7 ms·

Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor or dedicated hobbyist (who kno

Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor or dedicated hobbyist (who knows how to fix them.) The games make it a destination for families with kids, and the adults play some but really spend on food and drink. Same as how a tabletop game store is really making money on the food items, not the trading cards. And as for your last, yes, virtual pinball games don't come close on ball physics. Real ball motion is so much more than a pair of X-Y coordinates and velocities. A real ball slides and spins and scrapes across the playfield and the objects in all sorts of ways. A ball's motion is very 3d even on a 2d playfield - it can have a spin axis aligned anywhere on its sphere. Flippers too. It's much more than one object moving at one velocity. There are really subtle details in the interactions with the rubber on the flippers - a real ball will sink into the rubber by a fraction of a millimeter and rebound in ways that depend on that. Flippers accelerate and decelerate on a time scale of single-digit milliseconds, with all sorts of subtleties that an experienced player can feel. Response time matters too - a computer platform is usually limited to 1/60 second input resolution by the host hardware and OS, while a real machine responds hard real time instantly. And of course nudging - no virtual controller comes anywhere close to all the things you can do to a real machine, shoves and pushes and slaps. No game physics engine comes anywhere close to all that detail in all these areas.

sdfghswe 3y ago
If we're able to simulate airplanes before they fly, I'm pretty sure we can simulate a sphere.
- vikingerik 3y ago
  It's way more than just the sphere, it's simulating all the surfaces and materials that the sphere interacts with. Particularly the mechanical pieces with their own movement as well. The comparable level of detail to get pinball right would be something like simulating all the rubber gaskets and surfaces in the ailerons and elevators, all the fluid dynamics in the hydraulics, and so on. If you invested something like the $100 million that Boeing or Lockheed must have done in their simulators, you probably could. Video pinball isn't exactly that big economically, though.
  - mywittyname 3y ago
    It is absolutely possible to model a pinball machine very accurately with existing CAD software, and for much less money than that. With GPU-powered physics, it might be possible to model this in real time. But if not, one could definitely run the simulations in CAD and export the results to a table (or fit to an equation) and use those in the game. The limitation isn't technology.
    - vikingerik 3y ago
      Is your CAD software simulating the increase in temperature as the coil fires frequently throughout a game, with the ensuing changes in coil strength and rubber resilience? Is your GPU accounting for millisecond-level fluctuations in power as more lights and flashers are on at any given instant so any coil receives a tiny bit less power? Are you accounting for a tiny bit of residual magnetism left in the balls after they departed from recent contact with a magnet? You are correct that the limitation isn't technology. All this is doable with enough specialized computation - but the reality is that it's vast avenues of effort that nobody has done or likely will.
      - mywittyname 3y ago
        > Is your CAD software simulating the increase in temperature as the coil fires frequently throughout a game, with the ensuing changes in coil strength and rubber resilience? Yes. That's a basic feature a professional CAE package. And the materials library includes a few hundred different rubber compounds and metals to model with as well. Modern CAD is amazing. Back when I worked in the industry, we'd have customers whose simulations for jet turbine engines match the the sensor readings on the prototype almost exactly.
      - jwagenet 3y ago
        I don’t doubt that these interactions have some minuscule effect on pinball performance, but I’m skeptical that you couldn’t get close enough with some relatively simple models. Eg count the lights on and model a draw in remaining power available to solenoids.
- 40four 3y ago
  Of course we can simulate a sphere, but to the point of the well written comment you a responding to, the simulation models in pinball video games don’t even come close the the complexity of the physics of a real world pinball. I played a lot of pinball as a kid, and I’ve played many pinball video games since. I was recently at one of these ‘barcade’ venues and tried my hand at pinball thinking I would be good at it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I lost all 3 balls immediately just about every game. It’s incredibly difficult and unpredictable. Go to your local barcade and try for yourself :)
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  Sure, for enough money and with enough horsepower we could simulate just about anything you want. For a freeware pinball game? Maybe not. It's always a question of money and time.
  - zamnos 3y ago
    On the other hand, Dwarf Fortress was free for how long?
    - musictubes 3y ago
      DF is still free directly from Bay12.
echelon 3y ago
