Are there ANY arcades ANYWHERE anymore?

[Steve W]

There used to be a retro/JP arcade in the Irving Mall, but they have since closed.

I remember that one, it was the only place I ever played Planet Harrier at. The games there were too Japanese for my tastes. I'm not into rhythm games (considering I have no rhythm at all) or fighting games, which left me very little to play there.

Grapevine Mills has an arcade with more of the modern mainstream games.

That one's called GameWorks, which is also a restaurant. It's sort of like Dave And Buster's from what I've heard. I've been in it once, and it was okay. Not too many classic games. I never tried their food out, because when my friend and I got out of the movie next door they closed the restaurant area down for the night. After all, you don't want to serve food to the throngs of people pouring out of that busy movie theater, that might be a competent way of running a business...

There's another location of Tilt Arcade in Waco, TX, in Richland Mall. And just down the hallway from the Tilt is a nice little retro gaming store.

[portnoyd]

That one's called GameWorks, which is also a restaurant. It's sort of like Dave And Buster's from what I've heard. I've been in it once, and it was okay. Not too many classic games.

GameWorks is at least far superior to Dave & Busters game-wise. While 75% of D&B's and GW's selection hasn't changed in the past 5+ years, GameWorks at least has a much more diverse offering. Where GW may have had less classics than you would have liked, D&B will have half that. Shame they are significantly less abundant than D&Bs.

Oh, and those looking for arcades can find a really shitty one in Bumfuck, Tennessee right outside of Nashville.

[smork]

I've got several by me

There's also still several in Houston that I know of, unless some of them have closed down recently.

[Baloo]

The Dave and Buster's here in Philly is almost ALL redemption games, save for a couple of things I.E the Sega Derby game (which is actually very fun), 2 or 3 classic games, two tons of Racing games and a LOT of FPS games, and some other random stuff like Madden mixed in. The only things I play in there are:

Sega Derby Owners
Mario Kart GP 2 (how they actually got this I don't know)
Donkey Kong/Jr./Mario Bros.
Roll-a-ball Derby
Super Trivia
Virtua Fighter 4


The prices aren't as bad as they used to be though, I spent 3+ hours in here on $20 in credits. I didn't play any redemption though, and I spent a ton of time on Sega Derby Owners (or whatever it's called).

[NayusDante]

My local arcades are finally on life support. Beach Gameland, which had been in its new location about a year, didn't pay their lease. The games are still in there, and I picked up a wifi signal, but they've been closed for a few months. Treasure Island Fun Center was great about a year ago when I went, but I went with a friend a month ago and it had really slid. House of the Dead 4 was unplayable, with both abysmal calibration and broken guns stuck on reload. Dead or Alive's P1 joystick had a broken right direction, making it impossible to advance toward your opponent. Not surprisingly, the ticket games seemed to be in fine working order. After Burner Climax is still in fine condition, surprisingly.

[RadiantSvgun]

There aren't in Birmingham anymore- the closest thing is lazer tag places and bowling alleys. Its one of the reasons I got my own cab.

[PSerge]

There's a great arcade in Nashville, Game Galaxy..

There's a nice selection on classic games, newer games, pinballs, fighting games, etc..

http://gamegalaxyarcade.com/

[ubersaurus]

We still have a couple, though the majority went under about 10 years back.

There's the American Fun Center, in Oakland Mall; Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills; Pinball Pete's in Ann Arbor and Lansing; The "Butterfly" Golf & Games on Van Dyke in Detroit; as well as the requisite Gameworks and Chuck E. Cheese's.

AFC maintains their machines well, but their selection runs largely towards fighting games and music games...though they do keep those updated well. I mean, they have SF4, Tekken 6, and the latest guitar freaks/drummania revisions. No classic games though, other than Zero Gunner 2. Marvin's is mostly oddball machines that Marvin finds interesting in addition to all his ancient mechanical arcade machines. Still, he has Simpsons, pinball, Bust-a-move, and a number of racing games. Pete's, in Ann Arbor anyway, if known for having a good classic game selection, good pinball selection, and shoddy maintenance. How that place continues to stay open is beyond me, but when their stuff is working it's golden. Haven't been to the Butterfly in years, but if memory serves they have a crapload of games, old and new, but have even worse maintenance than Pete's.

