And so, with Funset Boulevard behind me, the second day of my journey started here in Appleton. But this was the day I met up with my traveling companion for the trip.
Tash had an extensive list of arcades he wanted to hit. I’ve never been into the arcade scene myself, so I let him guide our trip. This shouldn’t surprise you, but he has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of arcade games and the history of the hobby in the US, which he was always entertaining me with. It made the long drive from Appleton to Chicago more interesting and the time we actually spent in Chicago more illuminating. I learned a lot on this trip.
Yeah, this is Tom with the blue text, by the way. I mentioned him briefly in my last post, but we go way back. I coincidentally stumbled upon Funset while digging around for a random arcade I may have missed and recognized the town as the one Tom lived in. We’d been talking about traveling together for a while, but discovering the arcade up there cemented it.
Most of my knowledge of arcades is from childhood, so my information is pretty out of date. Lots of the newer cabinets (post 2000 or so) were totally new to me. It was pretty cool to hear about how the industry grew and evolved (or in some cases stagnated) through the turn of the century.
Still, how the hell can you live in the same city as Funset Boulevard and not know about it!?
Well I did know about it. Except it was always described to me as a sort of knockoff Chuck E. Cheese, which I suppose is halfway true, so I never really considered whether it had arcade games or which ones might be there.
Have you been to it now?
Nah, but I’ve got some relatives who might be coming up here for a little while soon, and it might be a good excuse to go there as a sort of family outing.
Speaking of information he was withholding, there was a goddamn WOODMAN’S right behind the arcade
Woodman’s is America made manifest. 70 trillion acres of potato chips, soft drinks, ice cream and all else you can find at grocery stores. It’s easily the biggest supermarket I’ve ever been in. There’s an even bigger one in Madison.
When I first moved out to the midwest, I stumbled upon two of these stores and couldn’t believe how damn massive they were. See that building in the first pic? That ENTIRE building is Woodman’s. I’ve wanted to get photos of one of these stores for years.
I do a lot of my shopping here and I’ve started to kind of take it for granted. It’s better than Costco and other huge supermarkets because you don’t need any membership. Just walk in and get what you need. Just be prepared to spend a few hours.
There are so many aisles that they go through the entire alphabet and then some.
This picture honestly doesn’t even do it justice. There’s all these aisles, plus huge frozen goods, produce, bakery and meat sections, then entirely separate sections for a bunch of other random crap. From end to end of the store is about a quarter mile.
Yeah, that’s A-Z on the right and 1-28 on the leftbecause both sides have full-size aisles. It’s MASSIVE.
For example, this here is the paper goods aisle. It’s entirely paper plates, napkins, and other such things
The amount of choices you have for everything here is absolutely bonkers. If it’s a halfway popular brand, or even if it’s not, they stock it. I’ve never been unable to find something here.
I swear we’re not being paid by Woodman’s.
And this is the soda aisle. So big, they have a separate mini-aisle for each major brand.
That’s about 1/3 of the soda aisles. Maybe less.
Yeah, these pictures really don’t do justice to how big the place is.
What I like about this place is, being an adventurous eater unlike Tash, I can always find some oddball thing to try that I’ve never even heard of and give it a go. Their imported food section has literally about 100 different kinds of Indian curry for instance. Their cheese aisle alone is about as big as most grocery stores’ entire dairy section, and has some of the best cheese I’ve ever stumbled upon. (Of course, Wisconsin does love its cheese.)
I remember when I showed a picture of this place I found online to the Memviv chat back in the day, one of the comments was, “They have an entire section for Greek Yogurt!?”
They do! I actually eat a lot of yogurt myself, so that’s a common stop. Watermelon yogurt, why not? Pumpkin cheesecake, sure. Dragonfruit mango, I’m down. It’s hard to imagine that a store this large can keep its inventory moving quick enough to beat the expiration dates of all these random, niche perishables.
Remind me to take you to Dragon Star Supermarket if you’re ever in Minneapolis again. You’d get a kick out of it.
I’m game.
If you look carefully at the left side, you can see that two aisles are dedicated to nothing but frozen pizza.
You didn’t snap a picture of their robot wop. That’s one of my favorite parts of Woodman’s. It’s an animatronic chef that stands in the pizza section in his animatronic chef hat holding an animatronic pizza and waving a sign all day.
Yeah, I tried to avoid getting people in the photos, so it was hard even to get the pictures I did. The place was a lot more packed than you’d expect.
It’s kind of a local institution. Definitely the most popular grocery store in the valley.
This map really makes the store look smaller than it is, doesn’t it?
Think about how big that section for soda is from the picture, and now consider that it’s a tiiiny square in the bottom left corner.
Looking at it from this angle, that diary section is something else…
Wisconsin loves cheese. It’s not a stereotype. I’ve never seen or eaten so much of the stuff in my life as I have since living here.
That reminds me, you guys have Kemps out there, right?
Yep!
Best damn chocolate milk I’ve ever had.
Kemp’s is the good shit. I like their half and half for coffee a lot too.
I plug Kemp’s so much on this blog, you’d think they were paying me. But it really is just that good.
