Every summer, I get the itch to travel; this year was no exception. I’ve already been to Vegas, one of the first places people would think to look for arcades. I experienced Kansas City before its arcade became a shell of itself. I’ve seen 45 of the arcades littering the East Coast. So what’s left? If you’ve been following this blog for any length, you know there are still a couple of big hotspots I’ve wanted to hit for years. It’s time to cross one off my list finally.
The big one.
Last year was about quantity over quality, so I figured I’d do the opposite this year. I decided to limit myself to just ten. But just visiting ten random arcades wasn’t going to satisfy me. They had to be ten really, really interesting arcades. After checking and double-checking, it turned out that ten arcades qualified. The only issue is that one of them turned out to be a dud, and I couldn’t make it to the other two due to a last-minute change of plans. Ultimately, it was seven amazing arcades and three underwhelming ones. But I’m far from disappointed with the ones I saw. In fact,
Those seven arcades all merit their own blog posts.
Lumping the three duds together means this will be an eight-part post. Most of these arcades were so impressive that there was no other way to do them justice.
Our journey begins in a nowhere town near Green Bay called Appleton. It’s an immaculate, upscale town, where all buildings look brand new, and the streets are clean. It’s not my kind of place. Seriously, look at that bus station. It looks like a small library or something.
And since I was too busy giving an introduction to mention it before, Time Crisis 4 was also taken out of the Minneapolis station. You can see where it used to be in that first pic.
The bus trip from Minneapolis to Appleton was a grueling all-nighter. I was hungry and exhausted when I got there, and the arcade wouldn’t open for another hour. I had to find someplace to eat and kill some time. Long ago, I worked on a failed internet project with a guy named Tom, so seeing the name of this restaurant reminded me of him. What a flaky guy Tom was. Has a habit of disappearing at the worst times. Come to think of it, we met up for an anime convention earlier this year, and he also ended up leaving early.
But I digress. None of that has anything to do with this trip.
Tom’s is best described as a cross between Dairy Queen and Sonic. Their food isn’t exactly the highest quality, but you know that when you go in. The restaurant’s state fair theme makes it pretty clear that they embrace the nature of their food. Just look at these tilt-a-whirl-inspired dining booths. You can’t see all of the old fair memorabilia hanging from the ceiling. I’m a sucker for places that embrace their themes to this degree.
They even had a small game room. Deal or No Deal is usually a ticket game, but they have a setup where you can get free meal coupons. I don’t know if the machine can print prize tickets or if you call an employee in to verify it. There is a prize locker for keys you can pull out of the plastic eggs for higher-tier prizes.
Overall, it’s quite the interesting setup.
I decided to grab a medium order of mozzarella sticks and some fries. What I didn’t realize was just how massive a medium order of mozzarella sticks was. Jesus Christ. Each of those sticks is about half the size of a standard mozzarella stick, but there are like 30 in there. They should warn you about that or something.
Overall, Tom’s gets a thumbs up from me. Plus, it’s about time for that arcade to open…
Here it is, Funset Boulevard! The arcade that I went 4 hours out of my way and pulled an all-nighter to see. It’s far from the first time I’ve completely switched up my bus route to see an arcade, but it’s not something I’d do for any old arcade. It has to be something pretty special to go through all this trouble. Appleton isn’t a popular place, so what kind of crazy arcade could they be hiding?
When you first walk in, you see their mascot, Teddy Token, painted on the well. I’d say this was one of the least creative mascots I’ve ever seen, but my local arcade growing up had Buster Ball. A Teddy Token mascot walks around the building, but he wasn’t around today.
This is it. Funset Boulevard. With just one glance, you can tell this place is a relic of days gone by. I couldn’t find when it was opened, but I did find a blog post from 2008 where a guy mentioned his wife came here as a kid. I have zero problems believing it’s been here for at least 30 years from the games alone. But we’ll get to those in a moment.
As you may have seen from the sign outside, Funset Boulevard has a small Hollywood-themed diner in the front called Funset Grill.
Well, maybe “small” is underselling it. Funset Grill is bigger than some restaurants I’ve seen. This is where all of the food and parties are held.
I took a shot of the area map to give an idea of just how massive this building is. It has to have three separate areas marked “Arcade” to express how huge it is. I mean, it’s nowhere near as big as something like Fun World, FunFuzion, or Circus Circus, but it dwarfs pretty much any other arcade I’ve been to in terms of floor space.
