Today we’re here in New Rochelle, celebrating the last day of this damned heat wave. Tomorrow it will finally cool off. From what I can tell, this place is JUST outside New York City’s limits, so we’re only in New York State today.
Here we’re looking for an arcade I stumbled upon right before leaving on my journey, but we’ve hit a slight snag: I don’t see it. This is the correct address, but nothing seems to be here. Hmmm…
The train ride here was too painful to give up, so I roamed around the general area a few times until I found this. No, it’s not in the theater. Look up.
Yep, this is the place.
Once upon a time, this was the New Rochelle Mall. In the mid-90s, the mall shut down, so they had to do something with the leftover space. Come 1999; they dumped a large sum of money into reviving it as New Roc City. This particular wing is home to entertainment facilities. There’s a bowling alley, a miniature golf course, an athletic center, and, most importantly, a humongous arcade.
New York is home to lots of legendary arcades. Chinatown Fair was once one of the most famous arcades in the entire world. Barcade single-handedly revived retro arcades across the country. Next Level is America’s central fighting game hub.
But each and every one of them pales in comparison to FunFuzion Arcade.
It’s hard to capture just how massive this place is in a single image. The only other arcades I’ve seen with this many games packed into them were in Las Vegas. Just having a lot of games means very little, but what’s truly remarkable about FunFuzion is what games they have. You can easily tell that it was built in 1999 from the remains of several fallen arcades around that time. This arcade embodies the spirit of a late 90s/early 00s arcade.
Instead of me just singing the praises of it, let me show you what I’m talking about.
EDIT: An update from the future. Re-reading this blog post, I can tell that I was very burnt out writing these posts. My commentary on these machines isn’t great, so the whole post comes across as more like a tour of the arcade than a write-up. It absolutely wasn’t because I didn’t like the arcade. In fact, it’s one of only four arcades I’ve ever deemed to be an S-class arcade. You’d never know from my lack of enthusiasm in this post.
FunFuzion also closed its doors for good during the pandemic.
Right away, I see games that I haven’t seen in decades. This one is Sega’s World Series 99, a relic that’s probably been here since the arcade opened. 3D sports games were a novelty in the 90s, but most arcades have long since gotten rid of them. The novelty is long gone.
Here’s Virtua Striker 2, part of Sega’s Virtua series that paved the way for 3D gaming. People fondly remember Virtua Fighter, Virtua Cop, and sometimes Virtua Racing, but the sports entries tend to be mostly forgotten. It’s really, really rare to still find these anywhere.
Out Run was such a significant hit in the 80s that a sequel or two was bound to follow. The first, Turbo Out Run, didn’t go over too well with fans of the original for playing more like a traditional racing game. The other 90s sequel, Out Runners, was received much better. Unlike Turbo’s disaster, it plays like a souped-up 2-player version of the original.
You could emulate this game but look what you’re missing out on. Instead of a start button, you turn the car key to begin the game. The radio in the first game was such a popular feature that they added an entire interface next to the steering wheel. I can’t remember whether those dash lights do anything or if they’re just for decoration, but you have to admit that this cab is fantastic.
I’m just talking about things in whatever order I took the pictures, so don’t expect them to be grouped by area. This back corner is where most of the bigger machines are stored. Well, that’s not accurate since there are giant deluxe machines all over the place, but this corner has some of the bigger ones.
I’m a sucker for this giant marquees they used to put on the top of machines like this. They usually break down and don’t get fixed, so it’s always a treat to see one still working.
And that guy’s giving me weird looks. Probably because I’m on my third day without sleep, covered in sweat, and look like shit.
You know how there are a million Marvel arcade games but only a couple of DC games that aren’t Batman-related? This is Justice League Heroes United, a 3D beat-em-up released in the late 00s (they do have newer games here, too, just not very many). It’s also awful. It plays like a clunky iPad game full of wonky collisions. If not for the novelty of being one of the only Justice League arcade games, I wouldn’t have even bothered trying it.
