With winter finally gone and the new season of exploration beginning, I finally took the time to finish my Denver blog posts and clean up the site a bit. I updated the directory page, shrunk a lot of the images significantly, and moved all of the imgur-hosted images back to wordpress. Which means I have access to photo galleries again! There’s no better time to finally clean up my backlog. Let’s take a look at small arcades that didn’t deserve their own blog posts, along with some small updates to arcades I’ve visited before!
EDIT: I decided to completely rewrite this blog post, since I wasn’t happy with the original.
Update 1: Up-Down Minneapolis
Before we get to the new arcades, let’s take a look at how some of the ones I’ve written about have changed in the last few years.
I remembered to get a photo of the outside this time. This arcade has been doing so well that it made a major expansion a year ago. Now they’ve got a rooftop bar with a DDR machine! They even had Crazy Taxi: High Roller very briefly, a machine I’ve been looking for, but it was out of order. On the bright side, I got to see it in person. The machine is way, way bigger than I was expecting. It’s massive.
By the way, I came here with the arcade group during the lockdowns. Unfortunately, one of the members forgot her ID at home and had to leave. I felt bad that she was left out, so I invited her to join me in one of my local arcade scouting expeditions to make up for it. You’ll be seeing the results of that trip later in this post.
Update 2: Tilt Arcade in Burnsville
It was my favorite arcade in town. Unfortunately, most of Tilt’s locations have been phased out over the past few years (their bigger Tilt Studio locations are still doing alright, though). Here are some updated photos I took a while after the initial blog post but never had a chance to use: All of the showcase cab fighting games were repaired by the end, and they even fixed the missing handle on Star Wars Pod Racing.
Just so the record’s clear, Tilt didn’t neglect their games nearly as much as you might expect from that first blog post. Sure, the Initial D was never in a playable state, but these were.
Update 3: That Theater Arcade in Burnsville
The one that was across the street from Tilt. Each time I came here over the next few months, there were fewer and fewer machines. You can see just from these photos that a lot of machines that were in my blog post were already gone. The visit after this (not photoed) had another half of the machines missing. I was under the impression that this theater had shut down, but Google says it’s still kicking. I shudder to think what state the arcade is in now.
Update 4: Savers and the Laundromat Next Door
It’s not an arcade, but I did spend a whole article talking about this area once. Unfortunately, the Savers shut down in early 2019. That hit me hard. I loved to come down here, do some thrift shopping, play X-men vs Street Fighter at the laundromat, buy some groceries at ALDI’s, then maybe grab a pizza and use it to fend off the bums at the light rail.
But Savers shutting down had a silver lining. You see, this whole area is right next door to the infamous Target that got raided during the 2020 summer riots, so this whole area was ravaged, too. The laundromat with X-men vs Street Fighter? It’s currently a smoldering pile of ashes. I’d go down there and take some photos, but it’s not really the safest part of town these days…
Update 5: Brunswick Zone
Specifically this one, not the other one. Thankfully it, and the Godfather’s across the street, both survived fully intact. Even Shifty is still there! Brunswick Zone (which finally updated its sign to “Bowlero”) even has a couple of new games. There’s the new Tomb Raider game and Super Bikes 3. It’s the first time I’ve gotten to mention either on this blog!
This was one of the arcades I rushed through on the “update journey” I mentioned near the start of this post, so I didn’t have time to stop and play either. It was entirely a scouting mission.
Update 6: That One Laundromat I Found
Same blog post as above. I stopped in here once to see if Metal Slug was still around, but it had been replaced with Aero Fighters. It’s not a huge deal since we have other Neo-Geo machines in town now.
What confuses me is why San Fransisco Rush: The Rock has been replaced with Rush 2049. I’m not upset, just confused.
Update 7: Gamerheadz
One of the first “arcades” I wrote about. God, those early pictures are terrible. Anyway, they moved into a new location, which is a lot more sterile than the last. The DDR and Mortal Kombat machines are still there, but the owner gets grumpy if you ask him to turn them off. The other three arcades at Southdale are all doing alright, as far I know.
