When you think of iconic places in the Twin Cities, no place comes to mind sooner than Mall of America. This is the largest shopping mall in the world, with four floors, hundreds of stores, and a sizable amusement park in the center. This was a frequent haunt of mine when I first moved to the Twin Cities, thanks to the DDR machine.
But we’re not going to Mall of America today.
If you turn around from where I took that photo, you get this giant Ikea store sitting in Mall of America’s parking lot. Our destination is over in this direction somewhere.
For the first time in weeks, it was above freezing. The snow was evaporating, leaving only slush and fog in its place. Most people would see this landscape as depressing, but I like it. Look at how the wet concrete, snow, and fog work together to give the world a sleek monochrome look, with every street light shining brighter than usual. Unfortunately, the place we’re going to isn’t as beautiful as this setting.
Looking carefully through the fog, you can see a cluster of hotels. One of them houses the monthly board game marathon, where a bunch of nerds get together to spend all weekend playing board games. It’s an excellent chance to play those long-ass games like Titan that nobody has time for otherwise. One of the others is the former home of Anime Fusion, one of our less impressive local conventions. Although I attend nearly every local con, I’ve never taken photos at any of them.
But anyway, back to our walk. Going passed the Ikea building for the first time, it’s only now that I realize just how big this place is. It’s two floors and an underground parking lot, each of which are about the size of a Wal-mart. What the hell is in this place that they need such a huge building? Is every Ikea building this big or is ours just huge?
Maybe I’ll take a look on my way back.
Once you get a few feet away from the glamour of the giant mall and the Ikea building, things suddenly become far more low-key. You’d think the area surrounding Mall of America would be full of places taking advantage of the tourism. It’s just mediocre hotels and convention centers outside the Ikea store. I guess that makes some sense because Mall of America is basically nothing but stores, so there’s no real reason to build anything of worth nearby.
Looking to the far right of this picture, you can make out our destination. It’s the building that you can see below the highway.
…THIS is the place with the tallest water slide in the country? I was expecting something a bit flashier. Maybe the inside will be better?
Those tacky decorations and awkwardly colored walls. There’s something somehow nostalgic about it, even though I’ve never been here before.
Now’s a good time to explain what I’m doing here. This place’s arcade is one I had been vaguely aware of for years but had never bothered to come here. While looking for a local Initial D machine, I found an old listing for this arcade that said it once had one. While I didn’t believe it would still be there, it was such an out-of-the-way place that they might still have it tucked away somewhere (spoiler: lol, no). I did some more research to see if I’d gotten lucky when I came across the place’s Wikipedia page. Aside from proudly advertising its long-gone Initial D and Wangan Midnight machines, it also announces that this place is closing at the end of this month for a complete overhaul. This is my last chance to see this place before it reopens at the end of the year. The arcade might not even be here anymore at that point.
Here it is, the Water Park of America arcade, technically known as the Northern Lights arcade. The sign advertises over 70 games, great prizes, and fun times. While fun times are subjective, and we’ll see their “great prizes” in a bit, the sign is blatantly wrong about the number of games. I counted around 60 while being generous enough to count things like two-player racing games as two. I’m sure that sign was correct at some point, but they had to sell off some games over the years to make ends meet before finally getting bought out.
I drew a diagram of this place in MSpaint because its layout is so damn confusing. See, the arcade connects the hotel and the front desk of the water park, but it’s not a part of it. Thank god I didn’t have to pay to get into the water park to see the arcade. I’ve had to do that at a few places, usually skating rinks. Theaters usually let you into the arcade without paying if you explain the situation, but these places aren’t as accommodating.
I’ve also marked A through E as reference points to make the rest of this post easier to follow. As a bonus challenge, try to guess what’s at each point before I get to it!
Well, here it is. It’s precisely what you’d expect from a ticket arcade that opened in 2006. You’ve got Deal or No Deal, that one jumping game, a bunch of racing and shooting games, and a few mild oddities. While I generally prefer my arcades older than this so that they have more obscure stuff lying around, it’s kind of surprising how much this arcade has started to decay in just a decade.
The first thing that sticks out here is that whoever wrote this sign couldn’t remember the true name of this arcade. The next interesting thing is that game cards are free here. I scanned my credit card, put .25 cents on the item, and it gave me the card. Usually, they cost a dollar or two extra. I guess this place makes enough revenue from the water park not to care. They probably wouldn’t have been bought out if that were the case.