It’s even got a unique sense of style. Funset Boulevard, as a whole, has a movie theme that it runs with. You’ve got a director coming out of a wall, a dinosaur poking its head through the ceiling, and even the shape of the building is meant to look like an old filming studio.
Even the redemption counter looks like a theater concession stand. God damn, I love this place.
They take the theme even further with this. You’d never know by the size of Funset Boulevard, but it’s attached to a full-size theater. I legitimately thought this was just an elaborate prop, but it displays what’s playing in the attached cinema. I have been to over a hundred arcades, and I have NEVER seen one with a theme as tight as this. And dammit, I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff.
Now is probably a good point to start talking about the games. Despite the size of this arcade, those three pinball machines are the only three in the building. X-files, South Park, and Austin Powers. You can tell they bought all three of these machines together in the late 90s. South Park is the only one of those three things that’s still somewhat relevant today. Unless X-files got a reboot I didn’t hear about.
I was so happy to see these. Every time I run into one at an arcade, I go, “back in the early 90s, it was widespread for arcades to have a bunch of different types of these machines lined up next to each other”. There were LOADS of variations of this machine, but this is the first time I’ve seen an arcade with so many of them lying around. This, more than anything else, tells me that this arcade’s been around for at least 30 years. It just doesn’t get more authentic than this.
On a side note, I’ve told a story about that Wheel of Fortune-esque one on this blog, if anyone remembers. Well, this is that game that refused to give me my jackpot as a kid. I’ll never, ever forget this machine.
They also had a bunch of these quarter rides sitting around. Come to think of it; you don’t see these at arcades very often anymore.
Much like Fun World, there were a bunch of rides scattered throughout. A kiddie train filled with oversized toys may seem random initially, but looking back at the floor plan reveals how this ties into the Hollywood theme. The kid’s play area is called “Let’s Shrink the Kids,” an obvious homage to a movie that was probably a lot more relevant back in the 90s.
They even have room for a fairly big DZ-esque play area.
…and bumper cars…
…and a carousal…
…and one of those cheap coin-operated bowling allies. I’m listing all of this to give a sense of scale. This place is enormous. I may even have to retract my comment about it being smaller than FunFuzion. If the map is any indication, it even has a laser tag arena half the size of the arcade. I was not expecting it to be this massive. At all.
The whole area with the bowling alley is backlit, making these four retro games stick out. These are the only four retro 80s games in the building, and one of them’s a multicade.
Now that that’s out of the way, we can finally see what games they have here. Up in the front are a more modern multicade, Police Trainer, and a NeoGeo machine with operating save card slots. Sadly, that seemed to be the only thing working on this machine. The screen was glitched to hell and back.
These are the four games it was running if you can make them out. There’s Metal Slug, Magical Drop 2, Bubble Bobble, and one I can’t make out. If you haven’t gathered by now, I’m not versed in Neo Geo display marquees.
EDIT: I figured it out. It’s Ninja Combat.
The newer games are mostly kept to the front. To the right of this picture are things like Batman, Fast and Furious, and other things. A handful of older games sit in the middle of the floor as if they just had nowhere else to put them. This also marks the first time I’ve seen Gauntlet Dark Legacy in ages.
You can get a better feel for the layout of these machines from this picture, although the newer ones against the wall are still out of frame. What impressed me about this Crazy Taxi machine is that they managed to keep the cardboard taxi decoration intact. This machine also reminds me how much I hate trying to play Crazy Taxi standing up.
And, of course, the arcade wouldn’t be complete without some DDR machines. They had the standard Extreme alongside the slightly more rare Supernova 2. A pretty solid pair of machines, if I do say so. They also had a third machine…
This arcade is fantastic, but this machine single-handedly justified my trip out here. I was worried that this machine wouldn’t still be around, but here it is. This is possibly the oldest DDR machine in the country that hasn’t been upgraded to a more recent version. There are less than ten original series (pre-Max) DDR machines remaining in public arcades, a number which drops more and more every year. Nearly all the surviving machines are 5th Mix, so finding something as old as 3rd Mix is a true discovery. The last time I saw one of these was at an arcade in Nebraska that was shut down four years ago. To find something like this is…
Wait, what?