Massive opportunity in Atlanta for any barentrepreneur. The main arcade on Edgewood ("Joystick") is super popular, but only has 8 or so machines. They're not in good shape either. People want to play, but it's too crowded. The similar "adult dog park / bar" concept has been absolutely exploding. "Fetch" bar started just across the street from me a few years ago and they've since expanded to over ten locations in three different states. It's huge. And it's always packed to the brim with over a hundred people. Plus you get to charge membership fees per dog in a subscription model. People want to drink and bring their dogs. If the west coast doesn't already have this, get on it. I can't imagine there's much moat apart from branding, but it's got huge growth opportunity.
- debatem1 3y ago
  Super popular here in Seattle. I was talking with a friend the other day about how to start a small metal venue in the area and their advice was to teach dogs to like metal because there's no way you compete with a dog lounge on revenue.
  - zamnos 3y ago
    If the dog lounge makes more money than you, do you lose some sort of competition?
    - debatem1 3y ago
      Yes. Rent will eventually approach the profitability of the most profitable business that can be put on that land. In a large and rapidly growing city, "eventually" is very quick.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Like all things I worry about it being a fad. It’s big now but what’s to say these trends last? It can hard to maximize the investment it takes to make a great repeat experience. I know that’s always the risk for sure, but I’d bet in a longer run of the barcade market than dog bars, but I’ve been wrong before
JohnFen 3y ago
> Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. In my city, there is one that is not only popular but has been in operation for 20 years or so. It has a couple hundred arcade machines, mostly pinball, and looks like that's their main business. But the reality of the economics is proven by one aspect of how they operate: if you buy a drink at the bar, you get to play all the games for free. If not, they're 25 cents per play.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  i like that bar freeplay approach, havent seen that around here and that's probably a good thing
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    Another good model is pay-by-the-hour using a reloadable card. This allows kids to get good at a game without having to invest hundreds of dollars.
    - chrisdhoover 3y ago
      Way back when we needed practice we would put ashtrays under the front legs and slow the game down. It improved my game turning pinball from an exercise in futility to something fun. Getting close to knocking out the top players, FUK, DIK, and CNT became a goal. I so wanted my initials, TIT up there on the leader board.
- m463 3y ago
  alcohol might help balance out the "pinball wizard hogging the machine all night" issue. :)
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  Please name the city and bar so I can visit it.
  - eastof 3y ago
splonk 3y ago
> Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor or dedicated hobbyist (who knows how to fix them.) To expand on this a bit, the actual maintainer of the machine is probably the most important factor of the quality of the barcade, at least if you're the type of person who cares about rulesets for games and will be irritated if something doesn't work because of a broken sensor. I like enthusiast owned/operated places because the owner who's actually playing the games will notice problems and fix them, as opposed to bars where any problems with the machine will either be broken until the maintainer gets around to it on their scheduled route, or possibly the problems never get reported at all. One possibly useful proxy for this is seeing where your local leagues play - in general they're more likely to be in places with well-maintained machines. For San Francisco: - Outer Orbit is my favorite place, even though they've recently removed a couple machines for more seating (more evidence that the bar/restaurant is the money maker). The owners met playing pinball, are heavily involved in the local scene, and do the maintenance themselves, so the machines tend to be in great shape. Decent Hawaiian food and a quite good beer list. - Free Gold Watch is the place everyone always recommends because it has the most machines. My feeling is that they don't keep up on maintenance well enough because I always have trouble with tables always having enough small things broken about it that it's impossible to advance some modes. (On pretty much any modern machine every lane/ramp/hole is probably going to be required for some mode or another, so a single broken sensor breaks the entire game if you're trying for wizard mode.) It's definitely the place to go for the arcade experience with a lot of machines to choose from. - the Alamo theater actually has a reasonably decent room upstairs from the bar, across the hall from the theaters. Doesn't seem to get rotated much and I'm not convinced it's maintained regularly, but it doesn't get much traffic so it doesn't seem like stuff breaks quickly there. A lot of people seem surprised when I mention it's there. - Gestalt always has machines in decent shape, but the bar itself might close any month now. - Emporium/Musee Mecanique - I don't go to them often, but they're both more generalist arcades, so they'll have a few machines at varying maintenance levels. I'm not sure how often https://pinballmap.com/ https://pinballmap.com/ gets updated or how its coverage is outside the SF Bay Area, but it looks pretty accurate for me.
- ryantgtg 3y ago
TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
