Our Blog: Review of Action City, and the demise of the Arcade

This last weekend, my girlfriend and I visited Action City in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

http://www.actioncityfun.com/

So, here's a review of the place, with some general thoughts on the state of arcades in general.

This particular venue includes batting cages, outdoor mini-golf, outdoor and indoor gokarts, a lasertag arena, airhockey, skeeball, indoor rock climbing, and miscellaneous video games. There were the usual "skill" games, such as the claw game that is packed with crappy stuffed animals, cheap watches and janky jewelry. They have the standard food operation going, with some pizza, sandwiches, etc.

The video games at Action City are on a card system, which you can reload. The manufacturer says:

Called the “Fun License,” guests simply swipe their card through the reader attached to each game and attraction and can reload or “Re-New” their Fun License at anytime.

Action City is the first location in Wisconsin to feature the Color-Glo Swiper by Embed, the industry’s first-ever color changing debit card reader. Color-Glo brings a new level of guest interaction to game play and allows Action City to color-coordinate their marketing efforts by easily identifying game types or specials

Um, okay. It changes colors. Big deal.

Anyway, most of the video games there are outdated, but a strong sense of nostalgia keeps me from ever condemning the presence of old timers like Donkey Kong (whose screen was quite faded) and Galaga.

Other games included Madden: Season 2, Time Crisis 4, Extreme Hunting, Dance Dance Revolution and Silver Strike (no year or edition given). We played a round of Need for Speed: Underground. The graphics on the machine look like they were cooked up in the late 90s, but it was still fun. However, I had much more fun in the actual gokart track they have there.

The best game in the house is Ghost Squad, which is a Duck-Hunt-like shooter and involves you hunting down terrorists and freeing hostages. There are a few funny parts about the game. One involves your character selection. You can be either a shirtless "tough guy" (i.e. bootleg Rambo) or a cowboy. Either choice is absurd, especially when you see your dudes situated among the standard SWAT bots on your side; the cowboy looks like a knockoff Eli Cash (Owen Wilson's character from The Royal Tenenbaums) Another goofy part involves how the terrorists are so snuggled up on the hostages. One scene had a hostage next to a bed with two or three terrorists popping out from under that bed. Really? That's the best tactical position these terrorists could cook up? Goofy as hell. But it is very satisfying to hold the controller and pull the trigger. It's a very fun game overall.

So what's the point of all this? Arcades are becoming extinct; see what happened to Funland Arcade in Toronto . I did have the thought many times, "I can stay home and rock out video games as much as I want, with supersweet graphics and surround sound. Why should I spend money at the arcade?"

It used to be the case that arcade games were generally more advanced than your games at home. I'm betting one cause of the doom of the arcade is that home consoles are so advanced now that it is simply not cost-effective to have a machine in an arcade for which you have to charge $3.00 a play. The customer simply won't cough it up.

So why do we still go to the arcade?

Answer 1: nostalgia again. As a kid, I remember going to Chuck E Cheese, Showbiz, and Aladdin's Castle. It was awesome every time. It's still with me, although I'm not allowed to jump in the ball pit anymore. (It would look slightly creepy and deranged.)

Answer 2: rewards. And by "rewards," I mean "mostly plastic shit--with some clutch exceptions." Many of the skill games at Action City spit out tickets for various achievements. Of course, most of these games aren't strictly video games, but I'd think the typical gamer would still check these out. Anyway, we collected enough tickets (5,300) to walk out with 7 "prewatched" DVDs, two sodas, and 10 packs of candy. And we got some fairly decent movies: 300, Munich, Pan's Labyrinth, Walk the Line, Apocalypto, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix . (Don't like my movies? Too bad--I don't care. I'm not out to impress you. You can keep all your David Lynch movies.)

They have an XBOX 360 redeemable for 70,000 points. Best bet to achieve it: go for it with the game, Deal or No Deal, or go with the Pacman game where you drop tokens to push other tokens into the slot. (This is very addictive, because it always looks like you're about to get the avalanche of tokens that miraculously puts you over the top into XBOX-achieving bliss.) At any rate, it's not worth it. You'd spend several times the retail price of the XBOX 360 on tickets.

Of course, the rewards are generally worthless and play on some evolutionary need we have, but they still work.

Answer 3: "I'm spending time with my kids kinda but not really while I try to hit the 100-spot in skeeball." Self-explanatory. (Not applicable to me, but I can understand it.)

Answer 4: Getting out of the house. Yeah, I can spend hours in front of the TV, rockin' out my video games. (Too many hours. I still have shit to do.) But sometimes, you just have to go somewhere else. No-brainer.

Overall verdict on Action City: Fun, but not worth a trip out of your way. If you're already headed to the Eau Claire area, check it out. It's a decent arcade, and it will take you waaaay back (if you're from waaaay back. If you ain't from waaaaay back yet, stay where you are. And you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, forget it.)

What are your thoughts on arcades? Where are/were the good ones?

-PLG

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