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where are all the arcades? :(

H3RBSKI

H3RBSKI

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Mar 29, 2023
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West Midlands UK
what happened to all the arcades? growing up i had several within walking/bus ride distance but now they are so few and far between at least in my area. "close" to me i have Tilt in bham (40mins car, 20mins train ride) Electric circus nuneaton (45mins car, 1 hour 30 by train) NQ64 bham (same as tilt but only open to over 18's and opens late till late) and then finally Retroids barcade in Worcester (45mins car, 1 hour 30min train)
i know there are some huge ones dotted around the UK but it now seems to be a "specialist" thing. I currently manage a bowling alley that has a medium sized arcade with 32 machines but they are all the stupid "put in a £1 press 1 button and get some tickets" thats not an arcade :( surely there is a market for retro and pinball arcades or the places mentioned above wouldnt be able to survive so why did they all start to dissapear and never return?
if you had the money would you open one? is it the rarity of some of the older cabs/parts that caused it to die off? people just not interested now they can sit at home and play what they want when they want etc? what are your thoughts
 
I don’t think the younger generation are really into pinball, not enough for any arcade to make money out of it. Pinheads are a dying breed :(
 
H3RBSKI said:
what happened to all the arcades? growing up i had several within walking/bus ride distance but now they are so few and far between at least in my area. "close" to me i have Tilt in bham (40mins car, 20mins train ride) Electric circus nuneaton (45mins car, 1 hour 30 by train) NQ64 bham (same as tilt but only open to over 18's and opens late till late) and then finally Retroids barcade in Worcester (45mins car, 1 hour 30min train)
i know there are some huge ones dotted around the UK but it now seems to be a "specialist" thing. I currently manage a bowling alley that has a medium sized arcade with 32 machines but they are all the stupid "put in a £1 press 1 button and get some tickets" thats not an arcade :( surely there is a market for retro and pinball arcades or the places mentioned above wouldnt be able to survive so why did they all start to dissapear and never return?
if you had the money would you open one? is it the rarity of some of the older cabs/parts that caused it to die off? people just not interested now they can sit at home and play what they want when they want etc? what are your thoughts
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There are quite a few ‘Barcades’ doing well but they are mainly aimed at the older generation as apposed to the younger generation.
Arcade Club in Bury and other locations are pretty cool and caters for all ages.
If you manage a bowling alley, couldn’t you persuade the owners to put some pinball machines in there? There are operators out there that would split the takings.

I was at coffee shop in London (Chief) earlier today that have Japanese arcades and pinball machines. They have a lot of families go there with young children.
Plenty of places out there worth looking for.
If I had the money I would open an arcade that also sold drinks and food as pinball machines alone wouldn’t bring much money in, plus people get thirsty and hungry playing pinball.
 
Chris P said:
There are quite a few ‘Barcades’ doing well but they are mainly aimed at the older generation as apposed to the younger generation.
Arcade Club in Bury and other locations are pretty cool and caters for all ages.
If you manage a bowling alley, couldn’t you persuade the owners to put some pinball machines in there? There are operators out there that would split the takings.

I was at coffee shop in London (Chief) earlier today that have Japanese arcades and pinball machines. They have a lot of families go there with young children.
Plenty of places out there worth looking for.
If I had the money I would open an arcade that also sold drinks and food as pinball machines alone wouldn’t bring much money in, plus people get thirsty and hungry playing pinball.
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ive tried, the company owner HATES pinbal because 1: games can last too long compared to the "put in a £1 press 1 button and win tickets" games and 2: the constant risk of kids spilling slush/smashing the glass. Eg: atleast once a month a slush gets spilt in side of a pusher bed and the whole thing has to be stripped and cleaned and we have had 4 top glass peices smashed in 5 months lol as the the post above about younger generation not being into pinball etc could this be because they are so few and far between that most never to get experience it? ive often visited Tilt on a sat afternoon and seen plenty of kids in there having a great time
 
The demand for pinball is home not site driven. Venues with pinball machines are labours of love. Ticket machines grabbers coin pushers and fruits are commercially viable. Pinballs started disappearing from arcades in the mid 90s and now even video games are following suit .
 
I went to Great Yarmouth this week with the family. There were a surprising number of arcades but they all just had ticket type machines, pushers, cranes or fruities.

That said just before we left I found one with a small hidden room with 8 really well maintained pins from Pac-Man to Rush. I had a good few credits on a nice STTNG and was chuffed to play some decent pinball in the wild.
 
H3RBSKI said:
if you had the money would you open one?
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God no. I think you have to really like people to do that! Fellow pinheads? No problem, Joe public and kids, hell no, my last few trips to Arcadeclub were my last. Would I site a new Stern in a bowling alley? If I had more money than sense yes but I'd have to expect it to get a hard life without being on location to watch it.

Id say those with a passing interest play and seem to be happy with virtual pinball but that's not for me. I consider myself lucky to have seen Arcades in the hayday, but those days are long gone.
 
Pooman2084 said:
I went to Great Yarmouth this week with the family. There were a surprising number of arcades but they all just had ticket type machines, pushers, cranes or fruities.

That said just before we left I found one with a small hidden room with 8 really well maintained pins from Pac-Man to Rush. I had a good few credits on a nice STTNG and was chuffed to play some decent pinball in the wild.
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Those pins are sited by @David retro
And yeah they play great, fair play to him and the arcade owners for having a selection of pins, as it’s very rare nowadays.
I live in Norfolk, 45 mins from Yarmouth, it’s nice to have pins relatively close to play, I often pop over on a Saturday evening
 
Yeah working with these machines we have here and some of the pain in the ass kids/customers wr have Is horrible some days. I imagine most arcade owners fear the school holidays incase you get all the un ruley teens etc in
 
I remember the 2 HUGE domes at Folkstone.

