Your old arcade hangout and what it is now.

[trickman]

Galaxy World -- Carol Stream, Illinois. That was my hangout. I used to go with my buds and hang out there a ton, throughout my childhood and into my teens. Still went back there after college, etc. b/c it still thrived and had lots of fighting games in the '90s.

It still exists but they remodeled a lot of the inside to include lazer tag and kiddie rides, and it's now a subsidiary of Brunswick Bowling which is attached on the right side of the building. Still a good portion of the arcade area is still intact, which is amazing to me.

It used to have a cool, neon sign with their "Galaxy World" logo all lit up and awesome looking. Now they just have a generic yellow vinyl sign put up that says, Games, Rides & Lazer Tag.

 

[SterlingRush]

Good ol' Sluggo's was the best arcade this town ever saw. Downsized about half of it and it became WC Franks. Shortly after that, it was turned into the hallway entrance to the multiplex movie theater. There hasn't been anything close to that since in this town.

 

[Scotty]

My Hangouts in Cleveland:

Space Invaders Cleveland - Now a Family Dollar
Space Invaders Pearl & Brookpark - Now an adult book store
Space Invaders 2 Pearl & Brookpark - Renamed and became a pizza joint & arcade (same owner as before).
Space Invaders North Olmsted - Parking lot for a pharmacy.
Future World - North Ridgeville - Auto parts store??
Fun -N- Games (x2) - Randall Mall (closed)
Arcade at Great Northern Mall - some restaurant in the food court
Arcade at Parmatown Mall - Spencer Gifts
Family Amusement Center Cleveland - ABC Check Cashing
Unknown named Dry Cleaner Cleveland - Cell phone accessory place
Unknown named arcade by Fairview Hospital - Parking lot

There were other places I went to, like pizza joints, bowling alleys, taco places, convenience stores, grocery stores etc that had anywhere from 1 to 20 or so games that are no longer around. Too many to list.

 

[Kawydud]

Thruway mall arcade, I remember them getting a brand new Joust machine the one day I was there. I think that Dragons Lair and Joust were side by side at the time. The mall has since been torn down and there is a super market in place.

 

[bradd]

my childhood arcade, the wizard, is still there. the guy sells on ebay and pretty much uses the store for storing his broken games. there are usually a few classics though, in recent years he has had working q-bert, pac man, galaga, afterburner, primal rage, 18 wheeler, lucky and wild, tekken, xmen, and a few others on their way to ebay. decent guy, offered to sell me a nice pacman with new monitor for $600 but i didnt have the cash at the time.

 

[Shavenyak]

Tanos moved and after 6 months or so it closed. The place it was at first is now a pizza joint. The second place was a real estate office the last time I saw it.

Video World became a church the last time I saw it.

I can't remember what Silver Oddessy became. It's in a shopping center.

 

[KevinMullins]

Castles N' Coasters in Phoenix, AZ.

Still standing!

Were they any affiliation of any kind with Alladins Castle at any point in time ?
(I'm talking maybe 20 years ago)
I recall a three level building, castle themed....I don't remember rides and such though, and I can only remember the name Alladins Castle for some reason. (been a loooooong time since I've been in that area as a kid)

 

[ArcadeMaze]

Hard to say....

I thought the Arcadia arcade in Crossroads mall (Waterloo, IA) was turned into a Verizon store. Arcadia2 (College Square mall, Cedar Falls, IA) was still in existance, as far as I know...

The one-offs around town are all gone.

In Des Moines, The Aladdin's Castles in Southridge (the only place I saw a Journey and a Continental Circuit- Cockpit with the 3D glasses) and Merle Hay Malls are gone, gone, gone... The famous arcade in Valley West Mall (Where a couple got married with Pac Man) is also gone.

The Classics out at Adventureland Park are gone since the arcade (Frontline, Ms. Pac Man, Marble Madness) burned down last year.


ArcadeMaze!

 

[khabbi]

Cool thread.

I moved a lot when I was a kid, so I have no idea what's in my old stomping grounds from the 80's.. but there was a place in Bradenton called Pirates Cove that I used to frequent, it had a large go-cart track, putt-putt golf, and batting cages also. It was a really cool place while it was there.

It's now an empty, sad building that's grown over with weeds. Lots of good memories there, especially with playing Gauntlet and I played the hell out of Cyclone pinball there. Ahh, the good old days!

Going back to the early 80's, I spent a lot of time in a pizza place close to my house that had Scramble, then Donkey Kong. I also went to Showbiz pizza alot, and of course the mall arcade.