> the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor The OP mentioned 1-Up chain in metro Denver. Their games are owned and serviced personally by the owner. He had the experience operating arcades and partnered with someone who had the restaurant/bar experience to make a very successful, multi-location business.
cdchn 3y ago
>Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor This has been the model for bars for a long time I think everything from those bartop entertainment systems, jukeboxes, electronic dart boards, etc.
MegaDeKay 3y ago
> And of course nudging - no virtual controller comes anywhere close to all the things you can do to a real machine, shoves and pushes and slaps. No game physics engine comes anywhere close to all that detail in all these areas. "Anywhere close" might actually be a little closer than you think. Ever take a peak down the virtual pinball rabbit hole? The KL25Z microcontroller board at the heart of many visual pinball builds has an accelerometer to measure nudges etc. Most builds also have a real tilt bob if you get a little over exuberant. Then there are real shaker motors, surround sound feedback, multiple displays for the backglass and DMD etc. Way of the Wrench on YouTube has the best set of videos I know of on the topic of building your own cab. It would really be a blast to build something like this. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrqlHbqP7FIO5P8e8HtrBB01xqQtAWpJ5 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrqlHbqP7FIO5P8e8HtrB...
- Tao3300 3y ago
  @ 1:15 > There's nothing better than real pinball and I would have to agree.
  - MegaDeKay 3y ago
    Indeed. Certainly not arguing that point. The challenge is in seeing how close you can get, and if getting that close results in something that is a lot of fun and worth the effort. And of course, if you can get something that is very good, then the variety of the virtual approach takes hold: something like VPX can emulate everything from electromechanical machines to the latest creations, with all the classics in between.
birdyrooster 3y ago
I am pretty sure local game stores make money when they sell booster packs to a kid at full price, kid sells them the best cards at a 30% discount and then the store resells it for market value. Sure there is risk here but they make it very hard to lose. Running the store lets them have options to purchase cards at a discount every time the sell a booster pack.
wahern 3y ago
> Yes, the barcade business model works. Does Dave & Busters fit into this category, or would you say they have the wrong focus? I've never been to a Dave & Busters, but they're a fairly large chain that long-preceded the current wave. Is Dave & Busters too much like an adult Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese, rather than a more casual bar you can pop into?
- weaksauce 3y ago
  it does too much. it's like 3 bars in one/a restaurant/over the top huge style arcade games/meeting room venue/pool hall/darts/shuffleboard probably missing something but yeah it's everything and nothing at the same time.
- wizardofthetoa 3y ago
  Dave & Busters’ arcade games are not real arcade games; they are more like casino games. There’s no Galaga, no anything that has levels or characters, it’s all giant wheels that you spin or darts that you throw or bags that you punch. It lacks all intellectual appeal, and honestly seems more like a gym than an arcade.
  - mh- 3y ago
    It's worth calling out for younger folks, or those who didn't visit them before that happened... They used to just have normal arcade games. I don't know when the transition happened, but I was stunned when I took my kids a few years ago and found it had transformed into what you're describing.
    - deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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adfm 3y ago
When real money is in the line, physics and real touch matter. They had to change roulette because certain players learned minor flaws delivered an advantage. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-how-to-beat-roulette-gambler-figures-it-out/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-how-to-beat-roulette...
SoftTalker 3y ago
It's a little weird to me to think of 50+ year olds hanging out at arcades. I was a kid in the 70s and 80s and pinball/video arcades were the domain of middle and high school kids, roughly 12-16 years of age. It was a place to hang out before you were old enough to drive. There were very few adults there, certainly nobody 50-60 years old.
- kfarr 3y ago
  Now all the middle school and high school kids stay at home on their phones while the adults have all the fun.
- looping__lui 3y ago
  How old are these kids today roughly? :-)
- chrisdhoover 3y ago
  It was, but there were pinball machines at bars then too. Its not new. As an 18 year old we played pinball and drank the bar closed. Although I must say my older brothers friends loved Space Invaders. I don't know maybe the coke and pot led to arrested development. I never got into video games, whether it was Tron, Pac Man, or Pong.
- gedy 3y ago
  I'm 52 and hung out at the arcades 40 years ago. So the same people?
syedkarim 3y ago
Galloping Ghost outside of Chicago charges $25 for unlimited play. There is no option to pay any other amount and there is no food or drink. They have around 900 games going as far back as Pong. This model appears to work for them. https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/ https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/
- sdenton4 3y ago
  The Pacific Pinball Museum is similar - only pinball, $20 at the door.

