New Pittsburgh Arcade in an Old Church

Oh very cool! Here's a post with more info from the Pittsburgh Arcade Collective, and here's their page for The Church Arcade. Looks like they bought the building and are gearing up for a pretty serious arcade. 🤯

Wow! Love that city and I'll definitely make a trip.


Today (Nov 24) was a pleasantly unexpected day. We aren't sure why or how, but Knapp Arcade shared a wonderful teaser post about The Church Arcade. For the next 12 hours our social media and messaging was exploding with likes, follows, and questions. It was a little unexpected and overwhelming, but also incredibly humbling and encouraging to see so many people in the local, regional, and national arcade scene so excited and supportive of our effort at The Church Arcade. The church as been a humble labor of love for the past 6+ months. Here's some background...

In early 2025, core PAC member Jon expressed an interest in buying a building for our (PAC members) games to be in. His only ask was that we all help him do it with sweat and comradery. That was an easy "yes, let's do it." When he found this vacant church for sale, we knew it felt right. And we've been dumping time and sweat in ever since.

We held a "very soft" opening private friends and family only event in mid September (this was where the current pictures came from). It was a wonderful event. But there is much left to do to be "open for real."

Answers to common questions:

1. When will you open? - Early 2026 hopefully. We don't have a date yet. Still a handful of stuff to check off the list before we are ready to open. Follow The Church Arcade for updates.

2. What are your hours? - TBD. Again, follow The Church Arcade for updates. But we are likely leaning towards an event based/membership based model. This won't be a "show up any time you want" place. This will be a community model where we schedule get-togethers and you put it on your calendar. Think tournaments, leagues, theme parties, or private events and rentals. We are evaluating options. Let us know if you have a preference.

3. How much will it cost? - We haven't decided on entry fee amounts yet, but we do know all games will be on free play, so you pay one price to play all day (or for a designated time period).

4. How many games / what games? - We have a lot of games. More than 6 people have their personal games here and are adding more constantly. As of this post we have around 100 video arcades and about 30 pinballs, but that's growing daily.

5. Is this PAC's official location? - Yes and No. PAC is a community and not tied to any one location. The Church is owned by a core PAC member and populated by games owned by PAC members. But the mission of PAC remains the same - to promote the Pittsburgh arcade scene - not just the Church location. The Church Arcade is simply an extension of this mission, not a replacement for it.

This influx of attention caught us off guard. We should have the official website live later this week. In the meantime, follow The Church Arcade on Facebook, or use the sign-up form on www.pittsburgharcadecollective.com for updates.

We appreciate the overwhelming love and support and look forward to enjoying games with you in 2026. Thanks!

~ Mike Hough (on behalf of PAC Members Jon Snow, Mike Behr, Mike Hovraluck, Jason Flinn, and Adam Airhart)
Click to expand...
 
All that needs to be done here is the following:

Where the pulpit was, you make an arcade cabinet. Inside this cabinet, you either get an emulator or an original NES, and hook it up with arcade buttons on a control panel. The game that shall be played in this cabinet will ONLY be the NES disaster.....Bible Adventures.

Therefore, we have the church aspect preserved and the arcade enhanced simultaneously!

Amen.
 
This is a hard one for me. As a designer, I admire the artistic direction and of course the execution. Truly amazing and hats off to the creators. However...... deconsecrated churches and what should they become is a complex topic. What should they become? A brewery, an auto shop, an office building, an arcade? I honestly don't know..

From research and personal experience, a secularized church more commonly becomes a boutique hotel, educational center, town landmark, and sometimes a personal residences. Again, not saying an arcade cant work, but to me it just doesn't feel very arcade like....... Others opinions are obviously different and respected.

Bravo, and I wish them massive success.
 
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