[old_skoolin_jim]

I'm surprised none of the other New Englanders mentioned the arcades at Hampton Beach, NH and Salisbury beach, MA (neighboring border/coastal towns, for those unfamiliar to the region). I mean, compared to Fun World (which I've sadly never been inside) and Fun Spot, they're dumps, but there's still a fair amount of fun to be had.
Sadly, not as much as there used to be, though. I've been going to Hampton for the last 10 years and just made my first trip to Salisbury this year, and it's clear: arcades have definitely crapped out since 2000. The first few years, I was amazed at all the retro games they had. Strider, Turtles in Time, Pole Position, OutRun, Hang-On, Tron, an old "Name That Tune" game you couldn't even hear, and more old pins than you could shake a stick at.
Sadly though, their games have all either disappeared to be replaced with junk like Guitar Hero ($2 to play and MORE STILL to play certain songs?? F-that!), or just increasingly deteriorated with each passing year. Each year, I find more and more machines will eat quarters, or have faulty buttons/joysticks.
My first visit to Salisbury wasn't particularly thrilling, either. My brother told me joe's playland had a killer 2nd floor with a ton of retro games (I saw the youtube vid too), and the day I went, the upstairs was closed off for no reason. There was also another creepy arcade on the waterfront with a bunch of broken machines lined up along the back wall and zero staff inside. Their Jurassic Park pinball was in good shape, but I wouldn't have tried my luck with any of the other machines in that dump.
Although on the plus side, if anybody ever finds themselves in Gardner, MA, the Gardner 10-Pin bowling alley has a few good retro games: Tengen Tetris, Buster Bros., Ms. Pac-Man, Primal Rage and a few others. It's been a few years since I've been in there though, so I can't say they'll still have 'em.
...I friggin' miss arcades.

[mattimeo310]

Boardwalks. At least the Jersey Shore boardwalk has a bunch of arcades. I do know for a fact that there is a classic arcade at the Jersey Shore also with many of the older arcade titles.

[Fontaine Le Funk]

Phoenix has several. One of the largest is at Castles and Coasters which has maybe 70 games and about a dozen pinball machines too. This is where I first played Asteroids(!), so awesome... The mall it is near is kinda slowly dying, but last I saw they were renovating the CnC entrance, so they must be doing ok.

Update: I went back after the renovation, and they changed every machine first from coin doors to thin plastic cards to store credits and now to more permanent swipe style doors. Even the pinballs are changed. It's kinda weird with the green glowing, but Asteroids still rocks.

[ChR0n1k]

I have been reading this site for a while, and own one of the books even but I honestly joined this forum so I could reply to this thread. I have been searching everywhere for a place where I could just order a beer and play some stand up arcade games. There used to be tons in my youth with classic titles but alas I was too young to drink a beer. Today I am lucky to find a Golden Tee and a claw game with the stuffed animals. I live in the Greater Toronto Area so if anyone knows of anything please PM me. Regardless there are a few places around but not that great and they keep disappearing for some reason. I envy anyone who has a pub they can cruise to and get a pitcher and pump some quarters into a Food Fight or MK1 machine even!

[Beefy Hits]

New arcade opened in uptown minneapolis called Rusty Quarters. It has some good games from the 80s, including Rampage, Crystal Castles, Castlevania (which might be subbed out for Tetris this week), Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Street Fighter Alpha 3, BurgerTime, Joust, Space Invaders, Ms. Pac Man.

Then for the pinballers, we have BlaineBrook in Blaine, MN and SS Billiards mere minutes from Rusty Quarters.

[Kiddo]

The Dave and Buster's here in Philly is almost ALL redemption games, save for a couple of things I.E the Sega Derby game (which is actually very fun), 2 or 3 classic games, two tons of Racing games and a LOT of FPS games, and some other random stuff like Madden mixed in. The only things I play in there are:

Sega Derby Owners
Mario Kart GP 2 (how they actually got this I don't know)
Donkey Kong/Jr./Mario Bros.
Roll-a-ball Derby
Super Trivia
Virtua Fighter 4


The prices aren't as bad as they used to be though, I spent 3+ hours in here on $20 in credits. I didn't play any redemption though, and I spent a ton of time on Sega Derby Owners (or whatever it's called).

