We finally arrived at the place I was going to but didn’t because I got off at the wrong stop. This is the actual Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. It’s a small, upscale neighborhood way up in the northwest part of the Twin Cities. If you look carefully at this picture, you can see a bowling alley with an arcade.
But I’m hungry. Let’s go here instead.
This is Godfather’s Pizza. For those outside of Freedom Land, Godfather’s is a rather prominent chain of mafia-themed pizza places. Godfathers is generally considered the most “upscale” of all the major pizza chains. That’s not saying much when the main competition is Pizza Hut, Dominoes, and Little Ceasers.
While I’m far from above rambling about pointless things like fast food chains, Godfathers are also one of the few major diner chains that still consistently have a small arcade in the corner. These can range anywhere from a couple of claw machines to some weird 90s games. For example, there’s a Godfather’s in Sioux Falls, SD, that still has Virtua Strikers and Paperboy sitting around. This specific Godfather’s has nothing so impressive. However, the underwhelming arcade is not why I’m taking the time to tour this Godfather’s with you. This Godfathers is hands down the best I’ve ever seen.
And I’ve seen a LOT of Godfathers.
Beginning nowhere, in particular, is the community advertisement board next to the entrance. It’s free to advertise anything here, but the only people who do cannot afford to advertise anywhere else. This board has been consumed by something called “Hugga Bear.” According to the fliers, give her an old shirt, and she’ll convert it into a teddy bear. I can tell you that the creator of Hugga Bear didn’t grow up in the late 90s, or they’d realize that you can’t hear the name without thinking of that damn commercial that seemed to air during every break.
That link might be a bit too quality to see what’s going on, but there’s one kid who has zero interest in hugging Hugga Bear. He just smashes the thing with his palm and stares at the nightlight turning on.
Chewy Spree. Now that brings back memories. Back in high school, I’d often aimlessly wander around town during my free time because I had nothing better to do. At some point, I bought a roll of Chewy Spree from a dollar store that happened to be on my usual route. With the DDR soundtrack stuck in my head, the chorus of e-rotic’s Turn Me On (it’s a song from older DDR games) had somehow mutated into:
Chewy Spree, Chewy Spree
I give my life for Chewy Spree
Like a radio who’ll never let it
For Chewy Spree
It doesn’t make sense, and the third line is forced, but it popped into my head one day while crossing the rocks in front of the car dealership. From that day forward, I couldn’t cross those rocks without remembering the damn song. If you get curious and decide to look up the original, I warn you: wear headphones. The group was called “e-rotic” for a reason.
For some reason, this booth in the corner has curtains. It’s the only one that does. I assume this is where the don sits when he decides to visit. Seriously, why does a pizza place have a mafia theme in the first place?
Every booth has a small stack of trivia cards that seem to be taken from Trivial Pursuit Junior: 1980s edition. The most entertaining thing about these is that these cards are full of questions that were once on par with “What’s 50 percent of 50?” but now nobody’s going to know the answer without consulting Google. The pink question is, “What color is the Green Giant’s scarf on frozen food packages?”. After a bit of searching, it turns out that the Green Giant did, in fact, wear a red scarf on frozen food packages during the late 60s through the early 80s. Who’s going to remember that?
The last time I came here, I got a card asking which of these wasn’t a real M&M color: Red, Yellow, Brown, or Green.
The trivial pursuit cards are nice and all, but this is really what makes this Godfathers special. They have an entire corner for taking pictures dressed up as mafia goons.
Over to the side, they have a bunch of suits and trench coats to make your mob-themed pizza experience photos more authentic. Also in this corner is a girl’s Minnie Mouse backpack. I don’t know if this area doubles as a lost and found or if the backpack is meant to be a costume prop.
Holding the fedoras and fake money bag is a real piano that you can use to recreate that scene from the movie Godfather where they go to the mattresses. There’s also prop dynamite. Isn’t dynamite more of a train robbery thing?
I’m pretty sure there used to be a prop gun in that violin case, but someone got too wrapped up in their role and decided to pull their own heist. Now the violin case is filled with Trivial Pursuit cards.
