A visit to Arcade Club in Leeds.
We visited the new Arcade Club venue in Leeds yesterday. What a place!
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| 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.
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| Three floors of fun |
It's an amazing place to spend anything from a few hours to a whole day.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Bubble Bobble, a true classic |
You can find Arcade Club at the Abbey Retail Park in Kirkstall, Leeds.
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| Arcade Club - retail entertainment done right |
Check out the
Arcade Club website for more information, opening times and prices.
