DISCLAIMER: These early Las Vegas entries were the first blog posts I ever did. They’re VERY antiquated compared to the rest of the blog.
Over the past few months, I’ve felt like my legs are starting to go soft. I can’t imagine a better place to do something about that. Las Vegas is a massive place with a lot of walking to get around. After breakfast, I decided to start by exploring the place I was staying at.
I never dreamed before. I’m gonna knock the door. Into the world of perfect freeeeee
Does anyone still remember Beck (the anime)? A lot of anime I assume everyone knows about seems obscure by modern standards. At the last anime convention I went to, the guy hosting trivia thanked me. I was the first person all day who knew the name of Ruroni Kenshin’s theme song.
Here it is, for those wondering what the hell I’m talking about. Also featured in that opening is Stardust Casino, which used to be right next to this place. I had completely forgotten about it until finding out it closed down. I guess it wasn’t gimmicky enough to stick around.
Circus Circus is a place very familiar to me. Because it’s one of the most family-oriented casinos, we’d come here every year on our way out of town. This place has not one but two arcades. If you add the two together, this might qualify as the biggest arcade in Vegas. This casino is way on the edge of the strip, so it has a “cheap” feeling compared to the more well-known places. There are loads of machines that have been here for two decades. They were too cheap to buy new ones.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This is the home of Circus Circus’ first arcade, The Adventure Dome. It’s a small indoor theme park with a canyon motif for reasons I can’t fathom. They added this section in 2003-ish, so I’ve only been here once. I only remember getting bored and wandering in here one day to find a DDR 1.5 machine and Dig Dug II. Neither of them is still here.
I’d love to start with an establishing shot of the “arcade” as a whole, but there’s a reason I’m putting “arcade” in quotation marks. The machines are just sort of randomly scattered throughout the park. There are a few clumps of them, but there’s not much rhyme or reason for their placement.
Title Fight from 1991 is a fitting machine, to begin with. When this game came out, I was just tall enough to start reaching arcade machines. Given how novel of a game it was, this machine could be found at nearly every arcade in Vegas. I’d never forget those beautiful boxing glove joysticks. Just looking at this machine gives me a heavy air of nostalgia, even if I didn’t really play it much.
Look, it’s F-Zero AX! I was kind of surprised that they hadn’t gotten rid of this yet. This game is pretty rare these days. It’s more or less an arcade version of the Gamecube game. While there are differences, it runs on the same engine. If you have the means to hack Gamecube games, most of F-Zero AX is hidden in the Gamecube version’s data. It’s fully playable and everything.
This machine was here when I last visited a decade ago. Back then, they also had a bunch of other older games like Millipede that haven’t managed to hang on as long. I have a pretty good idea why this one survived, but I’ll get to that later.
House of the Dead 2 through 4, all right in a row. If you ever wanted to play House of the Dead, you have lots of options here. I think they put them all next to each other like this to show off their collection. Now, if only they had House of the Dead 1…
Oh wait, there it is. It was on the other side of the hall, facing the others. The over-saturation of House of the Dead doesn’t end here. It was probably the most common game series in all of Las Vegas. Nearly every arcade had at least one of these games, usually more. For a game series that hasn’t had a new entry in a decade, that’s pretty impressive.
They ended up with two of these, too. It was hard to find an arcade that didn’t have this one back in the ’00s. I only remember this game for the weird screaming noise it makes when you lose. I’m pretty sure it’s some sound effects from the movies, but I’m not versed in Star Wars enough to identify it. I think it’s better that it just remain a strange beep-scream noise.
Throughout this amusement park are also carnival games like this. If I were anywhere else, I’d blow a lot of money trying to win a Turtwig, Bulbasaur, or stuffed Pokeball. There’s no way in hell I’d be able to cram anything else in my tiny luggage bag, so I’ll have to let them go.
When I was a kid, I did win a giant Play-by-Play Pikachu here. That thing was like two or three feet tall. I had quite a collection of giant Pokemon plushes won from arcades, but I gave them all away to someone online when I left Michigan.
You see a lot of Capcom fighting games around Vegas, but this is one you don’t see much of. The original Street Fighter III didn’t go over so well with fans. They were trying to differentiate from Street Fighter II, so they removed nearly all of the iconic cast. I think they realized their mistake and added them in during later revisions. I’m not all that versed in fighters, so I can only give a very surface-level analysis.
Taiko Master’s obscure bastard cousin, featuring the musical stylings of late 90s pop sensation Aqua. There’s one in Omaha, Nebraska too, but I’ve never seen one anywhere else. Popular rhythm games getting knock-offs is nothing unusual.
And here’s the first DDR machine in Las Vegas! I’m so out of shape and struggled with eight-foot songs. Maybe it’s because I only got four hours of sleep last night? Perhaps it’s because the down arrow didn’t work? Either way, this machine sucked.
Three classic Beat-em-ups in a row. I’ve been seeing a lot of Turtles in Time lately. While most places have it because it’s an iconic retro game, this place almost certainly has it because they never got rid of it. This arcade is beautiful.
The Spider-man game on the right lets you play as Submariner, so it’s okay by me.
The bad guy from Tom Hanks’s film Big. You give it a few quarters, and it prints out a fortune. I’ll snap a picture of mine before the end of the article. I saw about four different variations of this guy over the next few days, including one that appeared to be an old gold prospector.
The Pikachu crane games were prevalent. I saw about six people burn through their money trying to grab their very own Pikachu. It’s good to know he’s still popular enough for people to throw their money away on. Poor DK is here as a booby prize for people who wanted the Mario Bros.
Here are some other random shots of the arcade games. Not every game is noteworthy enough to spend two or three sentences talking about, you know. After snapping the minigolf parrot, it was time to head to Circus Circus’ real arcade. But on my way there, I had a fateful encounter…
…It doesn’t get any better than this.
