Earlier this month, we were informed that Coca-Cola & Netflix were joining forces to do a pop-up arcade in Shoreditch, UK to promote the freshly launched season 3 of the hit show Stranger Things. Fortunately, this news came in enough advance that some of you great readers had a chance to visit the venue and check it out.
As I am not based in the UK, a few of you served as my proxy. My thanks to Kevin Williams, Toby Na Nakhorn and Victoria Page for the info below!
I’ll sum up Kevin’s thoughts on the event here, by some points he passed along to me. As the press release suggested in the original post about this, the event was mainly handled by Coca-Cola, as “New Coke” had been launched in the timeframe that Season 3 of Stranger Things takes place. That said, it was a “great publicity vehicle for both brands,” generating a strong interest from a young audience, particularly among women (“who says girls don’t like retro!” Kevin stated). Check out the lines; site friend Toby N. mentioned that most people were there for Stranger Things and not the arcade, but that’s expected.
Kevin also noted that the “retro-inspired” hardware continues to show strength, although it was “a shame to see so many MAME cabs next to the classics,” but is understandable given the circumstances. There was also a hidden location that was a fun aspect of the whole thing, although they had some hollowed out original Space Invaders and Gorf cabinets that were operating as props with lighting instead of games is tough for any collector to see (find them in the slide show below). Perhaps they were already lost cause cabinets, so that use was better than the dumpster. 😛 Overall, it had Kevin thinking about proposing a retro-arcade concept, although he didn’t get into detail about that for now. I’m thinking we need to get Brian F. Colin in on a Deathstalker spiritual sequel for Stranger Things.
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Also thanks to Victoria for sending along a couple of photos of the arcade area!
My thanks again to everyone who sent me info and media on the event, along with a thanks to Coca-Cola UK for providing the initial heads-up in the first place.
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Shame I didn’t have time to stay and queue up for the Dragon’s Lair highscore challenge. They were giving out Coca Cola x Stranger Things tshirts if you made it on their leaderboard!
The staff were really friendly and the atmosphere was good. They had actors coming up to you in the queue adding to the intrigue.
The inside section was a small dimly lit maze style affair (only 2 rooms!) with a hand coming from the bushy wall offering you a limited edition Stranger Things Coke can. If anything, it was a hot day so the person with that job had a nice air conditioned time.
Funny to see SNK Vs Capcom Chaos as one of the arcade game lineups. That, and SF II Champion Ed had come out long after the Stranger things timeline… Weird choice but ok!
Google maps also pinpointed another address so quite a few people couldn’t find the place, that made it even more mysterious. All in all a very good popup.