Summer Retro Hunt & Arcade Tour in Essex

In this video we check out the stunning new shop Miso Retro Games, as well as the awesome Retro Hunter.  We also stop by Nerd Base for a vintage toy nostalgia overload and get our arcade fix at Neon Knights.

Easter Arcade Tour 2022

Join us on an arcade tour as we check out three new awesome arcades, The Pixel Bunker in Milton Keynes, Boneyard Arcade in Exeter and Insanity Gaming Arcade in Poole.

Arcade Club Bury Tour

In this video tour we check out the awesome Arcade Club in Bury, Europe’s largest arcade and one of the best in the world.  The arcade has so many incredible machines and just keeps getting better, with even more games added since our last visit.  Join us as we check out each floor and play lots of old favourites as well as new favourites.

EAG International Expo 2022

In this video we take a trip to the EAG International Expo, held at the ExCeL London.  It’s an annual three day event for the amusement industry, showcasing the latest coin operated releases.  After a two year absence, it’s great to have the show back on.  We check out the latest video games, pinball tables and even find time to play some Splatterhouse. 

The Heart Of Gaming & Playnation Games Arcade Tour

In this video we take a trip down to The Heart Of Gaming in Croydon, South London. 

I last went to The Heart Of Gaming a few years ago at their old site in Acton, and it was great to finally check out the new venue.  The arcade has an awesome selection of machines, including some survivors from London’s Trocadero.  It was fantastic seeing Alien 3: The Gun and Prop Cycle, two great games from the nineties which I haven’t played in years and every bit as good as I remember.  The eight player Daytona USA set up was an incredible sight, and we had some great races.  My personal highlight was The Lost World: Jurassic Park DLX cabinet.  There is a bit of a story behind this one.  On a cold, bleak January day back in 2019, I went to have a look at this machine along with a couple of others at Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach. 

The machines were stored in an outbuilding probably less than twenty meters from the sea. 

Routing around in near darkness, I also saw Final Furlong 2, GTI Club, Star Wars Racer Arcade DLX and Time Crisis II.  I had no doubt dropped coins into these at some point in the past, and it was sad seeing them in this sorry, neglected state.   

They were all big machines and too much for me to take on, and I contacted The Heart Of Gaming to see if they would be interested.  Fortunately they managed to save The Lost World, and it’s undergone a full restoration.  It was great seeing it again in an arcade, in all its glory for people to enjoy.  Best of all though it was Pizza Arcade Gamer Boy’s favourite game of the day, he loves dinosaurs and couldn’t stop playing it!

PLAY Expo Blackpool & an epic MVS pick up October 2021

In this video me and my trusty sidekicks go on a road trip to Blackpool for the awesome PLAY Expo event.  It was three years since our last visit to PLAY at the Norbreck Castle and was great to be back, enjoying some semblance of normality.   

Along the way we stop to see an old Arcade Operator and pick up an awesome MVS haul.  I hadn’t seen any pictures prior to this, and the haul massively exceeded my expectations, I was so happy.  I’m currently going for a full MVS set and this fills many gaps as well as giving me lots of upgrades. 

Hopefully there will be many more road trips and arcade visits next year.  Have a great Christmas and Happy New Year! 

A Great British Retro Hunt: On The Trail Of Banksy’s Spraycation

During the summer, artworks started appearing in towns on the east coast of England in Norfolk and Suffolk.  After much excitement and speculation, these were confirmed as the work of Banksy, the world’s most famous street artist and became known as his ‘Great British Spraycation.’  In this video we take a trip to see them.  We also check out a video game shop and a few arcades along the way, including an arcade with some of the oldest machines still in operation here in the UK.  Join me and my two trusty sidekicks on a Great British retro hunt! 

Four Quarters East Arcade Tour August 2021

We take a trip down to the Four Quarters East in Hackney Wick, East London to play some games, enjoy a few beers and chill by the canal.  Once again my two trusty sidekicks came along to hone their gaming skills and challenge me at Street Fighter II. 

The cab line-up has changed quite a bit since my last visit, with some new additions such as Joust, Point Blank, Sega Rally, Smash TV and an Indian Jones pinball table.  I believe OutRun DLX has been moved to the new venue at Elephant and Castle, which I’m really looking forward to checking out.  With cool games, a chilled, relaxed atmosphere, and a great selection of beers we had a fantastic time.  

Arcade Warehouse Lincoln Tour June 2021

It’s great to be out and about visiting arcades again, and we recently went to a brand new one, Arcade Warehouse in Lincoln.  Join me and my two trusty sidekicks, Cookie Gamer and Pizza Arcade Gamer Boy as we check it out. 

