Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Southtown Arcade

This past Sunday was our first trip to Southtown Arcade in San Francisco. Southtown opened in May of this year and I was very happy to go support a NEW arcade in Northern California!
Southtown is a fighters-oriented arcade with a lot of good titles running on Japanese candy cabinets. It's pretty small, but it is in San Francisco, so the rent is probably outrageous. The vibe is chill and everyone there was super friendly. They had some cool beats on the stereo system, but not too loud. Even though the focus is fighters, they also have puzzlers, platformers and at least one shmup. I didn't see any beat em ups, but aside from that they seem to have something for everyone if fighter's aren't your thing.

The main attraction of the arcade is their King of Fighters XIII machine. Southtown has been running tournaments on it all summer and the day that we showed up was the last one. Iplaywinner.com has been streaming the events and they had a nice setup with a TV on the wall showing the stream.

Here's what the tournament looked like on the day we were there, if you watch long enough, you can see myself and DoctorC getting pwnt by some locals. I think I did pretty good considering it was my first time playing XIII, it's too bad we didn't have time to stay for the losers bracket though.
(The whole tournament is in three parts. This is part one.)
Part 2 Part 3

Watch live video from IPLAYWINNER on Justin.tv


Here are some pictures we took of the arcade.
Southtown Arcade
Some Namco Noir style cabinets.
The King of Fighters XIII!
New Astro City's
An IREM Madonna!
Some Namco Cyberleads.
A Jaleco Pony Mark IV cab.
A Namco Exceleena II running some crazy version of Street Fighter II.
NEO-CANDY......Aww yeah.
This is the stream/commentator desk, the TV is showing the stream.
They also sell shirts...
Quarters.
They had a Puyo Puyo game! So awesome!

From what I can tell, they run the arcade in the traditional way, switching out games frequently.
They maintain a list of games currently in the arcade HERE.
Southtown Arcade gets extra points for having the best name ever. If you don't know, the name comes from the town in the SNK universe, Southtown.
I found this interactive map of Southtown while I was writing this. It's rad, check it out.

It takes guts to open a new arcade in the USA these days, the next time you're in San Francisco, drop in and show some support.
Oh, and btw, everyone that says "arcades are dead"....that place was packed, so stop spouting memes.

Support your local arcade!
Long live Southtown!

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