I can confirm, it’s quality.
And they had one of these old parrot egg-laying machines up front.
These were addictive when I was a little kid in the 90s. I bugged my parents to let me get something out of these machines every time I saw one. No wonder Gacha is so popular with this generation.
Yeah, I regretted not getting something when I came across one during my Exciting East Coast Arcade Adventure, so I put some coins in.
What did you get?
Honestly, I don’t know. It’s like a plastic ball of Spongebob with a comically oversized tongue sticking out. I’d post a picture, but I can’t even remember what I did with the thing.
Gacha machines are always more exciting in theory than practice.
After that, I had like five hours to kill, so I went for a walk.
This is a local barcade, right?
Yeah, I just started walking down the most busy-looking street to see what I could find. There was a Family Video still in business, a knock-off Goodwill, and this Barcade. I think it was called Player 2 or something.
How does it stack up in comparison to a standard barcade?
No idea. It didn’t open until 2:00 PM, so I only got the one picture. If I had known you were gonna be so late, I’d have stopped in. It looks very, VERY standard, though.
While trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself, I saw a bird.
Looks like that may be a falcon. They live and nest around here. My work has a falcon nest on the roof that they’ve put a camera on and I like to check on them occasionally to see how those bird buddies are doing. (Falcons nest for life, so it’s an honor to host them!)
Really? I thought falcons were smaller. I get these tiny birds of prey outside my window, sometimes tearing up smaller bird’s carcasses.
It’s hard to tell from the resolution so it could definitely be something else, but the falcons I’ve seen definitely aren’t little birds.
That said, I ended up going all over the damn place. I waited at a football field, then a school, then a public pool. Then I got a text from you saying you would be another hour late.
It was unfortunate, but my workplace is a factory, and when a machine goes down, you’re expected to stick around until it’s fixed.
Eventually, I just got bored wandering around and hung out outside a church. They had a bench.
I thought you had a thing against churches after all that time spent on Memviv, so that was a surprise.
The church in the story was too safe, and the entire plot was revolving around it. It had to go.
I’m just glad you didn’t burn this one down too.
Nobody except the three people who worked on that project and read this blog have any idea what the hell we’re talking about.
Maybe we should move on, then. After a brief moment of silence in recognition of Jun being worst girl.
Go to hell.
Anyhow, there was a small arcade in Wisconsin I remember reading about a while back, and I had to check it out. After like an hour of driving, we made it to our first (my second) arcade of the trip.
This was one of those arcades that has you pay an entry fee and then you get unlimited free play inside.
Yep. This is Garcade, a fairly recently constructed arcade discreetly hidden in a strip mall. I should note that I’m not used to taking pictures of arcades with other people around, so I missed getting a shot of the outside, the front counter, or anything better than this to use as an establishing shot.
Garcade was a lot of fun, their selection was good and the owners were clearly pretty passionate about the hobby. It’s a shame we could only spend a little over an hour and a half here.
Yeah, we were pressed for time, so I couldn’t play as many of the games as I wanted. But what you said about the selection is interesting for reasons we’ll get into.
I tried putting the photos in something resembling a logical order, starting with the left wall.
Pinball was never my thing, and I’m surprised there’s still an industry pumping out new machines. GTA pinball, what? I think this place had a Game of Thrones pinball machine too.
Yeah, about that GTA pinball. Doesn’t something about it look strange to you?
Hard to tell, since I didn’t play on it. What’s up with it?
Look at the shape of that backboard. Doesn’t it look a bit different than the machines you’re used to seeing?
Yeah, it looks unusual now that you mention it. But what does it do different to a standard pinball machine?
Nothing! What’s unusual is that those box-shaped backboards are characteristic of pinball machines produced in the 80s. 90s and later machines tend to have sleeker-looking backboards. Either that was a very authentic throw-back to 80s pinball, or, as I suspected, there’s a much different story behind it.
When I got home, I confirmed it. That’s actually a pinball machine called Hollywood Heat, made in the 80s. They changed the back of it for giggles.
I don’t know if that’s lazy or brilliant.
Most people have probably never seen that original since it’s pretty rare. It was the first pinball machine to use 8-digit scoring, too.
Score inflation!
Trust me; this is the first of many oddities that this arcade housed that aren’t apparent at first glance.
These are the kinds of details that totally escape my eye. I would never have known!
On the same wall as the pinball was a DDR Extreme machine, some SF Rush, and Race Drivin back in the corner.
Race Drivin’ is a terrible name. Just an awful name.
You know what the two major types of racing games are, yeah?
Ones where you’re in a full cabinet modeled like a car and ones where you’re not?
No, I mean in general. There are two “types” of racing games as far as physics goes.
Does this have to do with drifting?
In a sense. The two types of racing games are sim racers and arcade racers. Sim racers are more akin to Gran Turismo, where they attempt to mimic how cars drive, while arcade racers have more video game-y physics. You can probably already tell where I’m going with this…
If I had to guess? This looks more like a sim racer.
Yep. This was one of the first driving games to aim for realistic car physics, so it’s one of their earliest predecessors.