sdfghswe 3y ago

If we're able to simulate airplanes before they fly, I'm pretty sure we can simulate a sphere.

vikingerik 3y ago
It's way more than just the sphere, it's simulating all the surfaces and materials that the sphere interacts with. Particularly the mechanical pieces with their own movement as well. The comparable level of detail to get pinball right would be something like simulating all the rubber gaskets and surfaces in the ailerons and elevators, all the fluid dynamics in the hydraulics, and so on. If you invested something like the $100 million that Boeing or Lockheed must have done in their simulators, you probably could. Video pinball isn't exactly that big economically, though.
- mywittyname 3y ago
  It is absolutely possible to model a pinball machine very accurately with existing CAD software, and for much less money than that. With GPU-powered physics, it might be possible to model this in real time. But if not, one could definitely run the simulations in CAD and export the results to a table (or fit to an equation) and use those in the game. The limitation isn't technology.
  - vikingerik 3y ago
    Is your CAD software simulating the increase in temperature as the coil fires frequently throughout a game, with the ensuing changes in coil strength and rubber resilience? Is your GPU accounting for millisecond-level fluctuations in power as more lights and flashers are on at any given instant so any coil receives a tiny bit less power? Are you accounting for a tiny bit of residual magnetism left in the balls after they departed from recent contact with a magnet? You are correct that the limitation isn't technology. All this is doable with enough specialized computation - but the reality is that it's vast avenues of effort that nobody has done or likely will.
    - mywittyname 3y ago
      > Is your CAD software simulating the increase in temperature as the coil fires frequently throughout a game, with the ensuing changes in coil strength and rubber resilience? Yes. That's a basic feature a professional CAE package. And the materials library includes a few hundred different rubber compounds and metals to model with as well. Modern CAD is amazing. Back when I worked in the industry, we'd have customers whose simulations for jet turbine engines match the the sensor readings on the prototype almost exactly.
    - jwagenet 3y ago
      I don’t doubt that these interactions have some minuscule effect on pinball performance, but I’m skeptical that you couldn’t get close enough with some relatively simple models. Eg count the lights on and model a draw in remaining power available to solenoids.
40four 3y ago
Of course we can simulate a sphere, but to the point of the well written comment you a responding to, the simulation models in pinball video games don’t even come close the the complexity of the physics of a real world pinball. I played a lot of pinball as a kid, and I’ve played many pinball video games since. I was recently at one of these ‘barcade’ venues and tried my hand at pinball thinking I would be good at it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I lost all 3 balls immediately just about every game. It’s incredibly difficult and unpredictable. Go to your local barcade and try for yourself :)
idiotsecant 3y ago
Sure, for enough money and with enough horsepower we could simulate just about anything you want. For a freeware pinball game? Maybe not. It's always a question of money and time.
- zamnos 3y ago
  On the other hand, Dwarf Fortress was free for how long?
  - musictubes 3y ago
    DF is still free directly from Bay12.

echelon 3y ago

Massive opportunity in Atlanta for any barentrepreneur. The main arcade on Edgewood ("Joystick") is super popular, but only has 8 or so machines. They're not in good shape either. People want to play, but it's too crowded. The similar "adult dog park / bar" concept has been absolutely exploding. "Fetch" bar started just across the street from me a few years ago and they've since expanded to over ten locations in three different states. It's huge. And it's always packed to the brim with over a hundred people. Plus you get to charge membership fees per dog in a subscription model. People want to drink and bring their dogs. If the west coast doesn't already have this, get on it. I can't imagine there's much moat apart from branding, but it's got huge growth opportunity.