The arcade has a nice selection of machines, including a lot of relatively modern dedicated cabs.  Highlights include Dariusburst, H2Overdrive, Star Wars Battle Pod and Behind Enemy Lines.  My boy looked particularly at home wielding the gun turret, mowing down enemies on Behind Enemy Lines, Sega’s uncommon on-rails shooter. 

 

We had a two hour session.  Pizza Arcade Gamer Boy was excited to play Luigi’s Mansion Arcade, but unfortunately someone hogged it for the duration.  This is the only thing which slightly tarnished the experience, but that’s down to inconsiderate people, not the fault of the venue.  Apart from that we all had a fantastic time.  The venue is very family orientated, and it was great seeing people of all ages enjoying the machines. 

Arcade Club Leeds Tour June 2021

A visit to the awesome Arcade Club in Leeds was top of the agenda following the easing of government restrictions, I couldn’t wait!  Joining me were my two trusty sidekicks, Cookie Gamer and Pizza Arcade Gamer Boy.  We’ve put together a little tour of the arcade.

The arcade has so many incredible machines.  Whilst playing the games, it’s easy to forget the incredible amount of effort it must take to maintain them.  We were totally blown away.  Highlights for this visit include Namco’s Star Blade, a fantastic new addition.  I ramble on at the end of the video about not playing it for decades, but actually the last time I played it was in Mikado arcade in Japan about ten years ago.  So good, so atmospheric, absolutely love it.   

 

Virtual On: Cyber Troopers is another new game.  I remember this awesome 3D mech combat game having a brief spell down the seafront back in the day.  The game proved to be a massive hit in Japan, but it never really seemed to take off over here.  I wonder if the theme, and the unusual twin-stick controls just didn’t appeal to most arcade goers.  I suspect the hardware was sacrificed to keep other, more profitable Sega Model 2B games running at the time.  It was fantastic seeing it again, and I really enjoyed giving it a blast.   

 

The OutRun2SP SDX was amazing, with some very close races with the wife.  This and fighters are about the only games I stand a chance at beating her at. 

 

The Sega row really is a Sega fan’s dream.  It’s fantastic being able to experience the Sega Taikan cabs once again and great to see them get a new generation of fans.  There are also some nice new additions to the area, including Scud Race and Sega Rally 3. 

 

The Electrocoin Xenon row was a sight to behold, taking me right back to the halcyon arcade days of the eighties / nineties.  They were loaded with classics, including Aliens, Golden Axe, RoboCop, Splatterhouse and Sunset Riders to name a few.  I think it’s super cool how Arcade Club Leeds has the Xenon row and Bury has the Goliaths. 

 

There is an awesome selection of dedicated cabs, all the classics, plus some more obscure titles.  I enjoyed watching my daughter try her hand at Pac-Land, Pole Position and Tron. 

 

The second floor has an awesome row of Astro’s, complete with top tier shooters.  I could have easily spent a lot longer here. 

 

To summarise then, Arcade Club Leeds – it’s incredible, go check it out! 

Great Yarmouth Arcade Heaven - Part 3

In this awesome pic of the Golden Mile, some fantastic cabs can be seen in Circus Circus.  The sit-down driver is Final Lap R, released by Namco in 1993 and one of the only games to run on the System FL hardware. 

To the left of Final Lap R there appears to be a Star Wars cockpit and to the right the Taito Bubble Car! 

I played Chase H.Q. in one of these, and remember the chain guard around the cab, and my grandparents helping me get in and out.  I seem to recall it being black, but my memory is hazy.  Oh how I would love to have a few credits on this again!  It’s strange how times change.  Back in the day I thought these would be about forever, and the thought of owning machines seemed inconceivable. 

 

Barrons 

Barrons always had a special charm, with its heady smell of fried onions at the hotdog stall by the entrance, and the lure of Rad Mobile DLX and Nemesis in an old generic wood grain cab.  They had these games well into the nineties.  The arcade always seemed dated, even back in the day, and that’s why it was so awesome.  After all, we were spoilt with having the latest games in the other arcades up and down the seafront 

 

Behind these two gents there is an awesome and incredibly rare After Burner Commander, a sort of scaled down version of the DLX model.  The cab looks incredibly cool and is another one I’d love to play. 

In this pic there is an Electrocoin ZX-2000 to the left.   

