When was the last time you played in an arcade?

[storino03]

Whether it's the small rooms found in theatres, Dave and Buster's, arcades that you won tickets for lame prizes, or back in the 80s/90s era?

I think my fondest memories, were among the Pizza Hut establishments that had a few of the machines near the counters. I wasn't much of an arcade person growing up, and while there were a lot of restaurants that had huge rooms filled with them where you could win prizes by redeeming tickets, those days are largely gone.

I still haven't gone to Dave and Buster's yet!

[zborgerd]

We've got a Gameworks (SEGA's arcade) near me, and I've probably been to about half a dozen D&B's over the years. Been about 2-3 years since I've been to one.

My best arcade memories are from when I was a kid. We had a "Super Saturday" at a local miniature golf / arcade place. $5 got you unlimited games and pizza and soda at the end. I first played Cadash there. Mortal Kombat had just been released, as was the first Virta Racing game. I seem to remember Golden Axe 2 and Magic Sword being there as well. This was during the 16-bit era.

My first ever game was an arcade machine in some hole-in-the-wall diner in my hometown. It's been so long and I can't recall if it was Centipede or Millipede. When I play Millipede on my 2600, it brings back that memory, so I'm pretty sure that was it.

Pizza Hut was always fun. I remember one had Castlevania in a cocktail table. There was also a NARC machine. Later, I remember a Pizza Hut with a Dragon Spirit arcade machine.

Many people are familiar with Nolan Bushnell's Chuck-E-Cheese, but there was a competing chain called ShowBiz Pizza back in the 80s. The games and animatronics were much better. I vividly remember playing RoadBlasters on one occasion. Must have been the late 80s since that game was released in 87.

[Tsukoblue]

I haven't been to an arcade in years, all the ones within 150 miles went out of business long ago

There was a restaurant 20 miles away that had the Japanese machines for the two Megaman/Rockman arcade games but the restaurant was wiped out during the 2003 Hurricane on the East Coast

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Isabel

Those two Rockman machines are now resting at the bottom of the river where the restaurant was, it's since been rebuilt

[FlamingFirewire]

Never really got a chance to go to any arcades often when they were actually more common place, but I did make to sure visit the arcade of the last amusement park I went to - it even had two pairs of Japanese fighting game machines in it, but I can't remember what they were called anymore. Fun times

[ramzastrife]

The grocery store down the street had an arcade in it when I was a kid. Mortal combat was the hot game from most of my memories, though I do remember spending quite a few quarters on Samurai Showdown and World Heroes on the neo-geo 4-1. I remember I was pretty sad when they closed it, I would have been in the 7-9 yrs old when that happened. The 49th street galleria (mini golf, laser tag, arcade things) and chuck-e-cheese were usually my go to for birthdays. The Galleria closed a few years after I moved, but Chuck-E-Cheese is still around.

My family never really did big vacations, but every year for our "big" one, we would go to the local amusement park (Lagoon). During the summer they run a bounce back promotion where if you visit between certain days you can bounce back for an extremely reduced price. The price has since gone up, but back then it was $1. So we would camp in the camp ground and go to lagoon for 2 days straight. I spent many a quarter on the simpsons arcade game in their arcade.

After I moved to Texas, the only arcade within 50 miles was at the mall (I guess there was technically an arcade at the bowling alley too). I spent a bit of time in there. I don't remember what I played early on, but later, I played a bit of DDR. Oddly enough, I got one of my good friends (who was also my future college roomate) addicted to DDR. He would spend hours playing DDR there.

In my late teenage years/early adult years, I would occasionally go to Hollywood Connection. It has a movie theater, arcade, laser tag, and that type of stuff. But my preferred arcade was the nickelcade. It cost like $2 to get in, but all the games were $.05 or $.10 to play. So I would take 10 bucks, pay the entrance fee, then get 4 rolls of nickels and play for a few hours. It was a blast, and amazingly enough it is still around. Now I want to go...

Still have never gone to a Dave and Buster's. Closest one to me is in Vegas I think. I really want to, I just hope their food isn't terrible when I do eventually try it.

[Aristides]

Here in PR just about every shopping mall and movie theater has an Arcade (I think it's just cultural here lol). Of course it's not as glamorous as it sounds, it's not full of 16bit-gen Arcade games XD. Most arcades here just have fighting games, rail shooters, racing games, some dance/rhythm game and a huge bunch of ticket machines/games. My closest one is in a mall like 10-15 min away from home where I usually play MvC2 & Tekken 6 (also has SFII in it's original Japanese cabinet XD. It even has the yen sticker on it and you can play for about a quarter I think.) Though I've always had Arcades around I haven't been pumped for them since the mid 90s back when there were tons of beat-em-ups, sidescrollers and shooters. Nowadays they don't really offer anything that interests me much when I'm by myself but when I go out with my friends we always stop at the Arcade and have some fun :P.

To my knowledge, we don't have any D&Bs here (no idea why) but I had gone to some a few years back when I was visiting the states, it was pretty cool. :P

[xelement5x]

Last arcade I was at was the Gameworks in Seattle, I basically camped out at the DJ Max Technika as much as I could. They had a pretty awesome selection of games though. I used to go to the Gameworks in Schaumburg all the time when I still lived in that area. My friends and I managed to pool a huge amount of tickets and get an awesome Shadow the Hedgehog plush.

[Kou The Mad]

sodding years mate.

[TigerClaw]

wow, I just don't see much arcades in Montreal these days. Last arcades(i went to many) I went to was in japan.

[TempestOne]

Knights of King Arthur's Court was my favorite pizza acdade sticky......So smokye in theire stho, Mi wanan live......Haha