Oh boy, here’s something spectacular. Daytona USA was a huge deal when it was released. Both the normal-sized machine and deluxe cab are common to this day, but this baby isn’t something you’ve probably seen before. This is the eight-player Daytona USA linked machine. It’s not just eight deluxe machines hooked up together; it’s got a special feature that makes it truly unique. Do you see that monitor on the top of the machines? That’s not something the arcade put there for fun. Each of the 8 Daytona USA machines has a closed-circuit camera pointing at the players’ faces so that that monitor will cycle through the game faces of the people playing. The new Daytona USA 3 released last year has a similar feature, but we’ll talk about that another day. For now, revel in the fact that one of these not only still exists but still has the camera system working.
Sega Super GT is also here in this back corner, in case you want to play one of the most graphically impressive racing games of the 90s.
I had to google a walkthrough of this arcade to get the name of this machine since the marquee is so damn bright. It’s Ace Driver: Victory Lap. In 1992, Namco released Ridge Racer, a game stunningly advanced for its time. Then a few months later, Sega released Daytona USA, which did the same thing but better. Guess which of the two you can still find in most arcades.
The Ace Driver series was, as far as I can tell, Namco’s attempt to get revenge on Daytona, USA. It must not have been very successful since I’ve never even heard of it before. I thought this game was Final Lap when I played it. Wikipedia tells me the original was the first racing game to use a slipstream mechanic, which Daytona USA 2 would later be praised for a few years later. Poor Namco.
Tucked away in the corner somewhere is Area 51. The walkthrough I mentioned earlier was from 2014. I was surprised at the number of games FunFuzion has gotten rid of over the past few years. There are so many old machines lying around I assumed they just kept everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if Area 51 were the next to go.
You know what really makes an arcade special to me? When it has a bunch of games that I didn’t even know existed. This is a great example. Ninja Assault is a standard House of the Dead-type shooting game, except it’s set in ancient Japan, and you fight ninjas instead of zombies. I’ve been to over a hundred arcades in the last few years, yet I’m amazed that I can still find so many games that are new to me.
This one isn’t new, though. Like Jurassic Park, this used to be a game that half of all arcades seemed to have. Unlike Jurassic Park, most arcades have opted to get rid of this to save space because nobody cares about Star Trek Voyager anymore.
Primeval Hunt is a fantastic game. Imagine Big Buck Hunter, but instead of hunting boring stuff like deer, you hunt DINOSAURS. Someone at Sega must have seen that Big Buck Hunter and Jurassic Park seemed to be at every arcade, so they combined the two. This game has some neat features, like the guns having a Wiimote-Esque speaker that makes gunshot noises when you shoot and a small touch screen on the panel for moving around.
By the way, did you know spellcheck tries to autocorrect “wiimote” to “Wikiquote”?
Ladies and gentlemen, we have bingo! Not one, not two, not three, but all four House of the Dead games in one place! The tiny House of the Dead 3 machine probably has an inferiority complex to the other three. HotD5 is coming out later this year. They have to get it, right? You can’t have four games in the same series and then not get the fifth.
This is the exact moment that this became the third greatest arcade I’ve ever been to. They have a fighting game wall decked out with Marvel superheroes and M. Bison coming out of the wall. This might have taken second place if they didn’t cheat and put non-fighting games in Warriors Alley.
But I mean, come on, “Warriors Alley”. This is amazing.
Look at all of these non-fighting games in Warriors Alley. I’d be disappointed if that game with the Super Magical Bench Seat wasn’t Rail Chase 2. Like I said in a previous post, weird-ass interactive games like this were all the rage in the 90s. There were some pretty normal ones like skateboarding and skiing, some stranger ones like river rafting, and “who even came up with this?” games like riding in a minecart. This is one of those games you’ll never find at an ordinary arcade these days. I can overlook it being in Warriors Alley this time.