debatem1 3y ago
Super popular here in Seattle. I was talking with a friend the other day about how to start a small metal venue in the area and their advice was to teach dogs to like metal because there's no way you compete with a dog lounge on revenue.
- zamnos 3y ago
  If the dog lounge makes more money than you, do you lose some sort of competition?
  - debatem1 3y ago
    Yes. Rent will eventually approach the profitability of the most profitable business that can be put on that land. In a large and rapidly growing city, "eventually" is very quick.
no_wizard 3y ago
Like all things I worry about it being a fad. It’s big now but what’s to say these trends last? It can hard to maximize the investment it takes to make a great repeat experience. I know that’s always the risk for sure, but I’d bet in a longer run of the barcade market than dog bars, but I’ve been wrong before

JohnFen 3y ago

> Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. In my city, there is one that is not only popular but has been in operation for 20 years or so. It has a couple hundred arcade machines, mostly pinball, and looks like that's their main business. But the reality of the economics is proven by one aspect of how they operate: if you buy a drink at the bar, you get to play all the games for free. If not, they're 25 cents per play.

sitzkrieg 3y ago
i like that bar freeplay approach, havent seen that around here and that's probably a good thing
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  Another good model is pay-by-the-hour using a reloadable card. This allows kids to get good at a game without having to invest hundreds of dollars.
  - chrisdhoover 3y ago
    Way back when we needed practice we would put ashtrays under the front legs and slow the game down. It improved my game turning pinball from an exercise in futility to something fun. Getting close to knocking out the top players, FUK, DIK, and CNT became a goal. I so wanted my initials, TIT up there on the leader board.
m463 3y ago
alcohol might help balance out the "pinball wizard hogging the machine all night" issue. :)
jonny_eh 3y ago
Please name the city and bar so I can visit it.
- eastof 3y ago

splonk 3y ago

> Yes, the barcade business model works. Mostly as a bar. Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor or dedicated hobbyist (who knows how to fix them.) To expand on this a bit, the actual maintainer of the machine is probably the most important factor of the quality of the barcade, at least if you're the type of person who cares about rulesets for games and will be irritated if something doesn't work because of a broken sensor. I like enthusiast owned/operated places because the owner who's actually playing the games will notice problems and fix them, as opposed to bars where any problems with the machine will either be broken until the maintainer gets around to it on their scheduled route, or possibly the problems never get reported at all. One possibly useful proxy for this is seeing where your local leagues play - in general they're more likely to be in places with well-maintained machines. For San Francisco: - Outer Orbit is my favorite place, even though they've recently removed a couple machines for more seating (more evidence that the bar/restaurant is the money maker). The owners met playing pinball, are heavily involved in the local scene, and do the maintenance themselves, so the machines tend to be in great shape. Decent Hawaiian food and a quite good beer list. - Free Gold Watch is the place everyone always recommends because it has the most machines. My feeling is that they don't keep up on maintenance well enough because I always have trouble with tables always having enough small things broken about it that it's impossible to advance some modes. (On pretty much any modern machine every lane/ramp/hole is probably going to be required for some mode or another, so a single broken sensor breaks the entire game if you're trying for wizard mode.) It's definitely the place to go for the arcade experience with a lot of machines to choose from. - the Alamo theater actually has a reasonably decent room upstairs from the bar, across the hall from the theaters. Doesn't seem to get rotated much and I'm not convinced it's maintained regularly, but it doesn't get much traffic so it doesn't seem like stuff breaks quickly there. A lot of people seem surprised when I mention it's there. - Gestalt always has machines in decent shape, but the bar itself might close any month now. - Emporium/Musee Mecanique - I don't go to them often, but they're both more generalist arcades, so they'll have a few machines at varying maintenance levels. I'm not sure how often https://pinballmap.com/ https://pinballmap.com/ gets updated or how its coverage is outside the SF Bay Area, but it looks pretty accurate for me.

ryantgtg 3y ago

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago

> the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor The OP mentioned 1-Up chain in metro Denver. Their games are owned and serviced personally by the owner. He had the experience operating arcades and partnered with someone who had the restaurant/bar experience to make a very successful, multi-location business.

cdchn 3y ago

>Most often the machines are owned and operated by an outside contractor This has been the model for bars for a long time I think everything from those bartop entertainment systems, jukeboxes, electronic dart boards, etc.