How does it handle, in your opinion? Did it age well?
You can definitely tell it’s trying to avoid arcade physics. I’m not the best judge of whether it’s aged well since simulation racers have always felt kind of stiff to me.
I think this was one of the machines I played on too. If this is the machine I remember, it did feel sort of clunky and hard to control. The less realistic arcade racers are a lot easier to “pick up and play” as it were.
Many arcade games from this era are notable for their historical significance, not because they’re “fun.”
Two things in this bunch stand out to me. Go ahead and point out the one I’m sure stands out to you.
That machine on the far right has a pretty interesting joystick.
It’s the same one Tron uses, I think, or at least very similar, but I was expecting you to say the second one from the right…
That machine looks pretty old in comparison to its neighbors.
Really, you don’t know about Nintendo’s VS series?
It’s hard to read the marquee!
It’s VS Excitebike!
I was kind of pulling for Excitebiker as the new oddball retro rep in Smash. Excitebike was one of my favorites as a little kid playing on my older siblings’ old NES. I didn’t know it had an arcade edition, though.
Ah, so you really don’t know. In the 80s, Nintendo released a line of arcade games that were essentially difficulty romhacks of popular NES games. Things like Excitebike, Duck Hunt and such. You probably didn’t notice, but this arcade had THREE of them for some reason.
Are they pretty rare?
Not really; it’s just odd to find more than one in the same arcade. One of their choices was particularly strange, but we’ll get to that later. Speaking of weird, that football game there is Rushing Heroes, from 1995, I think. It was an early attempt at a 3D arcade football game.
Hard to believe that’s from all the way back in 1995.
Yeah. It’s even harder to believe that they even have it here. There’s a period in the mid-90s that had a bunch of games you rarely find anywhere because they’re too old for most arcades to keep around, but they have no real nostalgia value for retro arcades to bother having them. Once in a while, you can find them at ancient arcades, but this isn’t the type of place I expected to see one.
That’s kind of sad when you put it that way. Who will remember the Rushing Heroes of yesteryear? Kind of drives home the fact that the owners of this place actually care a lot about arcade games, I think. Maybe one of them liked this game as a kid, or maybe they just had an opportunity to pick it up and liked the idea of a quirky machine no one else really cares about anymore.
Given the sheer amount of these kinds of machines this arcade has, as we’ll get to, I think it’s more likely he just got whatever he could find cheap. Seriously, this arcade is a serious contender for the most bizarre line-ups of games I’ve ever seen at an arcade. I’m happy we made the stop.
(Tom mistook this game for Killer Instinct, so half of the commentary on it had to be awkwardly rewritten when he realized his mistake)
Yeah, I talked about this in one of my first blog posts about local arcades (although they got rid of the machine a month later). It had a big merchandising push behind it. There was a line of action figures and stuff. It’s not the best fighting game in the world from a gameplay standpoint, but you could tell it was trying to ride on the coattails of Mortal Kombat.
It’s even got a kind of similar name. The idea of a game with fighting animals is cool and all but there’s something just kind of uninspired about the design overall. So it makes sense to think it’s the Pepsi to Mortal Kombat’s coke. Although in my mind Mortal Kombat was kind of like the Pepsi to Street Fighter’s Coke so maybe this is more like RC Cola.
This game has a character who farts for attacks and can pee on your opponent. Mortal Kombat didn’t have that.
Fartality?
Something like that. This game had a sequel in development, but the franchise didn’t take off as expected, so it was canceled pretty late in production and was never released.
And nothing of value was lost.
Yes, but that’s a story for another day.
Here’s a machine I’ve searched for since starting the blog!
Was it everything you hoped for?
I’ve played it before, but seeing a game as big a deal as this one again makes me happy.
Well, give us your history lesson!
I’ve talked more about Sega AM2 on this blog than anyone should. They were the arcade pioneers of 3D gaming. They single-handedly codified many genres by making their first major 3D iteration. The Virtua series was revolutionary game after revolutionary game. Virtua Fighter is the game that codified how 3D fighters would work, and its influence is still felt today, although it’s far more realistic than most of what would come after. Besides being able to jump really high, it’s extremely grounded in reality.
The most interesting thing about it, to me, is that they weren’t sure how to fix the problem of the characters being asymmetrical when facing each other, so they came up with the idea of having the characters use slightly different moves based on whether they’re in a closed or open stance. Effectively, every character has two versions of every attack with different speeds and ranges. It’s a highly fascinating game from a design perspective, despite how basic it looks.
Every technological advancement looks quaint in retrospect, but you have to admire the vision. Even if I personally hate 3D fighters.
This series is still very well regarded in Japan. That’s why it keeps getting stuff in Smash, despite Americans going, “why the hell are you putting Virtua Fighter stuff in?” In the states, it kind of got eclipsed by Tekken…
Do you prefer one over the other?
Honestly, I wouldn’t say I like Tekken, but as I’ve said on this blog many times, fighting games aren’t really my genre. I’ve always wanted to get into them, but they’re not the easiest thing to get into. I can still admire them for what they accomplished, though.