EDIT: I bumped into the owner of the DDR machine online last year. He told me that it was going to be removed and refurbished. I haven’t been there in a while, so I’m not certain if it ever happened or not.
With those out of the way, let’s get to the real stuff.
Tilt
Now we’re onto the arcades I haven’t written about before. This is Tilt. Don’t confuse it with any of the other arcades called “Tilt”.
I made a whole trip to photograph Tilt. Tilt is right next to the local art museum, so I was going to go through both in the blog post. Ultimately, I scrapped the post because I just don’t have much to say about pinball. It was a really cool arcade, though. I really loved the light-up pinball bartop in the second photo (there’s a scrollbar below the images). Just bar warned: It’s tiny and fills almost every inch of floorspace with pinball machines. There’s very little seating.
Pizza Ranch
We have two Pizza Ranch in town! This is the fancier of the two, featuring its own arcade! The most notable thing about this one is that it doesn’t expect people to stay very long. The games are expensive, but have a proportional ticket payoff. I got over 100 tickets per play, without even hitting any jackpots.
UPDATE: This Pizza Ranch shut down shortly after. Most of the places in that blog post I just linked are gone now, too.
Bearcat Bar
There were a bunch of local news articles about how this bar was shutting its doors and reopening as a barcade. It was just a few blocks from where I live, so I got SUPER excited. Then I find out that thier idea of a “barcade” was three arcade machines and a pinball. Bearcat Bar seemed to be going for an 80s theme, with decade trivia cards at every table, but it didn’t really stick the landing. It shut down not too long after.
It’s hard to see from the photos, but the four machines are Blasteroids, Pac-man, Dig Dug, and a Roller Coaster Tycoon Pinball machine.
Playland Arcades
Remember Playland Arcade at the State Fair? They branched out and started a chain of mall arcades. The first two are both at Roseville Mall, the third is in Northtown Mall, and the last is in Burnsville Center. I know they have one other location that’s slightly bigger, but it’s too out of the way for me to have made my way out to.
As you can see, there’s not much going on with these. I have some inside photos, but you can see nearly everything from the outside.
Roseville Mall Theater Arcade
AMC theaters aren’t doing so hot right now, so I wanted to grab a shot of this one while I could. You know, just in case it was gone the next time I came. The arcade was closed due to the pandemic, so this is the only photo I could get.
Recent Conventions
The convention game rooms are the same as ever, but Nostalgia and Dance Evolution have been added to the regular lineup. One convention also had a Rave Master pachinko machine I really liked, but I honestly can’t remember which. I’ve been sitting on these photos for a long time.
It’s been over a year since we’ve been able to have anime conventions in the Twin Cities. Animinneapolis finally started up again this year, but it was a sorry excuse for a convention with very few attendees. I played DDR for a while, milled around in the dealer’s room a bit, then left. I’d have probably tried to get a refund if they didn’t give every attendee a free pass to Metacon 2021 as an apology for this bare-bones convention. Even the room parties weren’t happening this year.
Concord Lanes
Oh, we’ve finally circled back to the beginning. This was the beginning of that short journey around the Twin Cities I made with the one from the arcade group. It was right near where she lives, so it was a good place to meet up.
Some photos from a few years ago showed they had a Crazy Taxi, so I was REALLY hoping to find a second one in the Twin Cities. An obscure bowling alley like this one would be the place. No luck. They did have Striker 1945 III, though. That’s almost as good.
That box of popcorn erasers in the prize machine now belongs to me.
Mermaid Entertainment and Event
Here’s an arcade I visited waaaaay back when I first moved to the Twin Cities, but hadn’t bothered to return to. Since we were traveling around seeing the state of the local arcades, now seemed like a decent time to do that.
Mermaid Entertainment is a bowling alley-slash-event center that has two seperate arcades. One is in the bowling alley, while the other is situated in the event center portion. Both of them have the original Fast and the Furious for some reason.