MegaDeKay 3y ago

> And of course nudging - no virtual controller comes anywhere close to all the things you can do to a real machine, shoves and pushes and slaps. No game physics engine comes anywhere close to all that detail in all these areas. "Anywhere close" might actually be a little closer than you think. Ever take a peak down the virtual pinball rabbit hole? The KL25Z microcontroller board at the heart of many visual pinball builds has an accelerometer to measure nudges etc. Most builds also have a real tilt bob if you get a little over exuberant. Then there are real shaker motors, surround sound feedback, multiple displays for the backglass and DMD etc. Way of the Wrench on YouTube has the best set of videos I know of on the topic of building your own cab. It would really be a blast to build something like this. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrqlHbqP7FIO5P8e8HtrBB01xqQtAWpJ5 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrqlHbqP7FIO5P8e8HtrB...

Tao3300 3y ago
@ 1:15 > There's nothing better than real pinball and I would have to agree.
- MegaDeKay 3y ago
  Indeed. Certainly not arguing that point. The challenge is in seeing how close you can get, and if getting that close results in something that is a lot of fun and worth the effort. And of course, if you can get something that is very good, then the variety of the virtual approach takes hold: something like VPX can emulate everything from electromechanical machines to the latest creations, with all the classics in between.

birdyrooster 3y ago

I am pretty sure local game stores make money when they sell booster packs to a kid at full price, kid sells them the best cards at a 30% discount and then the store resells it for market value. Sure there is risk here but they make it very hard to lose. Running the store lets them have options to purchase cards at a discount every time the sell a booster pack.

wahern 3y ago

> Yes, the barcade business model works. Does Dave & Busters fit into this category, or would you say they have the wrong focus? I've never been to a Dave & Busters, but they're a fairly large chain that long-preceded the current wave. Is Dave & Busters too much like an adult Showbiz/Chuck E. Cheese, rather than a more casual bar you can pop into?

weaksauce 3y ago
it does too much. it's like 3 bars in one/a restaurant/over the top huge style arcade games/meeting room venue/pool hall/darts/shuffleboard probably missing something but yeah it's everything and nothing at the same time.
wizardofthetoa 3y ago
Dave & Busters’ arcade games are not real arcade games; they are more like casino games. There’s no Galaga, no anything that has levels or characters, it’s all giant wheels that you spin or darts that you throw or bags that you punch. It lacks all intellectual appeal, and honestly seems more like a gym than an arcade.
- mh- 3y ago
  It's worth calling out for younger folks, or those who didn't visit them before that happened... They used to just have normal arcade games. I don't know when the transition happened, but I was stunned when I took my kids a few years ago and found it had transformed into what you're describing.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

adfm 3y ago

When real money is in the line, physics and real touch matter. They had to change roulette because certain players learned minor flaws delivered an advantage. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-how-to-beat-roulette-gambler-figures-it-out/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-how-to-beat-roulette...

SoftTalker 3y ago

It's a little weird to me to think of 50+ year olds hanging out at arcades. I was a kid in the 70s and 80s and pinball/video arcades were the domain of middle and high school kids, roughly 12-16 years of age. It was a place to hang out before you were old enough to drive. There were very few adults there, certainly nobody 50-60 years old.

kfarr 3y ago
Now all the middle school and high school kids stay at home on their phones while the adults have all the fun.
looping__lui 3y ago
How old are these kids today roughly? :-)
chrisdhoover 3y ago
It was, but there were pinball machines at bars then too. Its not new. As an 18 year old we played pinball and drank the bar closed. Although I must say my older brothers friends loved Space Invaders. I don't know maybe the coke and pot led to arrested development. I never got into video games, whether it was Tron, Pac Man, or Pong.
gedy 3y ago
I'm 52 and hung out at the arcades 40 years ago. So the same people?

syedkarim 3y ago

Galloping Ghost outside of Chicago charges $25 for unlimited play. There is no option to pay any other amount and there is no food or drink. They have around 900 games going as far back as Pong. This model appears to work for them. https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/ https://www.gallopingghostarcade.com/

sdenton4 3y ago
The Pacific Pinball Museum is similar - only pinball, $20 at the door.