One last thing I wanna mention here. That machine next to it is Soul Calibur, the second game in the Soul Calibur series. I don’t remember the last time I saw it at an arcade.
I didn’t even realize that was Donkey Kong Remix until I looked back through my photos…
What’s remixed about it?
From what I’ve heard, it has some extra stages, a bonus round, and some new RNG elements to shake the game up. It’s a fan-made ROM hack, but it isn’t available anywhere on the internet as far as I know. It’s made specifically for arcade machine owners.
It would have been somewhat neat to experience, but playing any flavor of Donkey Kong on such a tight schedule felt like a waste.
Yeah, but it goes to show just how random this arcade is. With most arcades, there’s some rhyme or reason to the game selection. This one has whatever the hell it wants.
I like that kind of thing. You never know what’s gonna be down the next row of cabinets.
True. Also, that blurry-ass helicopter game is Choplifter. It’s notable for being one of the few computer games that got an arcade port. Supposedly the original Apple version is noteworthy for something, but you’d have to ask someone more versed on 80s computer games than I am.
I don’t think I remember noticing Stargate at the time. Any relation to the film?
No, in fact, that game is a sequel to another very well-known arcade game. Can you guess which?
Space Invaders would be my best guess.
Nope, it’s Defender, of all things. A lot of popular 80s arcade games had weird sequels. Some of them, like Donkey Kong Jr and Galaga, are pretty well known. Others, like this, Blastroids, and Q-bert’s Qubes, not so much.
Another example of this arcade’s wacky line-up, then.
Yeah, and this is a good time to mention one of the few machines I didn’t get a pic of. While some popular 80s games got sequels, so just got official challenge updates to make them harder because players were getting too good at them.
I bet they didn’t even come with patch notes!
Nope. In fact, most of them are obscure today. I missed Super Missile Attack, an update of Missile Command that’s pretty damn rare. I didn’t even notice it wasn’t Missile Command while we were there.
How much harder are these deluxe challenge updates compared to their vanilla counterparts?
The only one I’ve played myself was Q-Bert (for Advanced Players, I think the name is?). I remember it having a lot more RNG bullshit.
“hurr durr how do we make our game harder”
“duhhhh I dunno make it more random”
Speaking of arcade sequels, is this one well known or not?
The Pac-Man games all kind of blend together to me, to be honest. It feels like there must have been dozens of them.
Well, this one is Super Pac-man, a pretty damn strange incarnation. You collect keys to open doors to fruit. The Power Pellet makes you huge instead of just being invincible.
An early example of fixing what isn’t broken and changing popular series staples for no good reason.
A lot of arcade sequels got pretty damn strange because they didn’t just want to be an update of the original. See also Donkey Kong Jr. and the absurdity that is Q-bert’s Qubes. By the way, since you mentioned Smash earlier, this is the game Pac-man’s final smash is based on.
#QbertForSmash
I’m just glad they didn’t use Pac-Man’s Saturday morning cartoon design, honestly.
Really dodged a bullet with that one.
Wanna know what’s really great about this game?
What’s that?
If you shoot the letters “B”, “O”, “N”, “U”, and “S”, you get to go to a bonus round! Isn’t that amazing!?
At the time, stuff like that must have been pretty clever.
Yep, this game is often cited as the very first example of a bonus round in a video game.
It’s always weird to see these examples of games that had a huge impact on video game history and blazed the trail with all these brand new concepts in game design, that people just don’t really remember anymore.
This game definitely got lost to history. It’s one of the oldest games in this arcade and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it anywhere.
I’m sure it’s not very fun, but that’s hardly the point with something that’s practically a historical artifact by now.
I wouldn’t say it’s “not very fun.” It’s basically a Space Invaders clone, except your bullets are limited, and you replenish them by not missing, so it’s more about accuracy than spamming shots.
And you’re… shooting at escaped carnival animals?
No, it’s supposed to be based on those carnival games where you win the prizes you shoot with the fake gun. The prizes scroll by at the top and sometimes fall and “hurt” you for some reason, making you lose some bullets.
Reminds me of the time I won at the ring toss game and the carnie threw a stuffed Pikachu at me.
Looks like a lazy generic knockoff of Mario Bros., but it’s actually legit.
Not only legit, but that’s also the original Widebody machine! Most copies of Mario Bros you see these days are converted Donkey Kong machines, so the machine is a lot more narrow and have less room for two players.
Makes sense. I’ve played Mario Bros. on a normal machine and it does feel kind of cramped. This is the luxury version.
Yep. That’s the only reason I took a picture of it. It’s a SUPER common game. Also, I usually try to avoid repeating things I’ve said on my blog in the past, but that game next to it is Moon Patrol, the very first game to use parallax scrolling.
Parallax scrolling fucks with my eyeballs.
Really? It was considered pretty revolutionary at the time.
At least primitive parallax scrolling does. But yeah, I can respect the innovation.
Here’s the machine I was most excited about. A legitimate sit-down cab from the 80s!
It was a lot of fun, even if the years haven’t been kind to the machine itself. It felt like the wheel was about ready to fall off.