The sign says 3rd Mix, but this is Dance Dance Revolution. The first one. I was prepared for many things, but not this. How did this thing survive for two decades? Why do they even have this? It’s not that I’ve never run into one of these before, but I legitimately never expected to see one again. This machine, without any question, holds the title of the oldest version of DDR in an arcade in the entire country. To think it would be hiding someplace as strange as Appleton. Being able to play with this machine made the whole trip worthwhile.
Now let’s see what else this arcade had.
And when I thought it couldn’t have anything weirder than the original DDR, here’s the original Guitar Freaks. I’ve legitimately never seen this machine before in my life. Or have I? That one arcade that wouldn’t let me take pictures had an old Guitar Freaks machine, but I couldn’t tell you which version it was.
But it’s the implications of this machine that interests me. Was this arcade one of the early adopters of the rhythm game craze? I wonder if there was a point in time when this arcade was full of various classic rhythm games. It’s interesting to think about.
Also, they literally chained the guitars to the machine. With a heavy metal chain. That’s probably why this machine is still working two decades later.
Remember last year when every bloody arcade seemed to have Tekken 3? Well, this year, we’ll be running into Tekken 2 a lot. Look forward to it.
On an unrelated note, a part of me loves those generic arcade cabs with the wide-ass control panel and weird button layouts.
By the way, all ticket games were over on the opposite side of the redemption center. They were pretty good about keeping the two separate.
Oh, hello there. This is F-355, a rather unusual game by Sega AM2. I’m waiting for a special occasion to go into detail about this. But knowing my luck, the local one’s already gone. Whatever, I’ll talk about it when I get around to doing that arcade, whether it’s there or not.
EDIT: That blog post never happened.
The general rule of thumb in the main room is that the closer to the back you get, the older the machines are. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but all 90s racers are grouped back here. The green motorcycle on ManxTT has seen some shit. I’ve also got to give props for how many of these machines are still in working condition. Sega Rally is the only one I can recall being out of order (besides the NeoGeo, which might as well have been).
Here’s Turkey Hunting USA. When I was looking up information about this machine to see if there was anything notable about it besides being a Deer Hunting USA spin-off, I came across a page mentioning Pokemon Catch. Pokemon Catch was a redemption game made by the same company where you get tickets for making Pikachu catch Pokeballs. I know I ran into that game somewhere when I was young, but I can’t remember where. This is going to bug me all day.
It’s also a hell of a lot more interesting than Turkey Hunting USA. There’s probably a good reason I never see this game anywhere.
Edit: Funny story. Four years after writing this post, I went through to see if these arcades survived. While looking through Tom’s Diner’s pictures on Google Photos, I saw that it HAD a Pokemon Catch machine a few months before I made this trip. Funny coincidence, huh?
Near the back is the Funset Boulevard Center Stage, a raised platform where they keep the showcase cabs. Not ALL of the showcase cabs are up there, but most are.
I don’t think there was any real rhyme or reason for what games made it up here other than being in a showcase cabinet. It’s mostly shooting games, but some sports and other things are mixed in. Seeing these showcase machines together on a raised stage like this is cool, though.
I love it when I find arcades with games I haven’t seen before. Power Putt Golf is a spiritual spin-off of the Golden Tee series. As the name suggests, it’s a miniature golf simulator instead of the usual full-size golf for Golden Tee is known for. The International Arcade Museum describes the game as such:
Golf game. For some reason its called Power Putt which is the time when the most control over the ball is needed, usually meaning lack of power…
I don’t think there’s anything I can really add to that.
If you can see them, the two games seen here are Sega World Series 99 and America’s Army. The latter is notable for being an officially licensed US Army arcade game. The attract screen is full of army facts and recruitment ads. They probably weren’t allowed to depict the US army killing anyone, so it plays like a crappy Police Trainer clone.
I ran into Sega World Series during my last trip but didn’t get a good shot of the controls. It has a unique control scheme uses these pull-back flippers to swing the bat. It makes a bat swing feel more like a bat swing than pushing a button would.
So here’s the deluxe version of Beach-Head 2000/Air Strike, games that are most notable for the head-mounted goggles VR version. For the longest time, I thought the game was called Beach-Head because of the head display, but it turns out that it’s just a military term for some kind of beach defense position. I wonder if I’m alone in not knowing that.