As a test of skill, I asked her if any of these games stood out to her. She correctly identified Blazing Angels as worth playing once. It’s absolutely the most notable thing here. It’s not the only one in the area, but close! (there was a third at one point too, but I’m 99% sure that’s gone)
Zero Gravity
It was a bit of a walk to get to this one. Once I told her that our next destination was a children’s trampoline park, she started to get hesitant about going in. I don’t like coming into these sorts of places either, but I know how to talk my way in without seeming weird. It was a useful skill she learned that day. May it serve her well in the future.
Do you remember the theater arcade we discussed earlier in this blog post? See the Arctic Thunder in that photo? It disappeared the week before I took the arcade group there! There was one specific member who’d been asking me if we had an Arctic Thunder. With that one gone (and me not being willing to tip my hand about this one), my pride was on the line. If there was still an Arctic Thunder in town, I’d be sure to find it. No matter where it was.
Mission accomplished.
And so, after stopping in to see Shifty and the laundromat, she finally got sick of it and went home.
Now’s a good time to mention what happened to the arcade group afterward. A few months later, I left, and she became the new leader. It wasn’t something so dramatic as “I recognized her potential and entrusted her with it or anything.” It was just a series of events that happened because I happened to have her text number because of this “adventure.”
The bank detected a fraudulent transaction on my credit card, so they canceled it and sent me a new one. Right before the monthly payment was due for the group. So I texted her to ask if she could take care of it for the next month or so. She wanted to do some online meetup with the other members, so we discussed it a bit, and I left her in charge of the event. I did have a bit of a hidden agenda with that one: I told myself that if she scheduled the next one on her own without consulting me, then my presence in the group was no longer needed. Sure enough, another event popped up on the schedule a week later, and I finally made my leave. I figured something like this would happen sooner or later, so I never got too attached to the group. As I said in my first post about it, I was only sitting on it to ensure it was running okay.
I still feel bad about sticking her with the group, so I always make it a point to tell her about any new arcades I find. That was my only real contribution when I was running it, anyway (Plus the bloody 200 bucks I paid to keep it open during the pandemic. Ungrateful, the whole lot of them). Half of the time, her entire reply consists of something like “OK, cool.”
Maybe I should stop. It’s not my problem anymore…
AMC Theater
I told myself that if she accompanied me through the whole journey I had planned, I’d give her a link to this blog. But ultimately, she decided to go home right before the final stop: Three arcades next to each other!
It worked out fine since it turns out the first one is in a theater that’s only open on the weekends. I had to awkwardly take these photos through the window! But it’s totally worth it. Do you see what I see? It’s a freakin’ DDR Megamix machine! I’ve only ever seen those twice before. Who’d have thought we had one right here in the Twin Cities all this time? The rest of the lineup isn’t terrible, either. It’s a shame, though, since Google Images shows they had Police Trainer and Tekken II until recently. Wouldn’t those have been an interesting find?
UPDATE: This theater was demolished shortly after.
Awkward Motel Arcade
This arcade was right between the last one and the next one, so I stopped in to satisfy my curiosity. You never know when you may stumble upon something in an unexpected place. This was not one of those times. But now, if anyone asks me where they can play Find A Key, I’ll know!
Dave and Busters
Oh, Dave and Busters. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. I usually skip them on arcade trips when I’m out of town since they’re all similar. We’ve had two D&Bs in town for years, but I’ve never bothered to visit the northern one. This was my first time. It’s been so long that I’ve written about one that they do have some new stuff to mention, like the latest virtual reality games. And more importantly…
AHAHAHAHA! DO YOU SEE THIS!? WE FINALLY HAVE A DDR MACHINE FROM AFTER 2006!
Remember the one I mentioned who was looking for Arctic Thunder? A month later, they happened to visit this arcade, and it turned out Dave and Busters JUST got this machine in on that day. Perhaps that’s karma of some sort?
And there you have it. A bunch of random updates I’ve been meaning to get off my chest and the end of the arcade group plotline. Except for that one time when I visited Up-Down on the same day they were meeting there. I don’t THINK they saw me, but I had to start keeping tabs on their schedule again after that to avoid any more run-ins…