Of course, Pole Position is one of the more common 80s sitdowns that have survived to modern times, but seeing any big machines like this from that era in the wild is rare.
This is the machine where I realized you’re really, really good at racing games. You were drifting around the track like it was second nature.
Rhythm games are my main “thing,” but I’ve gotten pretty good at racing games in the last few years.
As for me, I think I wrecked three or four times before giving up in frustration.
Before I forget, this machine also had 7-11!
Now how’s that for realism?
I don’t know if this was the first video game to have product placement, but it was one of the first. (by the way, for the readers, this machine was running Pole Position II, not the original)
Was it paid product placement or did they put it in there for fun? I wonder whether companies outside the industry understood the value of putting their shit in games at the time. If so, 7-11 must have had a visionary in their marketing department.
Pole Position was one of the codifying racing games, supposedly the highest-grossing game of its year. 7-11 really knew their stuff if it was product placement.
It would make sense. If you’re a kid at the time, you’re at the arcade on a Saturday morning, where are you gonna go next? Down the street to get a slurpee of course.
What, you don’t know?
What’s that?
7-11 used to have arcades in them.
Oh, I know that. I remember playing Rampage at a local 7-11 as a kid. I think it was a 7-11
But if you’re at 7-11, 7-11 has already done their job!
Since this arcade seems to have one of everything else, here’s a goddamn vector game.
Vector graphics, man. That’s like the most primitive of primitive.
This one is a bit special since you have to put your face up to it to look inside the machine. Some people consider it the first VR game.
I remember playing this game on PC in the mid 90s. Or a very similar game. This is the one with tank fights right?
That’s the one.
Super fun, even if completely quaint by modern standards.
Hey, you know how people who speak in favor of video games always use “it can be used for military training” as a justification? This game WAS used in military training. They made a unique and EXTREMELY rare variation of it for training tank soldiers.
How does it differ?
I’ve never played it since only two of them exist, and I’m not sure if they’ve found their way online, but supposedly it has different controls and some new enemy types. (edit: The Bradley Trainer was dumped and is readily available online)
It’s a neat idea in concept, but I just don’t see how a game so basic and primitive could translate to real life tank operators. This seems like a good decade or more out from stuff like flight simulators that can effectively replicate operating machines like these.
Yeah, but this game was proof that they were thinking about it as far back as the early 80s. Military flight simulators might not have been developed otherwise. The transition of video games into 3D happened mainly because of military flight simulators, you know.
You could say this game was crucial to the history of video games as proof of concept.
I don’t doubt that. Making a fully 3D playing field in 1980 is a hell of a technical feat.
I tried to set the machines up in the order you’d see them walking through the arcade, but this is the point where my memory got a bit shaky.
I see a Donkey Kong machine in there, what else?
Time Pilot 84 and… I actually can’t remember what the other one is. Many of their less notable games were in the middle of the arcade.
Yeah, we must have pretty much breezed past these, since I don’t remember them.
This whole row was pretty unremarkable.
Not every arcade game can be as groundbreaking as Battle Zone.
If you have anything to say about Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, do it now. This is the only real picture I got of it.
Nada.
Well, let it be known we did play it. I used the cheat to play as Pojo the Chicken, as always.
I bet you want to know what this thing is, right?
It looks like a competitive flight sim!
Your guess is as good as mine, so I don’t know what it is either. There was no marquee, I didn’t see it listed on their website, and Google turned up nothing…
Spooky. This arcade is full of weird surprises and mysteries, huh?
Yep.
Since I’m pretty much a novice, scale of 1-10 it for me. Exactly how weird was this arcade?
In terms of atmosphere, extremely standard. In terms of the games they had, it’s an easy 10.
It’s funny to think about how many people like me go through there, who would never realize what a treasure trove of rare and weird cabinets they’ve come across.
We haven’t even gotten to some of stranger ones yet.
EDIT: The more experienced me from four years later here. That game is Viper, a game where you control a jet fighter by using the handles to swivel the monitor around. Also, I feel like that 10 was a bit hasty. Having seen a LOT more arcades now, I’d probably give it an 8 or 9.
That machine there is Surf Planet, a totally radical game from the 90s.
Hang 10, dude!
Hang 10? Surf Planet is a snowboarding game…
Now that’s just confusing as hell.
Remember I mentioned those weird mid-90s games like Rushing Heroes that are rare for arcades to bother with these days? This is one of them.
And even an arcade like this has a staple like Area 51.
Area 51. The game that was everywhere.
Zaxxon is pretty common too, right?
Definitely. And about half of all Barcades have Tron.
Tron is a trip and a half. It feels like one of those games that was just trying so many different things it becomes a bit schizophrenic.
It was a very early example of a minigame collection.
Yeah, that’s what I was about to compare it to. 80s Wario Ware.
You’re missing half of video game history if you only look at console games. You’d be surprised how many people don’t realize what arcades were doing years before consoles.
We’re finally back to the back wall from the start of the article.
Zero point! I sucked shit at this game, but it was a blast.
This one caught me off-guard. I hadn’t seen it before, so I thought it was an overseas release of Point Blank or something. It turns out that it’s just an obscure knock-off of that game.
