Best Museum Ever

[Chip]

I've been spending the holidays at Lake Winnipesaukee with my family. Today I drove around the lake to Funspot, home of the world's largest arcade and the American Classic Arcade Museum. I usually enjoy museums of all types, but this one takes the cake. They have over 250 classic arcade games and pinball machines, which is a fracking lot. I spent several hours and about $40 playing my way through a good chunk of them. Even managed to set a few high scores, though that is more due to the relative unpopularity of games like Phoenix and Sky Shark than any real skill on my part. I may also have set some sort of record for most money dumped into a Kiss pinball table before realizing the damn thing was out of order. Sadly, the machine doesn't keep track of that particular statistic.

Though technically a museum, this place is really just a big arcade. The informative bits are limited to a plaques on about half of the machines, telling a bit about them and crediting the person who donated it. Other than that, it's exactly like every arcade I remember from my childhood, right down to the 70's and 80's music blaring on the speakers. The only difference is that now I'm too tall and too fat to fit in most of the cockpit games. If you've ever seen the movie King of Kong, the competition was filmed here. They hold yearly arcade tournaments here with some decent cash prizes.

Not counting Dave & Buster's, I haven't been to a proper arcade in a long time. There just aren't many around, and the ones you do find don't have much in the way of classic games. This was a real treat for me. I had an absolute blast, and I highly recommend the place for anybody who lives in or visits New England. It's totally worth the trip.

I didn't bring a camera, and my phone takes crappy photos, but I had to get one of this. Computer Space was the first ever commercially produced arcade game. Unfortunately this one wasn't in working condition, but the sparkle-painted fiberglass cabinet was gorgeous. There's other pics on the museum web site, but they really don't do the place justice.

 

[torpor]

Nice one Chip! I would love to have joined you on that visit .. I really, really miss the arcades. I grew up with the "Time Zone" franchize in Australia, an arcade chain that didn't really survive the 90's, and when I lived in Los Angeles I was quite frequently drawn to the seedy little dives that were still struggling along to keep the kids pumping quarters into the machines .. but once Dance-Dance Revolution started hitting the scene, pushing the older (better) games out of the arcade, I stopped going ..

Here in Austria, there isn't much like this to be found except in Prater park, which is fun but not quite as exciting as it used to be, due to the fact that there are usually only old fogies like me around. I miss the atmosphere and liveliness of having hundreds of teenagers spending their cash in the arcades, that was always really a fun time .. a bit like Roller Disco, heh heh.

I work across the street from an arcade/entertainment machine manufacturer/warehouse, though, and they have a secret little stash of old .. like, really, really old .. European arcade machines. Some of them are very crap, but some of them very unique .. the only problem is that its not really set up for me to go for a visit during lunch break and drop a few euro's for fun. I have to ask permission just to go look at it all.

It'd be really fun to have an arcade revival. The last time I really had any sort of nice arcade experience was really too long ago .. have to try to find me some other arcades here in Vienna, in case they exist and I'm just too jaded to find them.

 

[senquack]

Nice writeup..

Kinda sad that when I was younger I had no car to take me to arcades much less any more than a couple of bucks I could spend at a time.. Now that I have both a car and much more money the arcades are gone! Thank god for emulation, because I never would have gotten to play many many games.