On the left is Goal Line Rush, a ticket game from 2015. I’ve never seen the thing before, but that’s probably because there are so few ticket arcades nearby that keep their machines up to date. It’s Bandai-Namco, so I’m surprised neither of the local Namco arcades has it. This machine is proof that they kept getting new games in until recently. Right next to it is another Namco game from 2006 that was probably here since the arcade opened. These two games perfectly illustrate the rich history of this arcade.
For those of you following along on your maps, this is Point A. Off the side, in its own corner, is this mysterious desk. I can tell that it hasn’t been used in years. There’s nothing back there except for the LCD monitor on the desk and a waste basket. It didn’t show up in person, but the camera photo reveals a desk mark showing where a keyboard was once housed. Maybe it was an information desk at some point? But why would it be in an arcade? Perhaps it was for security?
I guess the world will never know.
You’re supposed to put these basketball games between other games so that you can’t see under them. The staff didn’t seem to care much since they were storing a piece of wood. I can’t tell if this piece of wood is a piece of this game or if it came from somewhere else since the walls are the same color. Either way, I’m sure some little shit has hit the switch on that power strip before.
It’s hard to see because of the lighting, but this is Northern Lights Skeeball. “Northern Lights” is the chain of arcades generally found in Great Wolf Resorts, even though they didn’t own this place until last year. I wonder what kind of technicality allowed this arrangement to happen. You’d never even know this was a Northern Lights arcade if not for their custom-branded Skee-ball since it’s not written anywhere else (unless you count “Northern Arcade” on that sign earlier).
This photo cuts off on the side, so you can’t see it well, but this crane game is the size of four regular crane games. While it’s far from the first time I’ve encountered one of these, they’re usually filled with large stuffed animals. Why would you buy a giant claw machine like this and fill it with balls? Nobody’s going to play this.
You’ve probably seen this thing once or twice if you’ve read any of my other posts. It’s the Big Bass Wheel and is really popular at arcades for some reason. It’s hard to find a modern ticket arcade that doesn’t have one of these sitting around somewhere. Back when I worked in an ice cream truck one summer, we did a promotion with Family Fun Center where we’d give kids a coupon they could exchange for a free spin on this particular game. I don’t understand why this stupid fish game is such a big deal. It’s just a standard wheel-stopping game, except big.
I don’t know if it was intentional, but this place has a few carnival-themed games near the redemption counter. These three games being so close to each other gives the area a pretty unique feel in this specific corner.
I haven’t mentioned it yet, but this arcade was utterly devoid of staff for most of my visit. The poor lighting and big wall of unused prize pegs make this one of the most depressing prize counters I’ve ever seen. Hell, look at that empty corner case. I wonder if this place is always so sad or if they don’t care since they’re closing in a week. Without staff, we can easily get a closer look at what they have without explaining why I want pictures of the prize shelf.
At first glance, it’s pretty standard. If you look closer, you’ll see that it really is standard. For candy, you’ve got the cheap stuff like Sweet Tarts, Jolly Ranchers, and Tootsie Rolls above the higher-end stuff like Nerds, Air Heads, and “I’m just showing off that I got 100 tickets” stuff like Ring Pops. The non-candy junk has dead dinosaurs, some playing cards, and whatever those rubber finger monsters are. The most surprising thing is that even top-shelf items tend to be cheap. Sure, there’s a giant Patrick, but most of this stuff is in the 1000-2000 ticket range at max. Most arcades like this at least keep a handful of 8,000 ticket prizes around as decoration, but not this place. They just don’t care, do they?
The redemption counter is mark B on the map if it wasn’t obvious.
Raw Thrills are an arcade production company that was supposedly made up of old Midway staff. They’re the arcade equivalent of an A-list shovelware company that mainly releases licensed games. Do you know those over-distributed games like Fast and the Furious Arcade and Big Buck Hunter? Those are their doing. These generic bike racing games aren’t even the last we’ll see of them in this arcade.
I knew this day would come eventually. I guess it’s time to talk about Pump It Up instead of complaining about how it’s not DDR. It’s not like there’s anything more interesting in this place.
Pump It Up is kind of the rhythm game equivalent of k-pop, not just because a big chunk of the Songlist consists of the stuff. While DDR and Pump look incredibly similar, they play nothing alike. Something as minor as adding a fifth panel completely changes the game’s feel. Charts are far more complicated overall.
So far, this is probably sounding like some nightmare hell-mode DDR, right? There are two significant trade-offs in difficulty that aren’t obvious unless you’re playing it yourself. First off is that the panels are much closer together, so your feet can naturally move between them faster than in DDR. The other, the most significant difference, is that Pump It Up doesn’t care about your accuracy. Since the perfect window is enormous, it doesn’t matter if you hit the note way later than you were supposed to. Unlike DDR, I can play this game drunk and still do alright. (the game does have a competitive mode where the time windows are more reasonable)
This specific version is Pump It Up Fiesta from 2010, formerly a 2006 GX machine.