Now that I think about it, this is kind of like a minigame collection too, although the rules are all basically the same.
These light gun rapid-fire minigame collections were pretty common in the 90s. There was Point Blank, Police Trainer, that one US army game they have at Funset, Eggventure, and some others I’m forgetting.
You’re pretty good at light gun games, too. But that’s years of experience shining through, huh?
Light gun games aren’t something I’ve ever been particularly into. It’s just something you pick up by spending a lot of time in arcades.
I forget this one. Did we play it?
I played it after splitting off from you near the end.
Tell me about it.
It’s very similar to Area 51, except it’s actually 3D instead of the pre-rendered thing. Notably, it’s one of the first, if not the first, arcade games by a company called Play Mechanix. I often call games like Terminator Salvation “Raw Thrills” on this blog, but Raw Thrills only distribute them. A LOT of those are developed by Play Mechanix. Big Buck Hunter was their doing, too.
Oh man, I hate that game.
Now you know how I feel about all the Raw Thrills stuff every modern arcade has.
Same way with Invasion?
Invasion’s okay for what it is, but it does feel a bit primitive. If you’re ever in the mood to try it yourself, I know of a hotel in Appleton that has it. You did play Terminator though, didn’t you?
Yeah, we played that together. I’m a big terminator fan so I enjoyed myself, but it didn’t feel like a particularly amazing game.
This machine did have the cool projected effects working, though. When you get shot or something, the shot doesn’t appear on the screen but on a piece of glass in front of it. It has a cool 3D effect when the machine is working right.
I got shot a lot. The thing that’s interesting to me about this game too is it’s branded with all this Terminator 2 imagery but it actually takes place in the post-apocalyptic future well after the events of the movie. Like, the screechy pubescent John Connor and T-1000 as a pig are on the cabinet but they don’t actually appear in game. Same with Arnie.
I think they might later in the game, but I’ve never played this one much. We only got to the first level. After that, I know it turns into a standard scrolling screen light gun game.
Fair enough.
Speaking of standard scrolling screen light gun games…
It must have been really underwhelming because I’m drawing a mental blank on this one.
Before 3D, most shooters just scrolled to the side, and enemies would pop up at you. This game was released in the mid-90s, around the time things like Time Crisis were obsoleting those games, so this one isn’t very well known. And a much more popular shooter would eliminate everyone’s remaining memory of it a year later. You can see it there on the left if you look carefully.
What is it? I’m trying to ID it but my power level is way too low.
The House of the Dead
Ah yes. That game legit spooked me as a kid. I was too scurred to play it.
I’ve got a lot to say about it, but now doesn’t seem the place for it.
I completely skipped this photo when Tom and I were writing this post. I’m leaving it here for completion purposes. Look, it’s Raiden Fighters! Like Raiden, but worse.
Street Fighter is to Virtua Fighter is to Tekken
as Samurai Shodown is to Last Bronx is to Soul Edge
Does that make sense to you?
…Vaguely. Care to expound on that?
Street Fighter was an extremely popular fighting game, and Virtua Fighter took the genre into 3D but ultimately lost the war to Tekken. SNK’s Samurai Showdown was THE 2D weapon-based fighting game by the same merit, while Last Bronx was the first to try taking that sub-genre into 3D. Unfortunately, it was Soul Edge that ended up taking off.
I get it now! But so what’s your personal preference?
Again, fighting games aren’t my genre, but you can tell Last Bronx was really, really channeling Virtua Fighter. The Soul Edge series was a better fit for weapon combat, I think.
So, let’s hear what you think the story behind this game is.
Old game, new mechanics. Capitalizing on retro nostalgia and the recent resurgence in interest in arcades.
You’re pretty perceptive. This is, in fact, one of those indie arcade games that have been cropping up lately.
You can definitely tell it’s not a cabinet from the 80s. It’s too… new-y. Not just the state of the cabinet but its design aesthetic and how the game itself plays.
It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of indie games because of how much they lean on throwback aesthetics to avoid having to make authentic graphics. But these machines are becoming more and more common at barcades these days. Once the Switch port of Killer Queen was announced, nobody would shut up about that damn game for a week.
I’m not against it per se, but I’m kind of over the faux retro aesthetic generally.
Cosmotrons was okay for what it was, but it felt very barebones for such a fancy-looking machine.
Definitely agreed. It’s banking on the fact that people are gonna go in half-sloshed already, play it for a few minutes and walk away.
However, having one random indie game sitting around emphasizes how damn bizarre this arcade is.
Is that one on the left the one you wandered off to play?
I can’t make out the marquee, what is it?
No idea. I remember you were playing one at the end of a row when I was back playing Invasion.
If I did, it sucked, because I don’t remember it. Now the one on the right, that’s a classic. I love Crystal Castles.
I also love Crystal Castles. It was my favorite Atari 2600 game.
Not a half bad music group, either. Although you wouldn’t like them. /mu/ was obsessed with their female lead back in the early to mid 2010s.
Bah
Look, a Neo-Geo 1-slot.
What’s the point of a Neo Geo cabinet without an actual selection of Neo Geo games?
