Arcade-in-a-box Tournament Center opens in Tuscon, AZ

If you are looking to open up an entertainment business, whether it is an arcade or something similar, one modern twist on the coin-op arcade center model is to open a place where people can come and play console games, without the need of coin-operated mechanisms to control the way a game is played. These seem to be gaining some popularity as we have reported on such places in the past although one thing I have wanted to find out is how well such places do after the grand opening, which is not something we see reported frequently.

Either way, a new gaming center following this model has recently opened in Tuscon Arizona called Arcade-in-a-box Tournament Center where they let people play from a variety of games on all of the consoles that are available on the market at this time. They charge an hourly rate which is tracked by a customer card system and for fighting fans they also provide custom arcade-style sticks on which to play. Then even have two arcade cabinets which run emulators for access to many classic arcade titles and to top it all off they hold weekly tournaments (with prizes to win of course). More info can be found on their website and in the press release you’ll find after the break.

The Sega Honeymoon

My good lady ain’t in to the games. I’ve tried to convert over the years, but she won’t have it. But there are some men out there in the world who’s other halfs are thier gaming buddies too. Well UK:R reader Radguy is one of those lucky men, not only does his with like games, they went on a Sega arcade tour whilst honeymooning in Japan. Lucky sod!

Head over to UK: Resistance to see more excellent pictures

[Discuss on the Forum]

Exercise-based arcade opens in Rockford, IL

Video games often come under fire from health police for being a sedentary activity, most recently in a UK television advert for a government backed health campaign which caused a bit of controversy. However, this is something that the Gymnastic Academy of Rockford hopes to combat by opening the new XRCADE. The arcade is full of games which require physical activity to play, such as dancing games and motorised climbing walls. It’s always nice to see attempts to relate fitness to kids on their own level!

[WREX: Workout arcade opens in Rockford] [Discuss on the Forum]

Chuck E. Cheese – where adults can’t learn to play nice

At the very first arcade that I worked at, they had a large area of redemption games and of course a redemption desk. For the most part things went smoothly there but on occasion we’d get the ‘pleasure’ of watching an adult throw a larger tantrum than any spoiled child we ever saw there. While the situation never broke out into an open fight,  it would make for a crappy work shift to see some spoiled adults act like complete jerks over some stupid redemption trinkets that they would forget about before the end of the day, either because some other kid got to a prize before their child did or something else along those lines.

That doesn’t compare to this news that was published in the Wall Street Journal of all places, about a Chuck E. Cheese’s in Wisconsin where the calls to the police outnumber any other eating establishment in the area. Police have already broken up 12 fights there since January 2007, with the largest fight involving 40 people during a child’s birthday party. While CEC calls the fights atypical occurances, the WSJ article discusses a few other locations where fights appear to be a regular occurance and this is causing pressure on CEC’s in certain cities to change their policies regarding a few things, in particular the serving of adult beverages.

Now this surprised me! It’s been a  long time since I’ve been to a CEC but I had no idea that they started serving beer and wine in an effort to make things “more comfortable for adults”. Seeing how CEC is billed primarily as a place for kids, I can’t imagine why they ever thought that this was a good idea. The WSJ article talks about how emotions run pretty high at these sort of places where people take their kids to celebrate birthdays and naturally parents want to make sure that everything is perfect for their child but when you have several parents expecting to make the same thing happen for their child, there are going to be conflicts. Throwing in a little booze isn’t going to help soften the impact and I wouldn’t think that they would want to create a place that turns into a bar where you can take your kids. Now only 70% of CEC’s serve alcohol and from the article CEC says that they are working to deter these types of incidents since they know that it’s not good for business. We’ll have to wait and see how it works out and I do hope that they can work it out for the best, I’d hate to hear about some child being seriously hurt in one of these altercations.

[WSJ article on Chuck E. Cheese’s Trouble] [ Thanks to Jared Reas of Escapist Magazine for pointing this out [Discuss on the Forum]

Chuck E. Cheese – where adults can't learn to play nice

At the very first arcade that I worked at, they had a large area of redemption games and of course a redemption desk. For the most part things went smoothly there but on occasion we’d get the ‘pleasure’ of watching an adult throw a larger tantrum than any spoiled child we ever saw there. While the situation never broke out into an open fight,  it would make for a crappy work shift to see some spoiled adults act like complete jerks over some stupid redemption trinkets that they would forget about before the end of the day, either because some other kid got to a prize before their child did or something else along those lines.

