that was packed wall to wall with drinking college kids standing shoulder to shoulder trying to get laid and absolute 0 people playing any of the 50+ cabinets. They had Soul Calibur 1 and Smash TV.
nah like you said before this it‘s an effect of the camera combined with CRT tech, not actually being drawn diagonally. half of my CRT pics come out with a big black diagonal across it, from every CRT I’ve ever taken a photo. it‘s the main thing you try to avoid taking pics of CRTs, but pretty difficult if you don’t have gear or settings.
sometimes if you just whip out your phone from sleep and take a photo before giving the phone a chance to try and fully focus, it takes a better CRT photo than if you sit there fiddling with it. another option is to take a video, then screenshot the video.
bam! - 6.5/10
while the focus is on bowling, they have an arcade with some alright recent (within the past decade, about) games. the bar area has some older games (80s), though i don’t think they’re authentic (most have an icade thingy in them).
frank’s restaurant - 7/10
(not cifaldi;) a single icade cabinet in a small (like literally just enough room for the cabinet and seat and for people to walk past you), dark room in the back, but it’s completely free.
@DaveedNoo I want to update my review of Aftershock Classic Arcade. I went back because I needed some Metal Slug action and they had it! And it was a lot cleaner and all the cabinets seemed to be working. I brought quarters with me and used them instead of getting tokens because the quarters work and they didn‘t tell me not to. I’m gonna bump it up to a 7 out of 10 for now.
@DaveedNoo whoooooa Beast Busters! that was a longtime resident of the Melbourne Square Mall. never woulda thought about it again if not for this post!
Today I went to Blipsy Bar in Los Angeles KTown with @Moon
I‘ll give it a 7/10
It’s a dive bar. We went early in the afternoon so we were the only ones there. We each bought a $4 unlimited refill seltzer water and tipped $1 out of respect and went to town on the games. Everything is still 25 cents per play, everything had CRT monitors (no LCDs). It's a fairly decent joint. Staff were nice and friendly. I was glad we got there super early before the crowd came or any music was playing, because I could hear the games clearly.
I played a few games for the first time:
SEGA Monaco GP: surprisingly in depth for a game of the SG-1000 era I think. I kind of had a blast experiencing the Ur of SEGA's standing pedal driving games.
TAITO Chase HQ: I'd seen ports of this on nearly every console, never got what the big deal was until I played it today on a standing pedal cabinet. The US voice over is cringy and annoying though, especially with no background noise.
TAITO Elevator Action: I‘ve played the Family Computer port of this one a lot since I was a kid. It’s basically a perfect port of the arcade game so nothing new here besides chip audio differences.
TAITO Double Dragon: Never played this one in arcades before. I can see why it swept the nation when it was new as the first polished(???) beatemup. Slowdown was crazy and so was the bottomless pits. Music was good. Very interesting.
Chase HQ and Double Dragon were right beside the windows, so it was pretty bright. Wouldn't be an issue at night, but these are the most graphically involved games on the lineup so it was kind of an oversight to put them there in the first place.
They also had a fully functioning dual screen Punch-Out!! cabinet, and a lot of staples filling things in. The pac-man cocktail cabinet looks relaxing to have in a dive bar setting.
Good stuff. Most of the cabinets were kind of grimy and had various control issues, but nothing too drastic.
whoa hey cool, good timing on this thread revive! if anyone has chicago recommendations for barcades i am going there for the first time ever at the end of the month, so any recommendations are appreciated! i was thinking of going to the lucky strike one at wrigleyville before a ball game (hopefully it's not packed at, uh, noon) but open to alternative options.
i should try to do a breakdown/review of the ones here in montreal, but tbh pickings are slim because the barcade concept was borderline illegal until recently? because pinball/video games were... gambling? i think? so you pretty much only had a couple of cinemas and bowling alleys. there's North Star Pinball now which is pinball only (but consistently great, they have a few rotating tables from the electromechanical era and usually at most one contemporary table, so it feels like real time travel).
there's also a (video game-centric) barcade on st. denis near ontario, called arcade mtl. i went there once near when it opened and i wasn't super impressed, but that was... like maybe over 5 years ago? i remember playing a tetris cab. i think they had console games plugged in to play as well. the space didn't feel like it'd fit much! but it's been ages. maybe i need to go back.