The top of the salad bar contains as many mob-themed books as they could find, which is about four. They’re usually pretty plain on the inside if you’ve never been to a Godfather’s. Once in a while, you’ll find one with a few posters from the movie hanging up, but that’s all. Decorating the interior with mob-related stuff isn’t a regular thing.
In the back, near the bathrooms, is the game room. Most full-sized Godfathers have one, almost always near the restrooms. Pizza places having small arcades was a normal thing once upon a time, but they’ve long since been phased out. Once in a while, you can still find a Pizza Hut with a single Ms. Pac-man machine, but they’re pretty rare. Godfathers are one of the very few chains that have kept theirs around. I always make it a point to visit any Godfathers I can find while traveling because they sometimes have rare games lying around.
The only real lighting in the room is this fancy stained-glass deal. God, this place is ridiculous. I love it!
The first thing you notice coming in is this creepy mannequin. His name is Shifty, and he looks like he’s been around for a while. He seems to be this Godfathers’ mascot. I suspected he might have been a short-lived mascot for the chain that nobody remembers, but it turns out he’s unique to this location. He serves as the building’s mascot.
If you need more convincing that this was the best Godfather’s Pizza on Earth, I present to you: Where On Earth is Shifty? The staff like taking him out for photo ops around town, where they put silly hats and sunglasses on him. The sheer amount of personality they’ve dumped into this chain restaurant is spectacular. If you’re ever in the Twin Cities, screw the local cuisine and give this place a visit. It’s worth seeing.
Right next to Shifty’s wall is the single most loving wall you will ever find in a pizza place. The whole thing is covered in thank you cards from elementary schools who have come here for parties and photos of customers in the dress-up area. According to Google, the bench there is dedicated to Debra Backstrom, the owner’s late wife. From what I gather, she somehow worked in the school system, which is why it was so typical for the school to throw parties here.
Oh right. The only games in the game room were Big Buck Hunter and a few prize machines. A better lineup would have made this store perfect, but I’m sure as hell not complaining. It’s right next door to an arcade, anyway.
Ah, mozzarella sticks: my one weakness. I was expecting it to be much smaller, so I got a medium. It turns out the medium is the size of a medium pizza. I got halfway through it before having to carry the leftovers with me for the rest of the trip. These cheese sticks are amazing but a bit bland. A bit more garlic would do them a world of good. And maybe some onion powder and basil.
But this is an arcade blog, so I can’t dwell on video rental stores and pizza places forever. You may remember a past blog post where we visited Bowlero. This is the same thing, except it’s still branded as a Brunswick Zone.
I think the main reason is that they just don’t want to change the rug.
So anyway, I’m not going to dwell on this place too much. If you saw the last post, you already know that it is. The buildings have pretty much the same layout inside.
See? The bowling area is identical. The only real difference is that the bar and food court are separate. Let’s get to the arcade.
Here’s the arcade. It’s a bit smaller than the other one, and the game selection is shittier, but there are still some things worth noting. I get the feeling this is going to be another one where I dump a bunch of photos that I have nothing to say about.
First up is this old DDR Extreme machine. We have so many local DDR machines that only one thing sets this one apart.
It’s the only DDR Extreme machine in the Twin Cities I know of to still not have the hidden songs unlocked. To unlock them, you have to have an operator go into the menu and put in a code. Usually, any machine that sees any amount of play will eventually have the local players bug the staff until they do it. It’s pretty rare to see one where nobody’s bothered.
Right next to the DDR machine is the abandoned bumper car area. Arcade machines are lined up in front of what used to be the entrance, so now it’s just sitting here dead. I guess taking it apart would cost more than just leaving it alone.
Two shooting games: Ghost Squad and Time Crisis 4. Ghost Squad’s sound is working, but the monitor is dead. Time Crisis 4’s left screen is warped to the point of being unplayable.
I’ve run into Ghost Squad a lot during my trip, but usually don’t pay much attention to it. I’d like to take this chance to finally point something out: The deluxe Ghost Squad machine is really, really big. It’s less impressive when it’s sitting next to a mammoth game like Time Crisis 4, but still.