I went to the Dave & Buster's in the Franklin Mills Mall once. Doesn't sound like that one, as the arcade selection is entirely different. Last I saw they had;

- Tekken 6 (a token JP import fighter, it seems)
- Guitar Hero Arcade
- an Ultracade, with mostly Capcom titles. It looked like it was mildly damaged when I got around to playing it as the player-1 lower-left button was slightly pushed upward compared to the other buttons (in a way that looked like it wasn't screwed in right) and required more force to be pushed down.
- Ok, so there was a DK/Jr./MB, so that's one arcade in common.
- A football arcade of... some sort. It looked recent.
- An Arcade adaptation of "Deal or No Deal" (huh?)
- A bunch of shooting games including, for some reason, Time Crisis 2, 4, and Crisis Zone, the House of the Dead 2 and 4, some other one with Dinosaurs, Target: Terror Gold, Ghost Squad and whatnot.
- A bunch of vehicle games, including two different motorbike games (one had a Harley-Davidson logo, so I just call it the Harley-Davidson arcade. The other I forget), and a few twin-cabinet car racers. Sega Derby Owners might've been there, I forgot. However, the one that catches my eye is the 8-player Daytona USA. I've never seen a racing game cabinet linked to that amount. Being a fan of the game, as well, I was glad to see it there.
- Some strange Microsoft-made war-combat simulations. These were so expensive to play I didn't bother.
- redemption videogames that look like direct rip-offs of popular flash games.

And that's all I can recall. I found the credit prices to be fairly reasonable for most the video arcades (with the exception of the Microsoft stuff). At some point I wanna go there again and the try the food.

[portnoyd]

Other than Tekken 6, that's pretty par for the course at D&Bs.

[Baloo]

I went to the Dave & Buster's in the Franklin Mills Mall once. Doesn't sound like that one, as the arcade selection is entirely different. Last I saw they had;

- Tekken 6 (a token JP import fighter, it seems)
- Guitar Hero Arcade
- an Ultracade, with mostly Capcom titles. It looked like it was mildly damaged when I got around to playing it as the player-1 lower-left button was slightly pushed upward compared to the other buttons (in a way that looked like it wasn't screwed in right) and required more force to be pushed down.
- Ok, so there was a DK/Jr./MB, so that's one arcade in common.
- A football arcade of... some sort. It looked recent.
- An Arcade adaptation of "Deal or No Deal" (huh?)
- A bunch of shooting games including, for some reason, Time Crisis 2, 4, and Crisis Zone, the House of the Dead 2 and 4, some other one with Dinosaurs, Target: Terror Gold, Ghost Squad and whatnot.
- A bunch of vehicle games, including two different motorbike games (one had a Harley-Davidson logo, so I just call it the Harley-Davidson arcade. The other I forget), and a few twin-cabinet car racers. Sega Derby Owners might've been there, I forgot. However, the one that catches my eye is the 8-player Daytona USA. I've never seen a racing game cabinet linked to that amount. Being a fan of the game, as well, I was glad to see it there.
- Some strange Microsoft-made war-combat simulations. These were so expensive to play I didn't bother.
- redemption videogames that look like direct rip-offs of popular flash games.

And that's all I can recall. I found the credit prices to be fairly reasonable for most the video arcades (with the exception of the Microsoft stuff). At some point I wanna go there again and the try the food.

Nah, there's another one in Philly down by Penn's Landing right under the Ben Franklin bridge. They have decent food, I will save that.

[The-Bavis]

I remember that one, it was the only place I ever played Planet Harrier at. The games there were too Japanese for my tastes. I'm not into rhythm games (considering I have no rhythm at all) or fighting games, which left me very little to play there.


That one's called GameWorks, which is also a restaurant. It's sort of like Dave And Buster's from what I've heard. I've been in it once, and it was okay. Not too many classic games. I never tried their food out, because when my friend and I got out of the movie next door they closed the restaurant area down for the night. After all, you don't want to serve food to the throngs of people pouring out of that busy movie theater, that might be a competent way of running a business...

There's another location of Tilt Arcade in Waco, TX, in Richland Mall. And just down the hallway from the Tilt is a nice little retro gaming store.

I'm just responding to SteveW here because he's talking about North Texas. I finally went to Tornado Terry's in Keller a few weeks ago. You must go. It is an unassuming place, but there is plenty to play from classics to modern. It's $12.50 for unlimited play. The website is www.tornadoterrys.com, and is a terrible time warp, but it lists the operating hours. The place is clean and you can tell that the person (people) that run it really care about the games they have.

[sonic-boom]

There's one at the mall where I live, but that's the only one I can think of, it's always so crowded and it has all the Street Fighter games. I don't think it'll be closing any time soon.

[vectrexer]

There is one up at the Metreon in San Francisco.. At least it was there a couple of months ago. Lots of modern games and those crappy crane games. But at least it's still surviving for now.

I have a feeling the Bay Area will not be the location of the last arcade to go out of business. Except if you count temporary setups like California Extreme.