I believe this was a generic driving environmental cab, with the game marquee displayed on the back.  The ones I’ve seen had Konami GT installed.  Behind this there appears to be another cab, orange and white with sharp angles.  This one is a complete mystery to me.  If anyone knows what it might be please get in touch. 

 

To the left the front end of Thunder Blade DLX can be seen.  

 

A couple more interior shots, showing the bingo kiosk and a shell suit in all its eighties glory. 

The Marine Centre Amusements 

Last year the Marina Centre was demolished to make way for a new leisure complex.  With this, and the fire and subsequent demolition of the bowling alley, Regent Superbowl, it almost feels like my youth is slowly being chipped away and disappearing.  

 

I think there were amusements inside the main complex, as well as amusements accessible from the sea front.  I rarely ventured into the main complex back in the day and can only really remember the latter, from around the mid-nineties.  They had some modern machines for the time, which weren’t anywhere else down the seafront, and I put a lot of credits in Konami’s Crypt Killers and Sega’s Fighting Vipers.  Virtua Fighter was a massive deal in Japan, but never seemed to harness the same popularity over here.  Fighting Vipers took the same great gameplay, but with characters and themes geared more towards the West.  I loved it, smashing the opponent out of the caged arena never got old.  The cab featured full art and was the same type as that used for Virtua Fighter 2 and Virtua Striker.  I have never seen another in the UK.   

 

Here are some pics of the amusements from 1988. 

It looks a little sparse, but on the right there is Hang-On DLX, complete with a custom ‘Super Bike’ arch.  They had a similar one to this at the Flamingo. 

 

The Chuckle Brothers* posing in front of Hang-On DLX, complete with the cool ‘Super Bike’ arch.  Also on the left you can just make out Space Harrier DLX, with the blue Sega logo and red triangles at the top of the chair.  It’s a shame there isn’t a bit more on show! 

In this pic of the left side of the arcade you can see even more Sega goodness, Thunder Blade DLX and Super Hang-On just behind it.  Progress was rapid, with new awesome machines seemingly coming out every season.  Sega were at the forefront and really did own the arcades back then, continuously pushing boundaries and making fun, innovative games which were a joy to play. 

 

Absolute classics you hardly ever see anymore.  How I’d love to go back and spend the day there.  There also appears to be a row of machines at the back of the arcade, but they are unidentifiable. 

Operation Wolf, another absolute classic.   

The rows of Electrocoin Goliaths they had in the seafront arcades were a sight to behold.  Arcade Club have done an awesome job recreating this, but I’d love to find some pics of them from back in the day.  For now I’ll have to make do with this solitary Goliath, hiding behind the change desk. 

Now let’s travel back a few more years to the Marina Centre in the early eighties, the era of the dedicated cabs.  What a fantastic pic! 

 

The games from left to right are Pole Position, Armor Attack, Star Castle and Defender.  Pole Position takes me back, with the unmistakable ‘beep, beep, beep beeeeep.’  I had to look up Armor Attack and Star Castle.  These two are vector graphics multidirectional shooters, released by Cinematronics in 1980.  The era of the dedicateds was a bit before my time, and I remember the arcades having a good mix of dedicateds and generic Jamma cabs.  As Jamma became an industry standard, generic cabs became a popular choice with Ops.  Once earnings from a game started to decline, they could change the PCB and marquee and have a new game, negating the need for a new machine, thus saving money. 

*These aren’t actually the real Chuckle Brothers.  In the unlikely event the guys pictured are reading this, it was a light hearted comment with no offence intended.

Grays Amusements – Mundesley, Norfolk, August 2020

It may be December with the weather getting cold and wintry and Christmas well on the way, but let’s take a trip back to the summer, before the second UK lockdown.  It’s become something of an annual summer tradition for us to take the Norfolk coast road to Cromer for a spot of crabbing, check out the arcades and stop for fish n chips. 

On the way back we visited Grays Amusements in Mundesley. 

Grays is a releatively small arcade, and there have been some drastic changes made this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  The ticket redemption machines were no longer available for use, but the good news is the video games and pinball tables were still on the arcade floor for people to enjoy. 

It’s awesome to see some classics on the Norfolk coast.  The machines were in fantastic condition and played really well.  

Zombie outbreak training in progress. 

The owner mentioned that the classics have proved extremely popular and hopes Asteroids and Defender will be added to the line up next year. 

After working up an appetite battling zombies, alien ships, ghosts and a giant ape, we stopped by the fantastic Kingfisher Fish Bar in Walcott.  I’m looking forward to doing it all over again next year.