The first time I saw this machine, I mentioned that it was a Time Crisis spin-off. Do you remember how I also said there was a second Time Crisis spin-off that I’d keep my eye open for? Well, while I was looking through some older blog posts, I noticed that I had already run into it and just forgotten. They had a Crisis Zone machine in the theater at Southdale Mall. It was my very first “official” blog post, so I had forgotten. I kind of skimmed over those machines, didn’t I? The anniversary of that post is coming up soon, maybe I’ll give it another look then. Plus, I need to finally get around to that thing I mentioned at the end of it…
I’ve been putting it off for a very good reason. You’ll understand why when you see what it is.
The Fast and the Furious has many different cabinet styles that I didn’t know existed and this is yet another one. You know all of that red plastic junk that Tokyo Drift has covering the machine? This one has the same plastic, except black. I’ve never seen this variation before. Huh.
Trust me, this observation would make a lot more sense if I weren’t halfway through my East Coast blog posts. I ran into two different versions of this game I hadn’t seen before, so this is the third. A game having multiple cab types isn’t something to write home about, but this game is so common you’d think I’d have seen something besides the default machines before. It turns out that there are four of them.
Wait, “Slam a Winner”? I thought this was Monster Drop. Man, I wonder how many times I’ve run into this game before and made a jackass of myself by confusing it with the other giant ball dropping game. I do like to sound like I know what I’m talking about sometimes.
EDIT: This was originally a correction about something I’d said in a previous blog post. I’d since corrected it in the actual post.
If you’ve ever wanted to know if this game can function with three machines instead of two or four, here’s the answer. Strangely, the game knows it’s bike 3 that’s missing and labels the far right as player 4.
Jurassic Park, I can understand, but why this game is so common baffles me. I can’t imagine most players keep playing after seeing the opening cutscene with its Sonic Adventure-Esque lip syncing.
Crap, have I not talked about this before? I mean, it’s not really a game, but…
This is a virtual roller coaster from 2000 called Mad Wave Motion Theater. It’s precisely what it looks like. You sit down and watch a first-person video of a roller coaster, and the chairs jerk around to simulate motion. Some videos are live-action footage, while others are silly-looking early 00s CG. This was released during the regular “hey, maybe graphics are good enough to do real virtual reality this time!” thing that happens every few years. I wonder what would happen if they knew that once we got close to having it, everyone would realize that nobody particularly wanted it.
By the way, if you play this game at Chuck E Cheese, Chuck E appears on some of the menus.
I was a bit caught off-guard to see these. Like I’ve said several times, games like this died off when most arcades switched over to cards. Out of curiosity, I gave it a swipe to see what their solution was.
It turns out they installed a token dispenser into the machine itself. When you swipe your card, four tokens come out at the bottom. That seems like a lot of trouble for something like this, but these games are such token eaters that I can’t blame them.
The display on the card swipe says “Bowlero,” so the lack of a name change really was about the rug. The Brunswick card still works here, even if it doesn’t at the other one.
I still had a few coins left, so I decided to win candy. Then the network went down, and I couldn’t swipe my card. To hell with it. Picture dump.
They don’t allow outside food or drink, so I had to spend the whole time hiding my Godfathers leftovers. I was getting tired of that, so I left. There’s a reason I’ve only come out here once.
It was such a nice day, I decided to take a walk. There was another non-arcade place I’ve always wanted to grab some photos of. It was a ways away, but I didn’t mind the walk.
Like I mentioned earlier in this very post, I used to wander around aimlessly when I was younger. I found many strange things that way, such as a random sheep farm half a mile from my house (I lived in the suburbs, so you wouldn’t expect a farm to be anywhere near it). Now that I’m older, I find it harder to make excuses to roam around. A big part of the reason I search for arcades is so that I have an excuse to see parts of town that I normally wouldn’t. When I talk to locals, they often don’t know about things like the mill ruins we have on the coast of the Mississippi river. I think overall, I’m still more knowledgeable about this town than people who grew up here.