This one was running a multi-cart, so it had every Neo-Geo game on it.
Okay, I take that back. I wish I had noticed this at the time!
Yeah, but do you remember what’s strange about that?
I assume this has to be modified on the aftermarket.
Well yes, but it’s more about this specific arcade.
Go on.
Including this one, there were THREE Neo-Geo machines in this arcade for some damn reason. And the other two were regular 4-slot versions.
That is kind of weird. Neo Geo fans as owners? Just buying whatever, like you suggested?
Neo-Geo machines are dirt cheap, so that’s almost certainly the case. I’ve contemplated buying one myself.
Modded like the first one, I imagine.
Here’s the thing about the Neo-Geo arcade machines: The games are also pretty damn cheap, especially compared to the Neo-Geo console. You can get a working Neo-Geo arcade board on eBay for 70 bucks, and games are generally like 20-40 bucks.
Damn. That is pretty cheap. I mean I know nothing about arcade buying and selling but I would have imagined much more for a board.
Neo Geo was one of the longest-supported arcade boards, producing games through the entire 90s. There are LOADS of them floating around.
Good old supply and demand.
I’ve got better pics of all of these, so let’s jump right into them.
I know you don’t actually read my blog, but I’ve been talking about the Aliens games a lot lately.
Did we actually play this one?
No, but I took a picture of it because I referenced this game in NYC. See, there are a lot of Aliens games out there, and this is the only one I haven’t run into on the blog yet. There’s this one, an old light gun game, Alien vs. Predator, and those modern ones. I was hoping I’d have more to say about it, but we were kinda pressed for time, so I didn’t get to play it.
We’re really getting to the deep cuts here.
Deep cuts?
As in, a lot of these are machines I don’t even remember passing by, let alone playing!
They were back in the corner somewhere. Kung-fu Master is front and center, but Jungle King is the interesting game in this picture.
What makes it unique?
It got sued by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate for being a blatant Tarzan ripoff! They had to re-release the game as Jungle Hunt with a different main character and without Tarzan’s jungle yell. This here is the original.
Jungle yell and all?
Yep.
Let me guess: a pretty rare find?
I’ve been to so many arcades that I can safely say anything I haven’t encountered in person before is at least a bit rare. Maybe not rare on the second-hand market, but rare to find “in the wild,” at least.
You know, when I lived in Sioux Falls, the local pawn shop had a Kangaroo machine for 200 bucks.
Did you contemplate it?
I obviously didn’t have room at the time. Besides, it’s just a medicore Donkey Kong ripoff.
Anything else to say about these?
Nah, other than
SINISTARRRRR
Sorry.
There’s one of the other two Neo-Geos.
And Q-bert!
Have you ever seen that marquee before?
Not to my knowledge.
I’m sure this particular one is a reproduction, but that was the original Q-Bert marquee. Only the first wave of machines had them. They were deemed too confusing, so the swearing marquee got replaced with one that says “Q-Bert.”
I like the original. It has character.
Blame people for being too stupid to read the name in front of the joystick.
Have you ever played Tapper?
I don’t think so.
At my local Barcade, it’s easily the most popular game outside of Killer Queen.
Sounds like you take a dim view of it.
No, I love Tapper. My local Barcade is about half the size of Garcade, so it’s really big. The fact that it’s so popular says a lot about how fun it is.
I’ve never seen the original Hang-on in person, so I got excited for a moment. It turned out to be the sequel, Super Hang-On.
Jet skiing?
An early motorcycle game. The first to have the motorcycle you ride on, I believe. The original is one of AM2’s big four 80s games, alongside Space Harrier, After Burner, and Out Run. Each had a big interactive arcade machine that put them on the map as Sega’s best in-house development branch. Of course, finding any of those these days is a lost cause. I only know of a few sparse arcades that still have any of them. The smaller versions are all pretty common, save for Hang-On.
(they had Out Run and After Burner at this arcade too, but we didn’t bother commenting on them)
This is the only shot you can see one of the two party rooms in.
I’d be pretty damn psyched to have my 9th birthday party in a place like this.
I’m mostly amazed they had space for two party rooms. One was Ms. Pac-man themed, and I think the other was Q-Bert. The photos don’t do it justice, but this arcade was cramped.
Yeah, it was pretty jam-packed. Although it doesn’t hold a candle to how jam packed the main attraction was.
If you can believe it, neither of them is the most cramped arcade I’ve ever been to. One on the East Coast was so cramped that youcouldn’t play a game if someone was playing the game on the opposite end of the aisle.
That’s just bad. It’s kind of like cutting the actual number of available games in half.
Yeah, but it was an arcade that’s been around since the 80s and somehow survived in the tiniest strip mall possible.
Scrappy and full of gumption then, I’ll give it that. But I’d still be annoyed.
Dynamite Cop!
Dynamite Cop ranks in the top quartile of most ridiculous games I’ve ever played, easily. I like a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
We didn’t even get far enough to see the giant chef with minions wearing Master Roshi turtle shells.
It’s just one absurdity after another. It’s great.
Tekken 5 seems a bit new for this arcade, doesn’t it?