Here are the actual fighting games. Aside from Marvel vs. Capcom 2, they have the much older X-men vs. Street Fighter. I want to say the middle game was the original Marvel .vs Capcom, but I can’t remember. I’m sure someone who can recognize it just by the image on the screen hates me right now.
Oh wait, I had a better picture. It’s Street Fighter IV. What the…?
The last game in Warriors Alley is Raiden Fighters, yet another game I’m unfamiliar with. It’s a 1942-esque scrolling shooter, but I don’t know anything else about it.
This is one of those Vortex Beach Head VR machines made back when they wanted to do real VR, but the technology wasn’t there yet. Rather than being real VR, it’s a vaguely 3D game where you put the visor over your head, then can spin 360 degrees to see the enemies coming at you from all angles.
Warriors Alley did have one other game. Every arcade has to have a dance machine of some sort, right?
This one has seven. That’s right, SEVEN machines. On top of the PIU Prime machine in the last picture, we have DDR Supernova and Supernova 2. I didn’t notice until just now, but do you see how the Supernova machine has a blue frame around the screen? That’s a decal meant for Supernova 2 and its blue theme (the original was red). Did they put it on the wrong game by mistake?
Machines 4 and 5 are the obligatory DDR Extreme machine and In The Groove 2. I think it’s hilarious that so many of these machines still have the old school DDR decals on them. Also note that ITG2’s full name is “In The Groove 2: Pump It Up”. That factoid will be necessary for the next machine.
This machine is Pump It Up Pro 2. Right around the time, Konami was suing In The Groove’s ass for being bootleg DDR, the guys behind Pump It Up acquired the rights to the series. They pushed ITG2:PIU out before Konami won the case, and ITG was killed for good. Since the PIU company still had the ITG team on hand, they let them make a weird spin-off series that was basically ITG except on 5-panel PIU hardware. That’s what PIU Pro, and the Infinity we saw a few days ago, games are. The spin-off must not have been very successful since it only had three entries before it was scrapped, and the ITG guys moved on to other things.
Such as this garbage. Since bootleg DDR got them sued, they decided to move on to bootleg Osu!. Since Osu! was already an Ouendan simulator, there was nobody who could sue them for making an identical game with a slightly different interface. From what I gather, this game wasn’t very successful.
From what I hear, the same guys have moved on to making yet another DDR knock-off, except this one requires either buying an overpriced pad or mutilating a DDR arcade pad. I want them to stop.
The 7th and final machine is DDR Megamix. For those who don’t remember when I found one in Vegas two years ago, Megamix is a hack of Extreme that was circulating arcades during DDR’s peak. The only difference between it and Extreme is some different menu screens and a few dummied-out game options being re-enabled.
Here are two newer games, the massive Transformers and Terminator Salvation cabs. To this day, I still have yet to take a photo of them that does their size justice. They’re HUGE.
Here’s yet another game I didn’t know existed. This here is Sega’s Hummer, released around the same time as that massive Out Run 2 machine I’ve mentioned a few times in the past. I bring it up because these machines are VERY similar. Like the enormous Out Run 2, each car seats two people and has a steering wheel for both, so the players can alternate driving the same vehicle at checkpoints. This place has four of these machines linked together, for a total of 8 players. I get the feeling that, like the giant Out Run 2, this machine is very rare to find outside of Gameworks. Since there are only 8 Gameworks left, that makes it pretty rare in general.
With all of the interesting games they had, there were a few common ones that I don’t remember why I bothered to take a picture of. For documentation’s sake, maybe?
Like this oddity. Seriously, why did I think this needed a photo?
I haven’t seen you since Vegas. This is Title Fight again, a game I’ll openly admit I have a nostalgia bias toward. Then again, I write a blog that generally boils down to “oh, I’ve seen this machine before,” so that shouldn’t surprise anyone. I think it’s fun, though.
Wait, The Fast and the Furious had a deluxe cab?? I’ve seen this game hundreds of times, but I’ve never seen this version. Wow.