A certain sense of peace can only be found when you’re alone and moving forward. Whether you have a destination or not, you can’t stop, and there’s no reason to turn back until you feel like it. If I could, I’d wander forever with no destination. I’d probably get bored pretty quickly without a place to return to. Even when I’m traveling, I like to find time to lop around the hotel room. Not to rest, but because I like being in a hotel room. There’s a TV, air conditioning, and sometimes even a microwave. I’ve lived in a hotel room a few times at various times in my life.
The peace and quite of wandering is nice. This is probably the last day of the year it’ll be warm enough to do it. It’s good that I was able to remind myself of the open road one last time before winter. During my walk, I remember thinking, “the only thing that would make this better is if I ran into an arcade I didn’t know about”. Ha ha…
…ha?
Ah yes, I vaguely remember this laundromat the last time I was here. I don’t remember if I went in, but I certainly remember considering it. There are quite a few local laundromats with arcade games, but it’s almost always just a multicade machine. Every once in a while, I get lucky and find something random, like X-men vs. Street Fighter or Wizard of Wor, so I’ve checked them anyway. I know not to get my hopes up, though.
As you can see, it’s a pretty ordinary laundromat with a few arcade machines. When I walked in, some guy doing his laundry struck up a conversation about VHS tapes and I told him that I had just come from a place that still had them. After sharing the address, it was time to see the arcade machines.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
WE HAVE A LOCAL NEO-GEO MVS!
AND IT’S RUNNING METAL SLUG!
For those unfamiliar with this, it’s the legendary Neo-Geo MVS (Multi Video System), perhaps the most successful arcade hardware of all time. Back in the late 80s, someone at SNK had the idea to take the vision of making an arcade machine that played cartridges and change it instead to an arcade machine that played arcade-exclusive cartridges. All the operator had to do to put new games in the machine was to pop it open and insert the new game. The best part was that the hardware could switch games to have one, two, four, or even SIX games on the same machine with the same hardware. This was a massive hit in places like small pizza joints and Japanese candy shops since they could have several full arcade-quality games on a single machine. The Japanese white sit-down Neo-Geo machines (called “Neo Candy”) were SO standard in Japan that the term “Candy Cab” became the Western term for those white sit-down machines that every arcade in Japan has.
While SNK was seen as Sega and Capcom’s main rival in the Japanese arcade scene, the Neo-Geo never quite took off in the same way in the states despite being everywhere. Hell, I’ve talked to many people who hear “Neo-Geo” and think of the home console first. Come on, people, this is the system that brought us the King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown, Puzzle Bobble, the good Magical Drop games, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and goddamn Metal Slug! Show it some respect!
One of my goals in life is to own a Neo-Geo MVS. Even if it’s just the arcade board wired into a TV (which isn’t hard to do). The board and games are a lot cheaper than you think. Ironically, they’re a fraction of the price of the actual home release.
Oh right. Something-something “Metal Slug and Puzzle Bobble”.
I frequently use this blog to vent frustration toward every arcade being flooded with Raw Thrills’ stuff. Raw Thrills has a stranglehold on the market due to being one of the few America-based distributors. As I’ve said, Raw Thrills is just the remains of Midway Games after they dissolved. Midway Games was the same beast as Raw Thrills is now, except they had competition. It was hard to find an arcade that didn’t have NBA Jam, Cruis’n, Ms. Pac-man, or, especially, the behemoths that were Area 51 and Maximum Force. Much like Big Buck Hunter today, you’d often find one of the two in places that otherwise had no games. The games were so popular at one point that they released a machine with both of them. Is it any wonder Raw Thrills’ first game was a parody/spiritual sequel to it? They even changed the title from “Target: Terror” to “Target: Force” to make the connection more blatant.
I’m sure you’ve heard this spiel many times before, but I bring it up again for a reason. Despite how common those games once were, most of Midway Games’ titles that once strangled the market have since become a scarce sight. Even the classic Cruisin’ games become rarer with every passing year. I wonder if a time will come when finding the original Fast and the Furious will also become a rare sight like this.
Speaking of Midway Games, there’s a title from Atari Games’ last few years before Midway Games turned them into Midway Games West. In the ill-fated racing game articles, I went into this, but Atari and Atari Games are completely different. You see, during the video game crash of ’83, the head of Atari realized the console division was a dud and sold it off but kept the arcade division. Due to legal reasons, they had to rebrand the arcade division as “Atari Games” since they were now a distinct entity from the Atari brand.
