One day, several years ago, I drove to Kansas City impulsively. It seems like a long time ago now. While down there, I texted many pictures to a friend in Omaha. The crappy pre-paid phone I used somehow survived, along with all the images I had saved. Today, I finally managed to transfer them to my computer. It cost 30 bucks, but I got them.
Unfortunately, because I was sending pictures of the most critical machines, they don’t form much of a narrative. I’ll do my best to fill in the gaps.
Before anything else, I should explain what I was doing in Kansas City. Once upon a time, that place was infamous for its large rhythm game community. Outside of Chicago, it was probably the biggest in the midwest. Since I lived only a few hours away in Nebraska, I had to check it out at least once.
Before heading into Kansas City proper, I had a stop to make around 50 miles to the west. According to the rumors, there was a DDR Supernova 2 machine in that area, which I had never seen in person. With all of the arcades I’ve been to, you’d think I’d have run into one before.
The location in question was a tiny daycare center-esque place whose name escapes me. While I clearly remember the above Sonic Adventure ticket spinner, Supernova 2 was nowhere to be found. The manager happened to walk in just as I was leaving. It turns out that he had sold it to Cici’s Pizza a year before. After a wild goose chase, I contacted the regional manager of Cici’s. He had indeed bought the Supernova 2 machine, but it was located several towns away. Thankfully, it was right on the way to Kansas City.
Sure enough, it was tucked away in the tiny game room in the back. The only photo of this escapade is me failing at Pluto Relinquish. It’s such a notoriously difficult song that I had to try it at least once.
Before I got into Kansas City, I ran into a VF Factory. VF Factories are cheap malls with stores specializing in close-out goods. It’s not uncommon to find arcades sitting around in the halls of these places, but I wasn’t so lucky this time. They did have a scale that looked like it had been sitting around since the 80s.
When I finally got to Kansas City, I discovered it was huge and easy to get lost in. This mysterious door was in the middle of nowhere near a college, sticking out of the side of a hill. The only hint to its contents was the mysterious message, “Glove.” To this day, I still sometimes wonder what was in that door. People I ask usually suggest it was full of gloves.
Now for one of the trip’s many highlights: The first 7-11 I’d seen in nearly a decade. They seem to be in every town except the ones I live in for whatever reason. Looking carefully, you can see that the coke mix is still wet and unmixed. I was hellbent on getting my Coca-Cola Slurpee, so I stood there and waited the hour.
No force on Earth will stop me when I want something badly enough.
Here’s the first real arcade in Kansas City. This arcade, whose name I had to look up, is “PowerPlay Family Entertainment Center.” This is one of the most giant arcades I’ve ever seen outside of Vegas. The few photos I got capture this place’s sheer size. If not for the fact that I only cared about rhythm games back then, I could have taken a good 30+ photos at this place alone.
If you want an idea of how massive this place was, look at the redemption center. This entire room is wall-to-wall redemption prizes. Dave and Busters also have redemption rooms, so I guess it’s not nearly as impressive as it looks…
Here it is. The main reason I came this this arcade: HiphopMania complete MIX 2. When DDR was at its peak in the states, Konami decided to try bringing one of their other games to western arcades. BeatMania’s huge following in Japan made it an obvious choice, so the result was this game with a strange name change.
There are still a handful floating around the country, but they’re very few and far between. Most of them got snatched up and converted into Japanese versions.
Hmm, what’s this? If I hadn’t come to this mall explicitly looking for it, I’d have probably walked right past this arcade without noticing it. I’m going from memory here, but I believe this was one of the two “Zonkers” locations in town. Despite being different branches of the same arcade, they couldn’t be more different.
This Zonkers was once one of KC’s central gathering hubs for rhythm game players. Although the arcade was small, it crammed as many games as possible into the tiny building. This machine is Beatmania IIDX Tricoro, a version of the game about a decade newer than any other BeatMania machine in town. There was once a less-than-legitimate way to take this game online outside of Japan, but it’s since been terminated. From what I’ve heard, that was the beginning of the end for this place.
This arcade also had the only Pop’n Music machine in town. It was the first time I had ever played Pop’n, so it wasn’t immediately apparent that this wasn’t a legitimate machine. It looks like a generic fighting game cab to which someone added Pop’n buttons.
Konami sued the guys behind In The Groove before a third one could be released. This is a cobbled-together fan release made out of ITG3’s unfinished code.
A few years back, I ran into the guy who put it on the machine in a chat room. The rest of the chat wondered what he was thinking, putting ITG3 in a public cab. Nowadays, nobody seems to care since this game has been cropping up all over the place.
Here’s another game you don’t come across every day. This is DanceManiax, a short-lived dance game similar to Parapara Paradise. Do you see those pad things near your hands? Those aren’t buttons; you swipe your hand over/under them according to the notes on-screen. That was pretty much the whole game.
I am particularly fond of this game since my local arcade had it for a while. Most of these machines are currently in the hands of collectors who got them cheap and sometimes pull them out of storage for the novelty of it.
Also, there was a Baby Pac-man machine across from it. Where did this arcade even get all of this weird stuff?
DrumMania in its most common form: Out of Order. I have no idea what it is about these machines, but they seem to break down constantly. The one in Omaha was usually in the same condition, so I was already used to it.
On my way out of this Zonkers, there was something I had to grab. The BeatMania machine ran on a pirate network that you needed a legitimate e-AMUSE card to access, so they sold them at the front desk. The guy didn’t seem to understand why I wanted one if I wasn’t going to use it to play BeatMania, but I wasn’t about to turn down money. Yeah, it’s not all that special nowadays since Round 1 sells them here in the states, but it was cool then.
I think this was when I called it a day. (to be continued)