With the massive Sunday Market - was epic.

I’m not sure on Pinballs but it had some many arcade games.
 
The vandalism of machines mainly by kids is something we didn't expect. Also damage to walls and toilets. It was like dejavu from when l worked in facilities for the prison service. Over exuberant play l can live with but mindlessness not so much

But it the end l still want to see the machines doing what they were made for. Being enjoyed.
 
I think the improvement in home games consoles is what killed off Arcades.

I loved spending hours in arcades when on holiday in the 80s and early 90s, as you just couldn’t get the same experience at home playing on your Spectrum, NES, Snes or Megadrive. If you had a Neo Geo AES then maybe, but no many did as they were £600+ with games starting a £150

I remember the term we used all the time when playing at home was “is it Arcade perfect”. Evidently it never was. However that started to change with the arrival of the PS1 and Sega Saturn.

By the late 90s games at home were just as good as the arcades, and by the mid 2000’s console games had surpassed the arcades and with online gaming starting to take off, there was just no need for kids to go to arcades anymore.
 
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A lot of good comments on this. It's something I've contemplated a lot, especially living in a seaside holiday resort. I've offered to put arcade machines into takeaways for 50:50 profit share and nobody is interested. I've even offered to put a free Neo Geo arcade machine into a gaming shop and it's still sitting in my garage.

The arcade scene these days is vastly different to what it was back in the day. There's no cash involved. It's swipe cards and redemption tickets.

You would think that offering to put an arcade machine into a busy fish n chip shop with customers waiting around would be snapped up, but no.

I don't have any answers but it definitely doesn't seem to be a viable business opportunity from my limited experience.
 
Really miss the local arcade from back in the day. Absolutely nothing in my town now.

The closest and best place to play anything would be in Edinburgh, and that be Mortal Kocktail. Edinburgh also has one of those NQ64 venues, an ok place for a night out on the **** with your mates but not a proper arcade, emulation and flat screens with consoles thrown in the mix running everdrives I believe. These places are also not catered for kids as they are 18+ places for a **** up so I wouldn't expect things to be very well looked after.

Back in the day late 80's and say 90-95 was the best times in the arcades for me. This was mainly due to my local arcade, we were at that place like near every night. The local amusements had some really really amazing machines back then, to think of a few out with the usual they would be, Street Fighter (the one with the rubber pads you had to punch or elbow), Sega's amazing Hot Rod, Sega's WEC LEMans 24 (the rotating one), Ridge Racer, Sega's Holographic Time Traveller, Super Street Fighter 2, Sega's sit on Hang-On etc etc. They didn't have all them at once but man they had some cracking arcade games. They also had a 2 Pins which would be swapped out from what I remember, these being Tales from the Crypt, Last Action Hero, Jurassic Park and I think a fun house, again these were swapped about.

I totally agree with what Ant had said about the videogames killing the arcades. By the mid to late 90's everyone had PlayStation's and they probably never really had much original games, it was piracy galore on the PlayStation side of gaming. It was the start of the 3D crap that killed the 2D arcades we all loved and sadly it was never coming back. Our local arcade turned into in a place where it was all fruit machines, previously I would have said it was 60% fruit machines and 40% videogames.

Would I open one if I had the money.. Absolutely not, however opening up a more local community club type place with 2 or 3 machines and a couple of pins and multiple consoles to keep kids entertained that I think may work.

Sadly the days of arcades are long gone but there is however those arcade clubs down south (that i need to visit) that appear to be the best of the bunch. Sure there are plenty barcade type places that are good with the mates for a bevy, but a proper arcade is where you would see kids and people of all ages having fun.
 
Our local area is certainly no good for pins. A guy tried with 4 brand new machines on hire from Pinball Heaven. AIQ, Mando/Turtles, STh and GZ.
Had these for 6 months and never made enough to cover the rent.
The place is full all the time with table top gaming folk and a cafe, but no-one was interested in the Pins. 😢
It might work in a city, but certainly not in a small town.
 
I’d recommend Four Quarters if any of you are ever in Newcastle- it’s only got 2 pins (DP and JP pros) but it’s well maintained and although clearly a barcade with pricey drinks; they’ve not gone the NQ64 route where it feels like a nightclub with LCD cabs everywhere
 
Stags6969 said:
@Renvil If you need your Stranger Things fix, 😉
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Let me know if you go sure you will enjoy it.. Guys who run it Luke and Tommo are top lads. If it’s the pins you want to get on would advise Friday night or later on Sunday. Saturdays it’s absolutely rammed with kids. They do a mean hot dog and burger too and got to wash it down with a pint of PAC MAN pilsner 🍻… Found a more descriptive photo on their Facebook page for you.
 

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Hayling island still has the same line up, all play like crap apart from the Star Wars Stern. I was riding 5 miles to play that but after noticing the diverter by the death star was borked I stopped going. It's probably on the first revision where that was an issue.
 
I have a jar I fill with spare change for those rare occasions we visit some seaside resort with arcades. It use to be something my son would look forward to. Now we don't bother, the last arcade we went to I had to explain to a member of staff what a pinball machine was. 😆
 
Devorian said:
I have a jar I fill with spare change for those rare occasions we visit some seaside resort with arcades. It use to be something my son would look forward to. Now we don't bother, the last arcade we went to I had to explain to a member of staff what a pinball machine was. 😆
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All loyalty card swipe payment these days.
 
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