Arcade Club in Leeds

A visit to Arcade Club in Leeds.

We visited the new Arcade Club venue in Leeds yesterday. What a place!

Earlier this year we visited the original Arcade Club in Bury and were very impressed by the selection of games on offer to play.

Always nice to visit Pac-Land

Once you've paid your entry fee (we paid £16 per adult) you get to play hundreds of games all set on free play.

Three floors of fun

It's an amazing place to spend anything from a few hours to a whole day.

A very small selection of the hundreds of games available to play

As someone who grew up going to arcades in the 80's and 90's it's superb to relive those memories by playing arcade classics like Pac-Land, The New Zealand Story and Bubble Bobble. But I also really like the fact there are games available that I'd only had a glimpse of back in the day, or those that were out of my price range to play.

Pac-Land

One of those was The Last Bounty Hunter, a live-action on-rails LaserDisc light-gun game. Back in the day it would've been one of the expensive 50p or a pound a go games I could only dream of playing. Watching older players pumping the machine full of money while firing away at a selection of bad guys and then seeing the really cheesy cut scenes as the actors die is indelibly burned on my mind like screen burn on a CRT monitor.

The Last Bounty Hunter

I easily got my money's worth by playing The Last Bounty Hunter and managed to get to the third stage. I could've spent more time on it but I had to wander and play other games.

The ground level is home to pinball tables, quirky Japanese import games, old racing and driving games and new arcade machines.

As a big fan of Resident Evil games there was one game I spotted and immediately wanted to play. After waiting for some other players to finish their go Emily and I jumped on the Taito game Elevator Action Death Parade. It was brilliant.

We arrived at 11.30am and there was a steady flow of people of all ages into the venue while we were there. Even though it was busy, there was a nice buzz and we never felt cramped in playing machines and there are plenty of games on offer we didn't have to wait long to play any games.

Tempest. I'd never played the arcade game before, but I love the Atari Jaguar version

There were still plenty of games I could've had a go on there but there just wasn't time.

The Neo Geo section

We're looking forward to our next visit to Arcade Club. There will also be a new Arcade Club venue opening in Blackpool next year. Wonderful news.

Bubble Bobble, a true classic

You can find Arcade Club at the Abbey Retail Park in Kirkstall, Leeds.

Arcade Club - retail entertainment done right

Check out the Arcade Club website for more information, opening times and prices.