Love to play your favorite round of Street Fighter or Super Mario on a real-life, old style  arcade cabinet, sipping a mug of craft beer? Good news: today you can.

The great comeback of the arcade, curiously, had started in the heart of Sin City… with a flop! Here is the story.

In 2015 young entrepreneur Chris Laporte was forced to throw in the towel and close his Insert Coin(s) “videolounge gamebar” in Downtown Las Vegas. The lounge had been a popular nightlife destination for more than four years.

Many wondered if it was the explosive success of the online roulettes  that caused the lounge’s downfall. Was the attention of patrons shifting from gaming to gambling? Insert Coin(s) was strictly no-gamble.

Nope. Laporte’s intuition was right.

He had as many as 60 refurbished arcade cabinets packed with classic games from the 70s on, in his posh lounge on Fremont Street. Complemented with 40 game consoles on 44 large HDTVs.  Classy sofas for comfortable playing and drinking, a dancing space, cool Djs and a catchy music choice.

The videolounge gamebar was wildly successful when it opened, in April 2011. Laporte, himself an avid Street Fighter player, had moved to Vegas from Brooklyn. At the time he was in another line of business and could not find a place that was not “boring” where to take his clients for a drink.

Convincing a couple of investors that videogaming and the nightclub scene could blend took a while. When Insert Coin(s) finally opened, retro games turned out to be totally cool, combined with the drink & dance mix.

What went wrong then?

Downtown Vegas all of a sudden started developing fast. A slate of new restaurants and bars opened, not followed by an equal increase in the number of patrons. “Market share has definitely been cut to pieces. There are not enough people to split among all of us”, was Laporte’s explanation.

Visionaries can have this sort of bad luck. Come up with a brigh idea five minutes too early.

Today, you can count arcade bars by the hundreds. All over the United States and in the six continents.

Another startupper and passionate gamer was more successful. Another Brookliner, Paul Kermizian, the inventor of “Barcade”.

Less grandiose than Insert Coin(s), the first Barcade opened in a former metal shop in Brooklin in 2004. Kermizian and three friends enjoyed immediate success with the simple craft beer + classic arcade formula.

In 2007 they registered Barcade as a trade name. Today they have nine bars across the United States, each with 40 original cabinets and a good line up of classics: Ms Pac-Man, Tetris, Galaga, Frogger, Donkey King and dozens more.

The trend has picked up in the last couple of years. More arcade bars are popping up every day.

Were your friends looking down on you because of your outmoded love for Pac Man?

Now you can show them!

Carl Williams

It is time gaming journalism takes its rightful place as proper sources and not fanboys giving free advertising. If you wish to support writers like Carl please use the links below. https://www.paypal.me/WCW https://www.patreon.com/CarlWilliams