Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade wins Stride’s Save The Arcades 2 competition

And by the final tally, it wasn’t even close, with Ground Kontrol pulling in 624,871,000 total points, which were donated to them by players via the Cowbots flash game. Arcade Infinity came in second place with 371,187,900 points and Rocky’s Replay with 109,806,000 points. Congratulations to Ground Kontrol on their victory (which also lands them $25,000 in prize money so they can beef up their location further), I had seen a video online where it showed that they had a station setup just to play Cowbots and they were also on top of sending out press releases to make sure that people didn’t forget. To top it off they even held a 24 hr. “Cow-Down” to promote the end of the event and keep players donating so in the end, the strategy really paid off. If you are ever in the area of any of the arcades above I’d encourage you to visit them but I am sure that regulars for Ground Kontrol are already excitedly anticipating some of the changes that will come to the place thanks to the prize.

Now a question I have is: Is this it for Stride’s Save The Arcades campaign? They didn’t seem to really publicize this one as much as they did the first competition, where they had went as far as hiring actor Zachary Quinto to go out to a California arcade as a part of the promotion. They don’t say anything about future plans for the campaign on the webpage currently so we will have to wait and see but even if this is the end, we certainly have to appreciate the effort. The attention this has brought to arcades has been better than what we get with trade shows since individual arcade businesses have been highlighted on a national scale. Of course there is a lot more that needs to be done to curb perception that the industry is dead but this has been an excellent way in helping to dispel that myth.

[Save The Arcades 2 – Stride Gum]

Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade wins Stride's Save The Arcades 2 competition

And by the final tally, it wasn’t even close, with Ground Kontrol pulling in 624,871,000 total points, which were donated to them by players via the Cowbots flash game. Arcade Infinity came in second place with 371,187,900 points and Rocky’s Replay with 109,806,000 points. Congratulations to Ground Kontrol on their victory (which also lands them $25,000 in prize money so they can beef up their location further), I had seen a video online where it showed that they had a station setup just to play Cowbots and they were also on top of sending out press releases to make sure that people didn’t forget. To top it off they even held a 24 hr. “Cow-Down” to promote the end of the event and keep players donating so in the end, the strategy really paid off. If you are ever in the area of any of the arcades above I’d encourage you to visit them but I am sure that regulars for Ground Kontrol are already excitedly anticipating some of the changes that will come to the place thanks to the prize.

Now a question I have is: Is this it for Stride’s Save The Arcades campaign? They didn’t seem to really publicize this one as much as they did the first competition, where they had went as far as hiring actor Zachary Quinto to go out to a California arcade as a part of the promotion. They don’t say anything about future plans for the campaign on the webpage currently so we will have to wait and see but even if this is the end, we certainly have to appreciate the effort. The attention this has brought to arcades has been better than what we get with trade shows since individual arcade businesses have been highlighted on a national scale. Of course there is a lot more that needs to be done to curb perception that the industry is dead but this has been an excellent way in helping to dispel that myth.

[Save The Arcades 2 – Stride Gum]

Reminder: Save the Arcades 2 competition ends Tuesday

Just a friendly remind here for those who want to take an active part in helping out an arcade out there – the STRIDE Gum Save the Arcades 2 competition is drawing to a close as whoever has the most points donated to them via the Cowbots flash game will win the $25,000 prize. At the moment Ground Kontrol in Oregon is in first place (in fact they are holding a big event all for the purpose of drawing attention to the competition), with Arcade Infinity in California in 2nd and Rocky’s Replay in 3rd. Any of those spots could change any moment depending upon how many points separate each business but we aren’t sure this time as the points are not being displayed publicly.

The question after this is, will STRIDE continue their campaign to help arcades that are out there? I certainly hope so as this has been a great idea on their part to really help some arcades out, even the ones who didn’t win the cash prizes get the benefit of some national attention, which usually spurs some extra local attention as well.

Visit the Save The Arcades site here.

Save The Arcades 2 by Stride Gum announces contestants, begins tournament

Via

It took them a while but after asking for your nominations and sifting through them for the past four months, STRIDE Gum is continuing it’s campaign to “Save The Arcades” by running Save The Arcades 2, where this time three US arcades are vying for a chance to win $25,000 for their business. The contestants are: Arcade Infinity (Rowland Heights, CA), Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade (Portland, OR) and Rocky’s Replay (Winter Park, FL) You can read brief profiles on each arcade by clicking here. [Editor’s note: If you click on the link to visit the websites via Stride’s info page it takes you to different arcades from the last competition.]For one of them to win, they need to have the largest number of points earned in a new flash game called Cowbots (it’s an amusing little Robotron clone that has a Jeff Minter-flare to it) donated to their particular arcade.

Apparently you can only donate to an arcade if you live in that State however. I am not in any of the locations that these arcades are in and after the site asked for my State, it said that I’m not eligible to participate in point donations, although I can still play Cowbots. Someone let us know if they have different luck but if that is the case then it looks like they are going to try and make sure that only locals from the areas of those arcades fight for their favorite, which probably helps keep things fair. We wish the best of luck to each of these arcades and we will know who wins on June 16th. Also be sure to thank Stride for their efforts in supporting the arcade scene like this by buying some Stride gum or sending them a thank you e-mail, whichever works for your tastes.

[Play here – Save The Arcades 2 – STRIDE Gum]

STRIDE begins Save The Arcades 2

STRIDE gum is at it again and their Save The Arcades campaign has just entered it’s second phase. This time they are giving players out there a chance to nominate the arcade of their choice to be saved, as along as it follows four certain guidelines, which are:

Participants should submit their nomination in 500 characters or less (including spaces and punctuation) and write about an arcade that meets the following qualifications: Arcade should (1) have classic games, (2) be a business that operates in the 50 United States and District of Columbia, (3) have at least 15 arcade games on site, (4) be locally owned and operated and (5) have an affinity for classic games.

The period for nomination runs from now (well, it started on the 17th but I was in Vegas and didn’t hear about it) until January 7th, 2010. You have to sign up on the Stride gum website but it’s free and if you participated in the previous Save The Arcades promotion you should already have that account.  So go and nominate your favorite arcade and help them out!

[Save The Arcades 2] [Discuss on the Forum]

Arcade UFO wins Strides Save the Arcades 2008 competition

Stride Gum’s Save the Arcades competition is now over and they have announced a winner. Where there were four arcades across the US to choose from, one walked away with the $25,000 prize and that was Arcade UFO in Austin, TX. When you look at the final votes it appears that StarBase Arcade in San Fransisco, CA was fairly close to first place, with Star Worlds Arcade and Game Galaxy coming in a distant 3rd and 4th place, respectively.

As to what Arcade UFO will do with the prize money, we don’t know that yet but if you look at their current game selection they already have a number of high-profile games available so it should be both interesting and exciting to see what they will be able to do with this. We extend our congratulations to Arcade UFO and hope that they will be able to continue to provide not only a great venue for players to hang out at but to stand as a great example for others out there to look to. Also our thanks once again to Stride Gum for this undertaking. It is notable however that Stride is not finished here – they have announced that starting next month they “…will ask gamers to nominate the arcade they think is worthy of the next Save the Arcades crusade.” which will happen sometime in 2010 under the name “Save the Arcades 2”.

[Stride Save the Arcades website] [Arcade UFO website] [Discuss on the Forums]