While I’m on the subject, Cruis’n USA had a really cool deluxe version. From what I’ve heard, they had that machine here until a year or two ago. That version of the machine is so old and full of specialty parts that it would likely have been my only chance to see it in person. Oh well.
Remember Offroad? Hydro Thunder was a hit, so Midway decided to try reviving it. Imagine Hydro Thunder with offroad vehicles instead of jet skis.
This was the first time I actually got to play Out Run 2 since it was broken down the last time I found it. This was the original, not the SP update, so I often spun out and hated it.
I’ve been building up to it since the beginning, but here it is: Let’s Go Island 3D. The same cheesy Let’s Go Island you’re used to, except with full head-tracking 3D. Let’s Go Island seems to be their go-to game to showcase on new hardware for some reason.
Back in the 00s, EA tried to break into the arcade market with arcade versions of some of their most popular titles, like Need for Speed and Madden. They didn’t do an excellent job of it since I’ve never even seen half of the machines they released during this period. Interestingly, this game has a save card system. Good luck trying to get one of those cards these days.
Check it out; it’s the triple-monitor version of Sega Strike fighter. The only information I can find on it is that it’s somehow related to After Burner, which makes sense because of how similar the games are. I honestly thought this game was After Burner before I double-checked the machine’s name.
Yet another game I didn’t know about. I’m beginning to realize that the 00s are an arcade blind spot for me. Now that I think about it I was mostly focused on rhythm games at the time, wasn’t I?
If Raw Thrills didn’t have a chokehold on distribution in America, you’d probably see games like this more often. It came out around the same time as Fast and the Furious Super Bikes, but only one of the two is in 90% of arcades. Look, it’s even sitting right there next to Nirin!
The marquee says GRAND PRIX, but the game’s name is Junior F-1 Grand Prix Star 2. As the name suggests, it’s a junior version of 1993’s F-1 Grand Prix Star 2. The picture doesn’t do its size justice, but it’s TINY. I tried to play a round, but the seat was so small I could barely fit my legs to touch the gas pedal. It was an awkward experience all-around.
Speaking of tiny arcade machines, check out this Pac-man and Frogger. Again, I’m not sure if the photos capture how small these machines are. They barely come above my waist. When I was 3 or 4 years old, they had a few of these running games like Ninja Turtles at Circus Circus. They were a godsend back then since I had to stand on a boost to reach anything else.
I can’t read the banner, so I don’t know if this is Kick-It or another soccer ball-kicking game. Once upon a time, these sport simulation games were a common staple in every major arcade, but nowadays, you mostly find them tucked away in larger theater arcades and places with batting cages. There is a Simpsons version of it that I occasionally see, though.
We’re getting into the ticket games for a while, so I’m not going to have much to say about the next few. This one is just a two-player version of Spider Stomp. Or a foot version of Ribbit Race. Take your pick.
I just thought this one looked cool.
Oh, look. It’s those two games I hadn’t seen in 15 years; then I came to the East Coast and found half of the bloody arcades out here have them. There was a game very similar to Ribbit Race that I didn’t get a picture of because I didn’t realize they were different machines at the time and thought I had already grabbed a shot of it.
This is another one of those ticket games they had at one of my Kids Quests. Since it was on Freeplay and didn’t give out tickets, nobody played it.
Hey, it’s that ancient Fire Stomping game I saw at Tilt a while back!
This is a basic “hit the glowing light” game, but that building slowly collapses every time you hit one.
Ever since I saw Smashin Drive a few days ago, it has been bugging me. Running into it again, I needed to know why it felt so familiar. The moment I started playing, I suddenly remembered. This game ate most of my quarters at the Stardust Casino back in the day. It was mainly because the other games there sucked, but still. I actually really like this game. It’s a racing game, but it feels more like running an obstacle course.