Yeah, I remember you being really confused about it at the time. Although it does also have that newer indie machine we talked about earlier.
What’s strange is that the older Tekken machines tend to be common, so they’re the kind of thing this arcade probably could have gotten a lot cheaper. Maybe a local theater closed down, and they snatched it up?
Could be any number of things. Estate sale, fell of the back of a truck, stolen from a rival arcade…
Well, it’s sitting right next to Turbo, so it’s just begging to get unplugged.
Yet another “literally who?” game from the mid-90s, Radikal Bikers. Guess what this game is about.
Hmm… shooting aliens?
No, it’s about riding through the streets on a moped to deliver a pizza before the other moped.
That was my second guess.
This is probably the only moped-based arcade game ever made, and I have to say, it controls much better than most games that use this setup for motorcycle controls.
Mopeds are clearly the superior form of transportation.
Believe it or not, I know of an arcade in Sioux Falls that managed to keep one of these machines around for the last 20 years. Getting a pic of the oddity was making me consider taking another trip out there, but now I don’t have to.
You’re like an arcade Pokemon master. Gotta catch em all.
Oh boy, the side room.
I don’t see any notable cabinets here. Or am I wrong?
The second one from the right is Strata Bowling, an EXTREMELY obscure bowling game. The arcade museum only lists four owners of this machine, and this is almost certainly the only arcade in the country that has it. It’s a five on their rarity scale.
Did you play it?
No, it’s obscure specifically because nobody wants to play it. You can get the arcade board on eBay for like 60 bucks, but nobody WANTS it.
That’s some land of misift toys shit there.
The third one from the right is Alley Master, an EXTREMELY obscure bowling game. The arcade museum only lists three owners of this machine, and this is almost certainly the only arcade in the country that has it. It’s a two on their rarity scale.
(?)
(you read that right.)
What’s up with this arcade and random no-name bowling cabinets?
I wasn’t kidding when I said this arcade is a ten on the weirdness scale. But the middle one is another oddity, VS Golf.
Are golf games the most boring video games in existence or what?
Well, I said early this arcade had three VS System games: VS Excitebike, VS Super Mario Bros (I forgot to mention it in an earlier photo), and VS Golf. These games are pretty popular at barcades, but you don’t see much of VS Golf for obvious reasons. Like the other two, it’s an arcade port of Golf for the NES, but with some difficulty changes that I’m not sure of.
So I will talk a little bit about Gauntlet Legacy after all, since there’s a Gauntlet poster there. The game itself fucking sucked, but what amused me the most was that it still had a splash screen advertising a contest that had a deadline of December 31, 2000. Contestants could mail the proof of their high scores to a PO box in California. It was just such a strange thing to see. I wonder who won. I wonder whether the company that made the game still owns that PO box. What would happen if I sent in my high score?
Of course, they don’t. It was made by Midway games, which dissolved around the millennium’s turn.
Don’t dash my hopes, Tash.
Overall, how does Garcade rank to you?
I generally don’t rank arcades unless they’re in a class of their own, but this was definitely an arcade worth going out of my way to visit. The sheer amount of strange machines they had was ridiculous, even if a lot of them were things nobody particularly wants to play.
How about you? This was probably the first arcade you’ve been to in ages. What you thought is probably far more interesting.
I was also surprised by the sheer selection of machines, and I’m glad to know that’s not just the fact that I’m a relative layperson but that they actually had a large and varied selection. I sometimes gravitated towards old classics because those were comfortable in an unfamiliar landscape, but the oddball machines I played all offered something that felt worth the experience, even if the game sucked (Gauntlet, for instance). I’m not partial to any one genre other than sort of disliking sports titles, and I like an underdog — the unloved, unplayed, weird games that people don’t pay attention to — so the weirdness of this arcade clicked with me, personally.
(note: Gauntlet Dark Legacy isn’t exactly an oddball machine…)
It’s definitely an arcade that probably took on much different contexts for the two of us. As you said earlier, most people who come here probably don’t realize just how absurd this arcade is, but I immediately picked up on it.
I definitely felt like some of the machines were odd, even if I didn’t realize just how much. This arcade had some of those obligatory machines every arcade is required by law to carry, like Area 51, but it had a bunch I’d never seen before, and I could sense they weren’t by any stretch in the usual crop of arcade offerings.
We should also probably mention the front counter since we glossed over it because there were no pictures. The guy running the place was extremely enthusiastic about arcades.
You could definitely tell he loved the hobby. He got excited FOR us when he heard we were going to Chicago to visit arcades.
In my last post of the East Coast, I made a list explaining the major categories of arcades. This was definitely an example of a community arcade. The enthusiasm is what makes those arcades what they are.
Even if the selection is somewhat schizophrenic, there’s a lot of passion and love there. Just a couple of guys trying to impart their enjoyment of these games to the general public.
The free keychain is definitely deserving of a special place on my trophy shelf.
Like I said in the first blog post of this trip, this is a journey of ten arcades, and so far, we’re 2 for 2. Next time, let’s finally take those question marks out of the post titles and begin the Chicago Adventure for real!