You know the infamous Tengen label? The ones who made the rare Tetris NES game? That was Atari Games. The console rights to the name Atari were just sold with the console division, so they couldn’t legally put the “Atari” part of “Atari Games” on a home release. The whole history behind Atari Games and Midway is a fascinating one. In fact…
Wait a minute, is that a classic 1980s pinball machine!?
It totally is. I may not know anything about pinball, but even I can identify pinball machines by era:
- Machines from before 1970 lack an electronic display
- 1970s machines are usually white or yellow
- 1980s pinball machines look like 70s machines, except more colorful
- 1990s pinball machines are black and have a digital display
The eras bleed into each other a bit. The digital display, for example, was introduced in the late 80s. Pinball has been pretty stagnant since the 90s, but in 2013 pinball machines started including a full-color digital display rather than the classic “orange dots” style. I guess that’s the new thing now?
That aside, this machine is from 1979, so my estimate was pretty close. It was the last thing I expected to find in a random laundromat. The owner saw me taking pictures and explained why it was here. It turns out that one of the local hardcore pinball collectors keeps it here. It turns out he’s pretty active in the pinball tournament scene.
She also mentioned something else before I left. It turns out that she owns TWO local laundromats and gave me rough directions to the other. I couldn’t find it at the time, so I had to give up for now. After a lot of searching, I finally figured out why: It’s buried deep in a strip mall where even Google Maps doesn’t know it exists. I’d have NEVER found it on my own. I’m really lucky the owner decided to start a conversation with me. I swear, someday I’ll repay you by spending a bag of quarters on Metal Slug. I’m rather fond of San Fransisco Rush, too…
I have a pretty good idea what kinds of games are there, but I’ll keep it to myself until I can make another trip.
Oh, right. This is what I took the extra trip for. Brooklyn Park is home to a rather sizable Asian population, so this place exists.
I stumbled upon this place the first time I came to the neighborhood. This banner was hanging outside. I’m unsure if it just opened or if they kept the banner hanging up to grab extra customers until someone called them out. They must have liked it if they still have it.
This is the Dragon Star Supermarket. In the Twin Cities, our local gigantic grocery store is called “Rainbow.” This store was once one of those (I can tell because you can still see where the name was scratched out), but now it’s a gigantic supermarket loaded from top to bottom with weird stuff imported from random Asian countries. If a random Asian food isn’t sold here, it’s not sold in the Twin Cities.
For example, here we have camel meat. 27% of the world’s camel meat comes from Asia. I didn’t see anything else in the store from India, so it struck me as a bit odd. As it turns out, camel meat is popular in Malaysia and parts of China. It supposedly tastes like beef. I’m mostly surprised that there’s enough demand to bother keeping it on shelves. The local Somali population probably helps with that.
Everything pictured on the shelf to the left is instant ramen. Any flavor or variety you can imagine is sold here.
Various fish from Animal Crossing can usually be seen swimming around in tanks in the back, but I visited so late in the day that they were long gone. There were plenty of frozen ones left. I wonder what shark tastes like.
There are also like ten different brands of dried squid to choose from. If you’d instead dry the squid yourself, they have frozen ones. Did I ever tell the story about the week in third grade when we were learning about squids? There was a tiny cartoon squid on the worksheet named “Squiddy.” At the end of the week, they plopped a dead squid on each of our desks and said, “This is Squiddy.” All we had to dissect it with was a toothpick. A few more adventurous students somehow managed to open the squid with just a splinter of wood, but the rest of us poked its ink sac a few times. We didn’t even have rubber gloves. Looking back, that had to have been a health code violation.
If you want to know where to get Ramune outside of cons without paying Tomodachi prices, this is the place. They have every flavor you can imagine. They also had an entire wall of other drinks, but this was the only one I could recognize.
Obviously, they aren’t going to import milk just for the sake of importing it, so we get local milk. 2% Kemps chocolate milk is hard to find in town, especially in half-gallons (it doesn’t come in gallons). Not only do they have plenty in stock, but it’s also 20 cents cheaper than at Target! This would become my go-to Kemps location if the bus fare didn’t negate the price.