The gist of the game is that you’re a taxi driver, and your customer wants to be taken to the finish line before the evil taxi driver can deliver his customer (???). The evil taxi will pretty much always outspeed you if you try to overtake him through normal means. Instead, you must grab the powerups scattered around the course to stand any chance against him. The courses are extremely short, most of which take around half a minute, so most of the game’s challenge comes from hitting ramps at the right angle to grab a power-up in mid-air, then figuring out how to best use the power-up before it runs out. It’s way more fun than you’d expect. I wonder why I’d completely forgotten it existed.
We’ve run into this game quite a bit over this trip, but this is the gorgeous deluxe machine I’ve been alluding to. With that huge seat and liberal use of chrome, it can’t help but draw attention to itself. If you’re playing American 18 Wheeler, it has to be in one of these babies.
…why did they need both versions of Confidential Mission?
Oh dear lord, it’s the dumpster fire that is MTV Drumscape. If your first thought looking at this is “Drum Mania knock-off,” then you’re entirely wrong. This game predates Drum Mania by a couple of years. Like you’d expect from an MTV-licensed video game, it’s full of then-modern tracks that you can drum to. So what’s the problem with this one? Are the controls inadequate? Does it have some crippling flaw that makes it worthy of laughter? Yes, it does! You see, this isn’t even a rhythm game in the first place. Instead, the game plays a song without the drumline and tells you which pads to hit to drum along. When you hit the pad, it makes a sound. That’s the entire game. There’s no scoring system or points, nor can you fail a song. When I played this, I assumed the game was broken and walked away mid-song because my notes weren’t registering, only to find that it was an intentional design choice.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say these were made for a boardwalk, not an arcade.
Which wouldn’t surprise me since they’ve got a bunch of stuff from Luna Park hanging on the walls. We’ll be visiting Luna Park later on this trip, but from what I understand, a bunch of the arcade machines were destroyed in a storm a few years back. Ridge Racer, one of my holy grail machines, did survive the storm, but it got sold somewhere at some point. Or Coney Island has a second arcade that I didn’t know about, and it was in there the whole time. I have no idea.
Nearly every wall of the arcade is covered in old marquees. I’m not sure if this is a memorial to all of the games that have broken down over the years or if they thought it looked cool. I’ve seen a few arcades do this before, and it’s usually the former. If that’s the case, just how enormous was this place when it first opened!?
They had one of them shooting ranges too. I recognize this one from a laser tag place in Tuscon, Arizona. I remember it because shooting the moonshine box makes an ass pop out.
The World’s Largest Pinball Machine is back, and it’s in New York this time! I’d be impressed if two of the last surviving ones weren’t both in Minneapolis for some reason.
Funfuzion insists on being the best at what it does.
Oh right. This place is technically labeled as an indoor amusement park, so there were a few rides like this. And look, Big Bass is making a cameo! How’ve you been doing, buddy?
The prize center is every bit as elaborate as you’d expect from an arcade this big. Although I’ve seen bigger…
Wait, I take that back. This might be the biggest I’ve seen. I’m hard-pressed to think of one that was bigger than this unless you count those boardwalk arcades where the entire building is one big prize center.
On the way out, there are the New Batman Adventures and Superman TAS kiddie rides. The Batman one isn’t a ride so much as a “batcave simulator”.
I took a photo of this because I thought they were bootleg Rugrats, but Google’s telling me Little Monsters was an obscure British cartoon that, as far as I can tell, never aired here in America. That raises further questions.
FunFuzion is the type of arcade I always dream about finding. It was full of character, unusual games, and seven dance machines. Sure, those fancy modern arcades with their hip imported games are excellent, and I enjoy tiny hole-in-the-wall rhythm game holes as much as the next guy, but nothing beats an actual 90s arcade that somehow survived into modern times. While my favorite arcade of all time still goes to Circus Circus in Las Vegas, FunFuzion easily holds the title of the third best arcade I’ve ever been to.
So what’s the second, you ask? That’s a story for another time. For now, let’s continue on in New York.