In 83-86 I frequented a local bowling alley that had a great selection of games, including Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Karate Champ, and others.. and the best part about that place was that my older sister was dating the owner's son, so I always got hooked up with free credits

 

[Ripweade]

Bally's Aladdin's Castle in the South Mall in Allentown, PA.

Closed in the mid to late 1980's. Now it's just an epty space behind a solid wall. They gutted the mall, took out a lot of stores, and now there's just a Petco and a Staples there.

Bill

 

[Slackmoe]

My local arcade's from the early 80's were the bowling alley which is still here and The Magic Scoop an ice cream place and had a good size arcade in the next room. That place is now a meeting place for Narcotics Anonymous.

Andrew

 

[josie]

I had 3 places growing up that had arcades in them that I played...

First was a bowling alley... that is now a Staples
Second was a bar w/a few games... that is now a music school
Third was also a bar w/some games... that is now a doctor's office.

The mall arcades I didn't go to as nobody ever wanted to go with me, and there was always some whiny kid running around out of control near the entrance so it was hard to try to convince my buddies to stop in.

 

[descrentl]

Barnstormers. Looked like a red barn. I think its a quicklube now. I remember when they tore it down, I was pretty bummed. Another arcade was at Wonderland mall. The whole mall is gone now and its a Walmart and Target.

 

[MrBungle]

post pics if you got em guys! i'm hunting through stacks of photos right now to find some of my own haha

 

[spmahn]

I remember going to the most fantastically awesome arcade ever somewhere outside of Boston, MA maybe about 4 or 5 years ago called the Good Time Emporium. It was a huge warehouse sized facility where they had nearly every title you could conceive of, old and new, from the last 20 years. It was the greatest place I've ever stepped foot in, and sadly right before I was planning a return trip a few years ago, I read that their landlord wouldn't renew their lease and booted them out so a furniture store could move in. What a shame.

 

[bahamacop]

Both the ones I went to are now gone. Well, one is an empty shell of a building covered in weeds with a "For Sale" sign in front of the lot, the other was a mall space renovated into several store fronts. I think it's either a wig place or tee shirt printers, not sure which.

 

[coinopdirect]

The Paladin Arcade in Lynn, MA. It was the only one in town and got shut down in the late 80's by the city due to the crime. Was a hole in the wall and the only place for us punk kids to go.

 

[JamesJH]

The first arcade I ever remember going into in the late 70's was Time Out (of Time Out Tunnel fame) in the Springfield Mall in Springfield Virginia. They used to have two locations in the mall - and one is still open to this day.

My "home" arcade though was Flippers in the Reston Bowling Center. It is now an empty lot. The parking lot is now used for an ice skating rink that was built nearby. Flippers was a full size arcade attached to the bowling alley -- and they were very good at getting new games. It is the only place I ever saw a Challenger, The Pit, and Wacko. The also had the cockpit Missle Command, which I understand is pretty rare. It was a huge hangout for its time -- I remember riding my bike over there on Christmas day around 1982 and they were OPEN for business - and doing great. The arcade was open -- the bowling alley was not. Good memories.

 

[videodan]

I had several in the 80s, so I'll go with Fun Time in Peabody, MA It's now, space-wise, a Salem Five bank inside the North Shore Mall.

 

[SuperGunGuru]

I too had several arcade hangouts back in the day. Most of them were in places like bowling alleys or party stores. I used to go with my dad to a bowling alley called Capitol Bowl when he was in a league on Wednesday nights and I would spend most of my time playing games. I played a lot of my favorites like Street Fighter II, Out Run, X-Men, Simpsons, WrestleFest, NBA Jam and Captain America. Like I said it was a pretty small area for games, but they did change games regularly and I can remember walking in and the first thing I did was check to see if any games were new. The alley still exists today, but is actually brand new....about 5 years ago the place was totally destroyed by fire and they built a new alley on the same site. They still have an arcade in the new place and it's actually much bigger than the old one was. To me there's still a lot of nostalgia attached to the memories of the old building and its small arcade.

The other big place for me was called Funn City. It was on the 3rd floor of a building that had a furniture store on the 1st floor and storage on the 2nd. Now the furniture business is gone and in its place is a dollar store. This place was really pretty damn good for its time. They had an area called "Classic Corner" where they had all the their 80's games including a working Tempest (which I actually bought from them broken for $50!), Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Tron, Crystal Castles, Paperboy, Asteroids, Gyruss and I'm sure a few others I'm forgetting. Sadly they sold at least some of those games and never seemed to replace them with anything. When it closed down someone took a lot of the contents and moved it to another location attempting to open a Chuck E Cheese type place, but that never happened. I knew the realtor selling this building so once that was done I was able to save most of the signage brought over from Funn City that was left behind to be junked.