Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade wins Stride's Save The Arcades 2 competition

And by the final tally, it wasn’t even close, with Ground Kontrol pulling in 624,871,000 total points, which were donated to them by players via the Cowbots flash game. Arcade Infinity came in second place with 371,187,900 points and Rocky’s Replay with 109,806,000 points. Congratulations to Ground Kontrol on their victory (which also lands them $25,000 in prize money so they can beef up their location further), I had seen a video online where it showed that they had a station setup just to play Cowbots and they were also on top of sending out press releases to make sure that people didn’t forget. To top it off they even held a 24 hr. “Cow-Down” to promote the end of the event and keep players donating so in the end, the strategy really paid off. If you are ever in the area of any of the arcades above I’d encourage you to visit them but I am sure that regulars for Ground Kontrol are already excitedly anticipating some of the changes that will come to the place thanks to the prize.

Now a question I have is: Is this it for Stride’s Save The Arcades campaign? They didn’t seem to really publicize this one as much as they did the first competition, where they had went as far as hiring actor Zachary Quinto to go out to a California arcade as a part of the promotion. They don’t say anything about future plans for the campaign on the webpage currently so we will have to wait and see but even if this is the end, we certainly have to appreciate the effort. The attention this has brought to arcades has been better than what we get with trade shows since individual arcade businesses have been highlighted on a national scale. Of course there is a lot more that needs to be done to curb perception that the industry is dead but this has been an excellent way in helping to dispel that myth.

[Save The Arcades 2 – Stride Gum]