Some other neighborhood geeks and I discovered a location just a tad east of Emerald on west O street which has a crap load of old arcade/bar toys. There was an ad in Craig’s so we ventured out. I’ve been by this old place a few times in my life and always wondered what its story was. It sits on about ½ an acre, has approx. 10 semi trailers and a several smaller outbuildings. The main focus of the property though is a 2 story Southwestern Stucco style building, in pretty bad shape. The thing looks like it could be straight out of a Rob Zombie movie.
So we arrive to the site and were greeted by Gary and Jerry aka “Father Time” which is what he said everyone calls him. FT claimed to, at one time, run the largest arcade franchise in NE and surrounding states. I would have loved to have stayed and bull shitted with the guy for a while but it was getting dark and the rain was moving in. I know he would have had some great stories about running the arcades back in their golden days.
Anyway, I just wanted to suggest the place in case others wanted to get out there and have a look around. For the most part, most cabinets are not in working order. Some of the shells and artwork are in good shape and others are not. I wish I could have gotten out there 2 days prior because a guy from OK City came up and snapped up 200 working cabinets for ~18K…would have been fun to see those. You have to plan on spending a combined total of ~$200 to get Gary to take you out so grab your friends, some dough ray me and a flash light.(did I forget to mention there’s no power in the building?) Games start at $25 and go up. We ended up walking out of there with a Dig Dug, Mortal Combat, Asteroids, Omega Race, Chinese Hero and Pole Position cabinet along with a box of shuffle board wax, an oscilloscope and other misc. pieces. I think everyone plans on converting their cabinets to MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator) boxes but keeping the original panels, artwork etc.