r/atlasarcadia

Shoutout to the 'Frogs' cabinet in the back! Whoever uploaded this 14 years ago, we salute you!

Hello!

I used to run an old arcade shop for a couple of years. It was probably the best and hardest years of my life, running an arcade shop in rural sweden is HARD, we made our money form selling coins that you could use to play on our arcade machines, which was our biggest selling point since 80% of the machines where made by us, and the games where our own games as well. Because we made out own machines the biggest income for us was custom machines for customers, and i LOVED making custom machines, it was so fun turning their ideas of how the machine should look and them describing their dream game, and then getting to do it as a job, it was amazing.

Well I have so many stories from my old shop but I wanted to talk about the last day that the shop was open, sure it was a sad day for me but honestly a relief in a way. Everyone played for free the entire day, we had a band and we even had a tournement where the winner got to take home any one of the arcade machines from the shop.

The game that we played was my version of DOOM, you played a wizard and you got to choose between 3 different wizard types (Fire, frost or demon) and you basically ran around in a cave fighting aliens protecting their most holy artifact. The tournament went amazing people loved the stakes and winning an arcade really ment a lot for some of the kinds. and in the end a really shy kid nick named PENTY, won the entire tournament, holy moly was it cool seeing that shy kid go from zero to hero ina couple of hours, and that was not even the best part. After he won he went up to me and told me in secret that he wanted to donate the machine to his school, but not to tell any one.

I never saw PENTY again but I can imagine he is doing great with a heart like that

Back in the 1980s, arcade games were everywhere: bars, convenience stores, bowling alleys, restaurants, amusement parks, college dorms, laundromats, grocery stores, hotel lobbies, ferry boats…

I experienced many of these firsthand, but it got me thinking: What are some other interesting places that arcade games showed up? Stadiums/arenas, airports, zoos, office buildings, hot air balloons, ski lodges, marinas, high schools…? For some reason, this idea is fascinating to me, so I’d love to hear your stories. Bonus points for pictures!