Way in the back, near the carousel, is the last of the arcade games. This is mostly where they keep the larger games that won’t fit anywhere else, like Air Hockey, Skeeball, and other such things.
Here’s International Shoot-out, a strange cross between foosball and air hockey.
It’s seen better days. I tried to get a year on this machine, but nobody seems to know for sure. 1996 seems to be the best guess. For 20 years old, this machine didn’t age well.
These three machines are hidden in the back, isolated from the others. Police Trainer is back here in hopes that people play it in the front of the building, then forget and play it again by the time they get back here. Silver Strike Bowling is here because it would be redundant if it were too close to the “real” bowling alley. Rolling eXtreme’s in the back because it’s a goddamn eXtreme Street Luge simulator.
When I visited Sioux Falls a few years back, the remains of Electric Rainbow had this machine. I’ve always wanted to find it again, partially because it’s such a ridiculous game and partly because I don’t want any excuse to ever set foot in Sioux Falls again. This is one of those weird games from that period when Top Skater was everywhere, and the X-games were relevant. It’s best to think of this game as a time capsule. In 50 years, people will play it to remember how much more eXtreme the people of the early 2000s were.
Lastly, I’ve been saving this oddity for the very end. Forget DDR; this is, by far, the strangest thing in the arcade. Flash Beasts is a Japanese Pong/Rhythm Game hybrid. I tried to get a good shot that shows the lights in motion, to make the game easier to explain. Those red lights are the “ball.” They crawl up and down the light tubes. The green ones are the “paddle.” When you push the corresponding button, the green light juts out for a moment and will send the “ball” back in the other direction. Much like Reflect Beat, the “balls” come down to the beat of the music so that you can time your presses to the rhythm of the song rather than just the visual indicator. With one player, you try to make it to the song’s end without the red lights killing you, while the two-player mode plays more like pong.
But the most important question is what the hell it’s doing here. This game was never released in America and very, very few of these were ever imported into the country. When you google for information about this game, all it brings up are a bunch of “weird Japanese Sega games you’ve never heard of” pages, a handful of private collectors showing off their rare machines, and a couple of people mentioning playing it at their local arcade (given that one of them also mentions F-335 Challenge, he’s probably talking about this exact machine). Seriously, I’m drawing a blank on why they would have a machine like this.
EDIT: Years later, I would go on to discover that one or two other arcades in the country have one of these. The mystery deepens.
With my lack of sleep finally catching up to me, I was forced to head back to the motel for the night. A few blog posts ago, I coined the term “S-class arcade” to refer to a specific type of arcade that I can’t easily put into words. An S-class arcade isn’t just a good arcade, but the kind of arcade I’m always searching for. Funset Boulevard has nearly everything I look for in one: A memorable atmosphere, an unusual variety of games that have accumulated through the decades, lots of floor space for large machines, and even games I’ve seen before. It even gets a bonus for classic DDR. The most classic DDR of them all. It has everything I could want in an arcade…
BUT
…I don’t feel right putting this arcade alongside things like Fun World and Circus Circus. It’s the highest honor I can give to an arcade, so I don’t want to give it out unless an arcade has genuinely earned it. Funset Boulevard has one glaring issue that holds it back: there aren’t enough games. What made FunFuzion and Fun World special was the sheer number of games they had. The history and floor space allowed them to accumulate the kind of experience that can’t be replicated. Funset feels like it hasn’t built up as many games as an arcade this old should have. If they had even ten more games, I’d have probably declared this to be an S-class arcade without question, but it ultimately came up short in one and only one way. However, I want to clarify that this is the closest I’ve ever come to giving out a fourth S-class title. I don’t want to start creating nonsense like an “S minus,” but I think this arcade would easily get one if I did. EDIT: I did eventually end up creating an A-class for arcades like this, though.
I’ve typed this all up for a reason. I came up with the term S-class for arcades that embody my personal taste in arcades. It’s something reserved for those rare times when I feel like I’ve found precisely what I’m looking for. There’s an arcade later on this trip, much later, where all this will come into play again. It’s an arcade I still have very conflicting feelings about. It may sound like I’m being dramatic, but it’ll make much more sense when you see which arcade I’m talking about.
