Hot on the heels of our story yesterday on four new places to play arcades comes two more locations – the more the merrier 🙂 These two locations are bars with arcades, which continues the strong growth trend in this part of the business.
Recbar To Open In Louisville, KY On April 15th – The first of the two is the new Recbar, which plan on opening their doors next month. They already have an excellent website setup that lists all of their games but before I share some of that list, they are planning on doing a more traditional business model by using tokens and also offering a full food menu. To quote the owner:
We are going to do tokens for the machines. It works a little better for our model. I’ve read complaints in other arcade bars with free play about people camping out on machines all night or never being able to get to a game. We will use the tokens as rewards or incentives as well.
I can certainly see that being an issue, the few times I put something on free play then it attracted loiterers and not so much paying clients. There is also that feeling of the quarter being on the line. That’s not to say that the free play models don’t have their place for certain venues, some places seem to have done well with them.
Recbar setup some games at the recent Louisville Arcade Expo, March 2016
Anyways, the Recbar will feature titles including: Black Tiger, CarnEvil, Donkey Kong Jr., Gyruss, Heavy Barrel, House of the Dead2, Kung Fu Master, Maximum Force, Metal Slug, 3 of the Mortal Kombats, NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, OutRun, Pac-Man, Shinobi, SoulCalibur, Space Invaders, Spiderman, Team Quarterback, Tekken, Vapor TRX and more; they also have some bar style games like shuffleboard, foosball, pool, air hockey and some pinball tables like Big Buns, Police Force, Secret Service and a couple of others. Their main website is here; their Facebook page can be found here.
Harrogate’s Lounge Also Aiming For An April Opening In Knoxville, TN – Hopping over to Tennessee, another bar/arcade is getting ready to open their doors in April as well. From their Facebook page, they mention bringing your quarters so it sounds like they are also going to go the coin route instead of freeplay. They will be open in the day where  The games they have shown include: Afterburner, Frogger, Gauntlet Legends, Golden Tee, Joust, NBA Jam, Ms. Pac-man, Spy Hunter, Street Fighter II, and a few pinball machines like The Addams Family and Nightmare on Elm St. They will have more titles than that by opening so you’ll have to drop by to find out. You can visit their Facebook page here.
As always, make sure that you check these places out if you are nearby and give them your support!
I really didn’t think the idea of a free play model would work out for these avenues. These days a quarter doesn’t mean much, but it’s still a fine measure to ensure patrons don’t take advantage of it.
Please delete my prior post
I really don’t see that as too much of a problem provided they have upfront financial support like Galloping Ghost Arcade.
The door entry fee per business cycle, seems to be working for them.
And at some point no matter how good a game is a person is bound to get tired of playing the same game or perhaps tired period in the case of the few loiterers.
Since there are no beds there you’d think they’d have the common sense to go home to their own.
On a sidenote I suggest those who want to go the door fee route have a timed circuit breaker shut off system. It shuts off at the end of a business cycle.
The loiterers should not be able to play a thing then. Try it out and please reply with your results