Seriously, it’s the best damn chocolate milk you’ll ever have.
If you’re ever low on cash and need cheap food for a month, this is the place to get it. It’s a hell of a lot better than the 2 dollars a pound most places charge. I should consider keeping a bag of this under the sink. Rice doesn’t go bad easily.
With that out of the way, I think it’s time to finally share the story of the first time I visited Brooklyn Park. Long ago, every Gamestop in the country was putting every Playstation 2 game they had on extreme clearance. Those who wanted Grand Theft Auto, Madden NFL, or Guitar Hero were all yours for mere pennies. Among those games nobody wanted was the Dance Dance Revolution series. I took the opportunity to buy every game in the series for a quarter or less. However, one game eluded me: Dance Dance Revolution X2. Since the game was never sold outside of a dance pad bundle and had a notoriously short run, it’s one of the rarest Playstation 2 games. I was unable to find ANY copy of the game online.
Gamestop’s website listed two local stores that had it in stock: This one and Mall of America. When I got to the store, the staff confirmed that the game was in stock. After an hour of digging through nearly 1000 used PS2 games, I finally found it. It turned out that someone got confused and thought “Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2” and “X2” was the same game, so the game showing up in the system was just a copy of Extreme 2 that had been misi-nventoried. Hilariously, the Mall of America copy was the same story, except it was Max 2 that was mislabeled. DDR has a lot of games with the letter X and the number 2 in the title.
I eventually found a Gamestop in Iowa that had it, and they shipped it to a local store for me. I ended up having to pay the whole 5 bucks for it. In the long run it was a steal, since the game goes for over 50 nowadays.
The day was winding down. Since we began our journey at the wrong Walmart, let’s take a quick peek into the Walmart I thought I was in before. It’s a Walmart, so there will be at least one weird item floating around the electronics department.
You’re making my job too easy.
iDJ2GO, released in 2012, proudly boasts its compatibility with the iPad 1, 2, and 3! For only 30 dollars, you, too can use your iPad 3 as a turntable!
I’m not sure which is funnier: That this is still 30 dollars or that it’s somehow cheaper than buying it new from eBay.
The first Epic Mickey did well enough that Disney gave the sequel a bit more backing than the original. For the release of Epic Mickey 2, a pair of tie-in Wii nunchucks were released resembling the main characters’ weapons (the other one was also buried in this mess somewhere, but I didn’t get a picture of it). It turned out that Epic Mickey 2 was worse than the original, and the Wii accessory market had long since crashed. The two sit on the shelves five years lateras a cautionary tale about making crap nobody wants.
This is a boxelder bug. They’re like black cockroaches with red stripes. I know these things well. Growing up, I’d sometimes see trails of hundreds of them crawling up the side of the house. They were so common that I’d seen conjoined twin boxelders—more than once. Much like back then, the outside of this Walmart had lots and lots and lots of these running around. I only photographed a single one to spare you the imagery. I’ve seen a lot of these around the twin cities lately. I wonder what’s causing them to be suddenly appear.
It’s nighttime, so I’m returning home. Believe it or not, there is an arcade close to this bus transfer point, but I’m not in the mood. This blog post is already 5500 words as it is. I’d have split it, but there weren’t a lot of arcades this time. I want to keep this site’s integrity as an arcade blog, even if I only have seven readers.
I got to take the good bus home. Look at those plush seats. It’s like some kind of bus sofa.
Finally, I return to Minneapolis with nothing but leftover cheese bread, photos, memories…
…and Dragon Rage!
I sure as hell wasn’t going to visit a fantastic place like Video Universe and not buy anything. Most of the PS2 games had long since been picked through, but this one seemed pretty rad. I’ve never heard of it, but it’s about a pissed-off dragon who’s mad because some wizards killed him or something, so he’s back for fiery vengeance. He’ll fly, shoot fire, and deal 40 damage to his enemies! It was the most metal-sounding thing on the shelf, so I grabbed it. Please don’t suck.
