I grew up in arcades. I spent most of my money in the late 70's thru the mid 80's on Donkey Kong Jr., Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Q-Bert. I owned the Atari 2600, Colecovision, Sega Saturn, and Playstation 1. Along the way, I stopped playing games standing, as did most of the world. Gaming went away from the public places, it went inward, into handhelds and our homes. You didn't have to pay 25 cents a play anymore, you forked over $40 and bought the cartridge. Arcades slowly disappeared.

I spent days in Crazy 8 in the Colonial Plaza in Waterbury. TheMochproductions uploaded this video to YouTube a few years back, if you haven't seen it, take a look, it's a beautiful glimpse into the past -

Quassy always had a decent arcade, but their stand-up video games are very limited. They feature more games of chance, like ski-ball and whack-a-mole. I used to love going to the arcade in the Danbury Mall food court, Time Zone? Time Out? I used to also play in arcades called Games People Play through the Midwest. Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods have modern versions of arcades now.

I still love visiting arcades. Over the past few years, I've gone up to the Weir's Beach area of Laconia, New Hampshire, and spent a day at Funspot, the legit fully-functioning world's biggest arcade. This place is amazing, Funspot houses the American Classic Arcade Museum, which has over 200 fully-functioning coin-operated machines, most with their original artwork. I snapped a few photos, take a spin through the gallery below and try and see if your favorite is in there.

Part of my family lives in Pennsylvania, and my cousin's husband owns a vintage pinball arcade, it's called Village Arcade, and it's in Saint Peter's,PA. Barcade opened up in New Haven a couple of years ago. I want something like that around here again. Candlewood Lake, Lake Zoar, Bantam Lake could all use an arcade. There are so many vacant storefronts in strip malls around here, and everywhere for that matter.

 

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