Google HQ office has classic arcade games!

Grantman

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Lucky bastards.

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Yep, that's an I, Robot on the right, along with Robotron 2084, Defender, Tempest cabaret, Ultracade and some unidentifiable cocktail game.

Here's the gallery this photo came from: http://www.officesnapshots.com/2008/02/19/google-mountainview-headquarters/

Edit: OK, I just realized that these photos are from 2008. Not sure if anybody posted this already.
 
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I think the cocktail is a pac-man.

It's a shame they decided to replace the I,Robot and Tempest with just some Tic Tac Toe gameboards.
 
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Lucky bastards.

gp34.jpg


Yep, that's an I, Robot on the right, along with Robotron 2084, Defender, Tempest cabaret, Ultracade and some unidentifiable cocktail game.

Here's the gallery this photo came from: http://www.officesnapshots.com/2008/02/19/google-mountainview-headquarters/

I posted this one a while back... This DOT was in the building that houses the Android team. They had three more games when we walked up stairs. They also said they had a full arcade on the first floor. What was sad was that they felt like they couldn't play them.

4783834277_a112a4af5d_b.jpg
 
Jeez they need to dim the lights in that joint and get some beer on them tables. Otherwise just turn em off to slow down the screenburn....
 
Last time I was there they had a pretty poorly built Mame cabinet as well. It was pretty disappointing to see how badly they had done it. But....the eating is good there every time!
 
Last time I was there they had a pretty poorly built Mame cabinet as well. It was pretty disappointing to see how badly they had done it. But....the eating is good there every time!

Not it that area they don't. It may be in some other building, but that area is the Android game area. There have also been some new games since 2008. There are two pinball machines, a Star Castle, a Gravitar, a Crystal Castles, an F355 Challenge and a XYBots. The Star Castle has been running 24 hours a day for 2 years. The Tempest Cabaret is now sitting next to the DOT, in the lobby. There is also IKARUGA upstairs somewhere.
 
The pac cocktail has a 96 in 1 kit in it...

That star castle has been amazing. It was assembled from spare parts for cax like 3 or 4 years ago.. I thought for sure it would be DOA by now..
 
Last time I was there they had a pretty poorly built Mame cabinet as well. It was pretty disappointing to see how badly they had done it. But....the eating is good there every time!

I can't pass up the chance to get an it's it while there either. We don't get them out here.
 
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There are games at a number of offices in the SF Bay Area. Industrial Light and Magic has several games, as does IGN (they publish a lot of game related magazines). I used to do a bit of maintenance for IGN. Out of order signs are pretty common for classic games in office environments.. At ILM I think half of their games were out of order!
 
I heard they also had an original 1972 Galaxy Game from Stanford University but I don't see it in any of these pictures.
Too bad, I'd love for a chance to play that one.
 
I can assure you most don't feel that way. Their only tie to you is to compensate you with a paycheck.
 
I heard they also had an original 1972 Galaxy Game from Stanford University but I don't see it in any of these pictures.
Too bad, I'd love for a chance to play that one.


they took it to cax last year(might have been the year before). Cool that it was still working.
 
Nice, didn't know Google had any... Pretty common for younger tech companies though.

I've got a few in the office at the startup I work for, some mine some that I convinced the company to buy in to. Have outfitted another tech company locally with a couple multi-cabs as well (I know, I know... They specifically wanted multi-boards even though I tried to sell them on dedicated setups). I know there's another shop with a mix of vids and pins, and still another that has a row of 4-5 pinball machines, lucky dogs.

There are games at a number of offices in the SF Bay Area. Industrial Light and Magic has several games, as does IGN (they publish a lot of game related magazines). I used to do a bit of maintenance for IGN. Out of order signs are pretty common for classic games in office environments.. At ILM I think half of their games were out of order!

All of the games in my office would have been dead by now without me taking care of them. Centipede just went down this afternoon as a matter of fact, intermittently booting to garbled sprites. Fixing 'em up is a small price to pay for getting to play at work and keep some of my cabs there though :p
 
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Nice, didn't know Google had any... Pretty common for younger tech companies though.

I've got a few in the office at the startup I work for, some mine some that I convinced the company to buy in to. Have outfitted another tech company locally with a couple multi-cabs as well (I know, I know... They specifically wanted multi-boards even though I tried to sell them on dedicated setups). I know there's another shop with a mix of vids and pins, and still another that has a row of 4-5 pinball machines, lucky dogs.



All of the games in my office would have been dead by now without me taking care of them. Centipede just went down this afternoon as a matter of fact, intermittently booting to garbled sprites. Fixing 'em up is a small price to pay for getting to play at work and keep some of my cabs there though :p

Yeah, it's a fairly standard perk of working in technology. Programmers are in such high demand that they get pampered like crazy to try to keep them from leaving.

When I worked at Digg, we had a Dig Dug cocktail machine, a fridge stocked with beer, and every Wednesday the whole company would meet up in the break room to drink together. One department would host and provide some kind of beverage (wine, belgian beer, whiskey) and snack, and the company would reimburse everything.

My office (which stumptown mentioned) has my Wizard of Wor, MVS-2-25, Black Knight 2000, and the Hollywood Heat pin I sold to another co-worker. Another San Francisco-based company has Pinbot in their Portland office, and used to have a Xenon. Twitter has a Tempest in their office.

You get work done because you've got shit to do and don't want to get fired, same as at any other company. But instead of taking a smoke break or whatever, you go play Samurai Shodown or Black Knight.
 
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