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Earlier this week, there was a scathing article written up about Arcade Bars and how awful they are. I took offense to this. I took so much offense to this, that I felt compelled to compose a retort to defend the arcade bar.
Let me be clear.
I’m 100% down with the Arcade Bar movement. I was 100% down with it at Kung Fu when I was still ordering fireball shots with a beer and playing skeeball. I’m 100% down with it now that there have been advances in the Arcade bar movement. Its evolving the way I hang out with my buddies and I’ll be 100% down with it as it progresses and eventually fades out of popularity. Let me break this down.
Exhibit A.) Drinking to Drink is No Longer Enjoyable
Scorching take? Sure. But once you hit around 25 years old (I’m 29 with a wife and 11 month old), the entire bar scene/drinking to excess JUST to drink to excess loses its luster. It especially falls out of favor for you when you get into a stable relationship. Other than hanging out with friends, what is the allure of a bar? It really boils down to the possibility of sex with someone else besides yourself. So you’re past the age when binge drinking is fun and you’re not out trollin’ for butt. What are you doing? You can do the same thing with buddies at home and spend a fraction of the cost and stay in comfy pants.
There needs to be a twist. Arcade bars are the twist.
The Arcade Bar is a wonderfully refreshing twist on the bar scene. The other weekend I went out to Cidercade, a local arcade/cider brewery in Dallas, and I had a blast. The hours flew by as my friends and I tried to get back what we used to have on Guitar Hero. We downed pint after pint at pop a shot. We sipped from our glasses between intense rounds of Mortal Kombat and then moved over to Turtles in Time to really go deep into our childhood.
The Arcade Bars made us feel like dumb kids again, only this time we had some good ciders and beers to go with it and I can’t wait to have my birthday party there.
Exhibit B.) My Parents Sucked at Giving Me Money for Arcade Games
When I was a kid, we generally would go out to eat once a week. Maybe closer to once every 10 days on average. One of our more frequent haunts was Fuddruckers. The food was fine, easy, and close to my dad’s office. I would inhale my food so I could run over to the arcade game section and look at all the games they had. Cruisin’ USA was fine but I really enjoyed Metal Slug.
When I got to play it.
See, my parents didn’t have money specifically set aside for me to pump into Metal Slug. I can’t be the only one who had had parents operate this way. Its not like it was a monetary issue. It was based more in principle. They didn’t want me dumping money into a waste of time. So what I got was whatever change happened to be in my dads pocket. On a good day, this was a dollar, enough for two rounds of Metal Slug. After that, I was resigned to watching other kids with better parents spend what I assumed was hundreds of dollars into the different games available.
The Arcade bars that I’ve been to remedy this difficult childhood memory immediately. $10 flat gets you all the playing time you want and I’m here to tell you I got my damn monies worth with the selection offered at Cider Cade. I was a total kid again, button mashing my way the Primal Rage, with no worry about running out of quarters or lives. Infinite lives. Infinite quarters. I love you Arcade Bars.
Maybe Arcade Bars suck elsewhere. I don’t know. I haven’t seen them all. But what I do know is Cidercade is my new favorite place to go. Check it out if you’re in Dallas..
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There’s a big difference between an arcade bar and the bars Duda described. A ping pong themed bar sucks dick so he is right. A bar like Emporium filled with tons of old school arcade games is dope and he didn’t say otherwise.
Agreed. Local place I’ve been to had 4 player hockey game that was a riot. Also, Metal Slug is the tits.
My parents would give my brother and I each a quarter for the tiny arcade inside our local pizza establishment. Needless to say, when you only have one chance, you get really good at Metal Slug. We ended up being able to get all the way to stage 4 on a single coin.
was it NHL 2 on 2 open ice challenge because that was one of the goats
Simpson’s arcade and the original House of the Dead.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s just like when you first start smoking weed and “smoking” is the activity itself. You eventually reach a certain point where you need to base the time around an actual activity, while the drinking/smoking just acts as a nice compliment to whatever it is you choose to do
trollin’ for butt – i did a desk giggle.
Duda can fuck off, barcades are awesome. But only if they have Area 51 or Big Buck Hunter
Time Crisis. Stepping on the pedal and then unloading a clip.
The fact that the slide moved when you shot made this game infinitely more fun to plays
Especially with the SMG in TC4
If you don’t lean in with the pedal are you really playing Time Crisis?
Big Buck Hunter is he GOAT
Also, I won’t tickets to the Houston Open on the radio this morning so happy Friday everyone!
Congratulations, brother!
I once spent a lot of time and quarters to set the high score on Big Buck Hunter at the skating rink.
Wait til you find Jurassic Park with turrets. It’s amazing.
bowling alleys are highly underrated as well, especially if they were made this century. if you’re ever in DC check out pinstripes.
I like the occasional bowl as much as the next guy, but part of the charm is that it costs like $5, tops, not $15-20/hr per PERSON like some of the DC places make it
Give me a seedy joint with needles, in the parking lot, crackheads in the parking lot and $7 Miller lite pitchers over those bougie bowling bars any day of the week.
Those places always have incredible mozzarella sticks too. Couldn’t tell you why. Some kinda big bowling alley conspiracy.
=> Jillian’s in Boston
I fondly remember my first time in an arcade bar. It was Emporium in Chicago, I was visiting my oldest brother, I had just turned 18, and I had a fake ID. Between the games and the craft beer scene just starting to explode, I knew it was a magical place.
Now I’m 26, and 1Up bars here in Denver are kinda grimy/gross most of the time, but they have phenomenal value for the games and the drink prices aren’t too pricey relative to other LoDo bro bars. Still not a bad way to start or end a night.
Agree about 1Up in LoDo, the underground locations gives it a major shitty/dive bar (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Still a fun time though. Literally carried my wife out of there when she blacked out on her birthday there a few years ago.
Since somebody bit on the 1Up reference, I gotta tell a story. My fiancee (this was a couple years ago when we had started dating) and I went to 1Up at like 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday to see if they had her debit card she left somewhere the night before. I casually went into the men’s room to take a leak while she talked to the bartender, and I encountered a horrible stench. In the MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR, on top of a drain, there was a huge turd. Some dude walked in behind me and I shouted “IT WASN’T ME, I SWEAR!” before running out.
Also, I may have bought a literal handful of questionable substances from a stranger dressed like The Big Lebowski at Halloween. I say questionable, because I literally have no idea what the fuck it was, but I did stay up for quite awhile.
Again a standing “sup” and invite to anyone who wants to hit up a beercade with me in Chicago.
Meet me in the middle in Columbus and you’ve got yourself a deal
This is why UpDown will always be one of my go-to bars in KC.
Rediscovered Metal Slug when I was a Junior in college, still couldn’t beat it.
Too Young to believe that “Drinking to Drink” will ever not be enjoyable, Too Old to deal with the its inevitable hangovers. PGP