Pump It Up is also known for advertising its world tournaments on all machines. It’s funny in America because, aside from dating the games pretty severely, those competitions see very few American entrants. While this game is huge in Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, and China, it never caught on in America outside the Twin Cities (and supposedly a few coastal cities). Pump is pretty uncommon in most parts of the states, but here in Minneapolis, it’s everywhere. I counted the local machines once, and it was something like 14 machines with seven distinct versions. They’ve all but pushed out the local DDR machines.
Point C on the map, for those who still remember it. An empty exit hallway with a single Let’s Go Jungle! machine making it look more barren than it would have otherwise. Did I mention how sad this arcade feels?
Fishbowl Frenzy is another large generic ticket game. This particular game is interesting because there’s a transparent video screen in front of the pegs that plays animations and changes the game’s color based on how your chip falls. Look at the yellow fish in the second photo if you want a better idea of what I mean. This is far from the only arcade game to use this technology, but it’s still pretty interesting to look at. However, it adds nothing to the actual game that couldn’t have been accomplished by having the screen behind the pegs.
More Raw Thrills stuff. If nothing else, I have to credit them for making visually interesting cabs. They know how to make a game stand out, even if the gameplay is mediocre. I guess that’s all it takes to be successful in the arcade.
Also, that Aliens Armageddon machine is much bigger than it looks in the photo. Use the Pump It Up machine behind it as a size reference.
We’re getting near the end, so here’s a roundup of the games where I didn’t have more than one thing to say: The Yahtzee game’s lighting is really cool. Wheel Win is NOT an official Wheel of Fortune game. The snow game looks cool, too. That arm-pushing game is the only feasible way to earn 6000 tickets here. Whack-a-Mole style games are rare these days, even alligator games that used to be everywhere. Carnival King’s attract mode shows a video of people playing the game and I wouldn’t say I like it.
Like I said, nothing much to say about them otherwise.
Here we are at point D on the map. It’s a hallway with a window in the corner looking at the water park. I had initially assumed this place was much older than 2006, given how faded some of the decorations are. I guess that, as a kid, all of the flashy decorations are enough that you don’t notice how crappy they are. Look at the water park I remember going to on a class trip. It’s not anywhere as exciting as I remember it.
This statement is a lie. It’s not the biggest. I checked. You can get a better idea of what the rest of the park looks like right now. It probably won’t look like this for much longer, so soak it in. (EDIT: pun not intended)
This is why I made the diagram at the beginning of this post. These (Raw Thrills) machines are in the area marked “Hallway to Hotel” instead of being in the arcade itself. I don’t get the point since they’re right around the corner. Heck, I don’t get the point of this entire hallway since there’s nothing in it. The arcade could have just been slightly bigger and get the same result.
Let’s see what they had in the prize games. The crane game proudly advertised its Super Mario Bros… Whatever These Things Are. They’re like some plush pillow-thing with official Nintendo art decals. I’m still not entirely sure what they’re supposed to be used for. The other two games were noticeably empty. Don’t let the mirror on Master Key fool you; there are only six prizes. The entire bottom row looks like it hasn’t been refilled in ages. Again, I’m not sure if it’s always like this or if they don’t care because they’re closing soon.
This place was really, really proud of their Dairy Queen. The entire hotel was filled with advertisements for it. I think the Dairy Queen was inside the water park itself, so you couldn’t get to it without buying admission. The elevator advertisement is a bit overboard for something like this, isn’t it?
And I didn’t even know Batman Laser Tag Challenge was a franchise. I thought it was just a Circus Circus Adventuredome thing.
Let’s have a quick peek at the rest of the hotel before I head out since nobody else is going to. But first, we need to wrap up a lingering plot point…
You’re correct if you guessed Point E would be a bored woman selling caricature art!
Seriously, how do you even end up with a job like this? Did the hotel decide that they wanted a caricature art booth, or did she shop around her talents at different hotels until she found one willing to house her table? And what’s going to happen to this booth when the hotel closes?
This is it. The Radisson Hotel was one week before being closed and rebranded. I doubt this part will change much, but who knows? Ten months is a long time to do construction on this place. For all I know, it’ll never look like this again.
So there you have it. The story of a water park that opened ten years ago with big dreams, as told by its arcade. No matter what happens to this arcade during the next ten months, it’s now archived for future generations, and its card will be added to my collection.