That doesn’t compare to this news that was published in the Wall Street Journal of all places, about a Chuck E. Cheese’s in Wisconsin where the calls to the police outnumber any other eating establishment in the area. Police have already broken up 12 fights there since January 2007, with the largest fight involving 40 people during a child’s birthday party. While CEC calls the fights atypical occurances, the WSJ article discusses a few other locations where fights appear to be a regular occurance and this is causing pressure on CEC’s in certain cities to change their policies regarding a few things, in particular the serving of adult beverages.

Now this surprised me! It’s been a  long time since I’ve been to a CEC but I had no idea that they started serving beer and wine in an effort to make things “more comfortable for adults”. Seeing how CEC is billed primarily as a place for kids, I can’t imagine why they ever thought that this was a good idea. The WSJ article talks about how emotions run pretty high at these sort of places where people take their kids to celebrate birthdays and naturally parents want to make sure that everything is perfect for their child but when you have several parents expecting to make the same thing happen for their child, there are going to be conflicts. Throwing in a little booze isn’t going to help soften the impact and I wouldn’t think that they would want to create a place that turns into a bar where you can take your kids. Now only 70% of CEC’s serve alcohol and from the article CEC says that they are working to deter these types of incidents since they know that it’s not good for business. We’ll have to wait and see how it works out and I do hope that they can work it out for the best, I’d hate to hear about some child being seriously hurt in one of these altercations.

[WSJ article on Chuck E. Cheese’s Trouble] [ Thanks to Jared Reas of Escapist Magazine for pointing this out [Discuss on the Forum]

Poll time!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that WordPress (the wonderful people that host this site) have now added a poll option, so let’s waste no time in taking advantage of it. I might make this a weekly thing, if I can think of something interesting to ask and/or remember. 

Let’s kick it off with a simple one

If you have any suggestions for future polls, please leave your idea in the comments.

[Discuss in the Forum]

A Japanese arcade in Bangladesh

[Thanks to Oga Shi for sending this in]

If you live in the capital of Bangladesh and have a lot of money to spend, where better than in this Japanese arcade. Apparently this arcade there is quite popular with the upper class and of the games there, the top three are Virtua Racing, Virtua ON and Final Lap R. Virtua ON didn’t do terribly well outside of Japan from what I know but they certainly love it there. There is a short video tour below, that and the article via InterNew.jp.

More coverage for ArcadeUFO in Texas

We’ve discussed the opening of ArcadeUFO previously but it blows my mind how many blogs and other news sources I keep running into that are discussing it – so much so that it’s not worth my time to report every single one. But I figured I’d mention it one last time to congratulate the new company on the amount of news coverage they are getting, which is certainly helping bring in people to support them and hopefully they’ll be getting enough momentum from the get go to keep them running for a long time. Whether they expected this amount of coverage or not is unknown to me but it was good planning on their part to get a hold of some highly prized games such as Tekken 6 and Street Fighter IV – if anyone continues to think that fighters aren’t meaning anything to people then you need to think again.

[Via Wired]

There’s a little more on my mind about this though, hit the post break if you’re interested in my thoughts about the attention given to arcades by the media and how it is sometimes a bit lopsided or discuss it on the forums.

Update on my arcade, The Game Grid (8/29/08)

It’s been a little while since I did an update on how my arcade is going and I’ve had a few people ask about it so here we go.

We finally got a sign put up a week ago, something that should have been completed two months ago when we opened but was delayed due to waiting on approval from the mall, the city along with production and a few other things. It certainly hasn’t helped that I didn’t have such visibility until now but I’m glad it’s finally taken care of. Unfortunately it is already falling apart, one of the buttons that was on the box broke off and disappeared over the past weekend, which I am not happy about. They are supposed to get it fixed, but I have to wait, yet again.

Another thing that hasn’t helped is the fact that our air conditioning has not worked since we opened so basically we’ve gone the entire summer without AC. I have been fighting to get it fixed and fortunately I am not going to pay for the repairs but that has meant that I have had to sit and wait and watch people go out the door when it’s sometimes hotter inside than it is out. It also has made it uncomfortable to be there all day but also about a week ago that was finally fixed after the entire unit was replaced. That certainly has helped make it pleasant to be inside for once.

I have had some great regulars that come in just about every day and part of that is due to the PC LAN. But it is working out like I planned – they play both the PCs and the arcades and in some cases they have been exposed to arcade titles that they never would have cared about otherwise.

Hit the post break for my musing on game earnings, games breaking, marketing, school starting and what to do next.

ArcadeUFO opens today

I have to admit that I have never seen so many people excited for one arcade to open before but we have mentioned ArcadeUFO before and as of today they are officially open. They are open in the Austin area and as part of the fuel to the hype behind them they have both Tekken 6 and Street Fighter IV available already. We wish them the best and if you live in that area be sure to drop by and give them your support!

[ArcadeUFO mainpage] [Discuss on the Forum]