Past Times Arcade in Girard, OH

Outland81

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I had a chance to visit for the first time last week — it's on our route from IN to PA, and conveniently at the half way point for us. Very easy to get there from 80/90. Girard is near Youngstown. I already gave this place a shout out on the Top 5 Destination Arcades in the World? thread but wanted to elaborate on my experience. Hoping others will chime in on their experiences there!

First things first, their website with all the basic info...
https://pasttimesarcade.com/

A recent YT walk through video that's very thorough. Should give you a great intro to what's in store. Even though this was in April, some of the games have been swapped out since then.


After you pass the vintage grocery store sign, you pay for your $20 day pass at the entry counter, put on your wrist band, and then you're all set.

I headed straight for the EDOT. It was OOO. :cry: I asked an employee about it. He was kind enough to turn it on just to double check. A few moments of EDOT glory. I saw it all lit up. The floor bulbs worked, the big disc lit up, it looked like all the inner and background pieces were working. But the audio was a disaster. Very loud constant hum, along with static, garbled Sark speech and sound effects, all making it unplayable.

Nitpicking on the cosmetics, but there's no carpet on the back piece and the start button should be white. Harumph!

edot1.jpg edot2.jpg edot3.jpg

Important detail: this was a Sunday, and the place is open Thursday - Sunday. Best chance for working games is on Thursday, after the staff has repaired games from M-W (and before the games start to go down over the weekend).

Such a shame. After crying for an hour, I moved on. Kidding. No tears were shed. There's so much that this arcade offers. It's overwhelming. I've never in my life seen so many pinball machines in one place. I've also never seen so many bronze age and early machines in one place. There's an entire row of early gun games. I spent lots of time with these b/c of my obsession with mirrored games with blacklight effects. Wow!

Two others that really caught my interest were Dune Buggy and Spooksville.

The player car is visible behind the mirror, but the playfield is reflected from below (second and third pics). This was a ton of fun. It's a game where you keep trying to stay on course and hit the lit up elements around the track, which keep changing.

IMG_8781.jpg IMG_8782.jpg

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Here's Spooksville, a very early mirrored pinball game. What a beast of a machine. Just so cool to see an early version of this idea...it reminded me of Video Pinball and Varkon (more on that later!).

Spooks1.jpg Spooks2.jpg Spooks3.jpg Spooks4.jpg

To be continued...
 
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I've driven by that a few times, buy never had time to stop.

I normally try avoid Girard since it's a well-known unmanned speed camera trap.
 
Land of the Giants...

Combat by Sega. It worked really well given its age. I love how it uses all the vertical cabinet space to reflect the play field horizontally.

Combat1.jpg Combat2.jpg

Periscope had issues. The periscope itself has a shutter that wouldn't stay open, so I couldn't see targets and fire at them. But it was amazing just to see it.

Pscope.jpg Pscope2.jpg

Hercules pinball next to Periscope. I played that for the first time, too. Another big beast! It worked great.

Hercules.jpg


Other highlights below. These Williams pins were a revelation. I even got our son to play Joust with me, and I think he actually enjoyed it (not easy to do). Varkon is so strange but so wild to play and look at. The artwork is incredible. I also found myself loving Bride of Pin Bot. You can see the others in the series on either side. Wish I'd had time to play them all.

These all worked great and were a ton of fun!

Defender.jpg Joust.jpg Varkon.jpg

Machine.jpg
 
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I hate to say it, but every time I saw a DOT or the few times I saw an EDOT, they were all OOO.

And I am not exaggerating. I was into TRON when it came out, I have a TRON hat from Disney even.
 
I hate to say it, but every time I saw a DOT or the few times I saw an EDOT, they were all OOO.
That sucks. I hope you get to play it as intended someday.

On the plus side, if it had been working, I probably wouldn't have played much else there...
 
Last batch of pics. I played Vega and the gun games. They also have a really nice Berzerk, Carnival, Nichibutsu Crazy Climber, Star Wars, Stratovox, Toobin, and many more. Wish I'd had more time there.

Anyway, this place is lots of fun, well organized, and almost everything is in top notch condition. I hope people get a chance to check it out.

gun games.jpg zoar.jpg vega.jpg jackrabbit.jpg

route16.jpg change.jpg sign.jpg
 
Forgot to mention that on the way back from PA, we stopped at the Mahoning Valley service area on the OH turnpike.

Love me some Cruisin' Blast! The Singapore track is radical, man. 🤩

blast.jpg

How about that sign? They still haven't changed these to say "Redemption Crap." We'll wait...and wait...

(Or I guess "Claw Machine Crap"...)
 
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