2012 saw a second Round 1 opening in California, this time in the Moreno Valley Mall. We decided to go check it out. Having just opened in September, it has a kind of a "new arcade" feel to it. I think it still has room to grow.
When you first enter the mall, a fancy sign greets you.
It's a pretty large presence.
Dark Escape 4D. A fun shooter, but it's $2.00 a game. It's loud and nice looking though.
Dark Escape 4D side view.
The famous Round 1 UFO catchers take up massive amounts of floor space.
A good mix of new and old fighters running on modern HD candies.
A pair of working DJMax Technika 3's, with working card readers.
Round 1 has a Pop'n Music Fantasia! Super fun!
Pop'n Music Fantasia sits between the Technika 3's and a employees only door that seems to have heavy traffic.
A Blast City and a New Net City stand proudly near the modern candy section.
A wild ReRave appears! I personally think (the cabinet) looks a bit silly, but it was loud at least!
Dance Dance Revolution X2
Pump It Up Fiesta 2 - They had the volume up to 11 on this one ^^
Lots of deluxe ticket games are around waiting to take all your credits. Here is a Bejeweled.
I don't know what this is, but it looks crazy. I think it's a pachinko type game.
Some Skee Ball
Winners Cube
Private Karaoke rooms make up the back wall of the arcade, near the Bemani/music game section.
A giant Purikura booth sits near the entrance.
This Round 1 sports an entire room for ticket prizes. GOOD prizes abound, making the ticket games tolerable.
A Pac-Man Battle Royale! Not quite as fun as I'd hoped, but it still looks impressive.
The mandatory Initial D racers. (they had lot's of racing games)
Some Dead Heat I think...
doodle jump........I have no idea.
KOF XIII (arcade, not climax) is in the house.
Some older favorites are lurking about; Let's Go Island 3D.
Overall it's a nice arcade and we had a great time during both visits.
I finally figured out the pricing system and I'm not sure why I was confused before as it's pretty simple.
It is possible to spend quite a bit of time in this arcade without spending very much money if you have any skills at all and stay away from the ticket games. If you come with the kids, better be ready to drop some funds though.
When you go, I'd recommend staying away from the unlimited credits for an hour pricing deal, the games that are set for unlimited play (green swipers) are games that don't cost much and take a good deal of time to play anyways if you are any good.
This arcade is a winner and I will certainly be back. If you are in Southern California, do yourself a favor and pop in for awhile. Now if only Round 1 would open some of these up north more....
Unfortunately it looks like Southtown Arcade in San Francisco has closed, yesterday was their last day open and DoctorC and myself went down to say goodbye. There were a lot of people there playing, but with having to come from far away, we didn't make it in time to enter the final King of Fighters ranbat.
Luckily we can watch the final showdown thanks to Iplaywinner.
"All good things must come to an end. And, unfortunately, that time has come for Southtown Arcade.
Due to a number of circumstances, Southtown Arcade’s last day of
operation at its current location will be Sunday, November 25th, 2012.
We’re really sorry for the sudden nature of this announcement, but we
were hoping that we would be able to resolve a number of outstanding
issues in order to continue normal business operations, and,
unfortunately, our optimism did not bear fruit.
Between our lease expiring at the end of the year, increased demands
on our time from work and home (we have families and/or full-time jobs
outside of STA!), and increased demands on our time to grow the business
and maintain day-to-day operations at the Arcade, we’ve decided that
the best thing for us to do is cease operation of STA at this time.
Are we going to come back? Never say never; we’d love to continue
doing what we’re doing, but, as it stands now, we’re in no position to
do so, given the circumstances we find ourselves in. However, we are
going to continue our partnership with Iplaywinner and run events in the
San Francisco Bay Area; Season 6 of our Ranking Battles will be played
out, it just won’t take place at STA, sadly. We’ll have more information
on this and future events, like Season 7 of our Ranking Battles, very
soon.
We’d also like to take a moment to thank everyone and anyone who has
ever supported STA in any way, shape or form, even if it was as little
as a Facebook “Like” or just stopping in to take a look around. We also
want to thank all of our sponsors and partners who’ve supported us in
the past, including, but not limited to, CAPCOM, SEGA, EightArc, Mad
Catz, Namco and ArcadeShock. We especially want to thank everyone who
showed up, day in and day out (you know who you are!), everyone who ever
came by for a Ranbat (you know who you are too!), and everyone who came
by just to tell us how much the place sucks (we know you who are!).
We’d just start rattling off names, but we’re sure we’d forget someone,
and that wouldn’t be fair, so, if you’re thinking to yourself, “You’d
shout me out… RIGHT?!”, you are one of those people. Thank you.
Lastly, we wan to tell everyone to support the community. Support
events that support the community. Support businesses that support the
community. Don’t support scumbag tournament organizers and don’t support
businesses who’ve shown themselves to be incapable of conducting
themselves professionally. This is the most important thing you can do
to keep the community alive and make sure we continue to grow. If we
don’t support the real honest supporters of this community, then they
all go away, and this will make the community weaker.
Please feel free to send us comments, words of love, proclamations of hate, or whatever you need to get off your chest via Twitter, Facebook or email. We
always love to hear from our fans. We will not be granting requests for
interviews nor will we be providing comment for news stories, so,
please, kindly refrain from sending us media requests.
Thanks again to everyone for your love and support, and we’ll be back
sooner than later, one way or another. We’ll always bring the hype, as
we always have.
#RIP #RIP BibleThump Kappa
Love,
Southtown"
A great arcade that has done so much for the arcade scene and the
fighting game community, as well as hyping KOF and SNK worldwide. We
can't thank you enough for everything, good luck in whatever you do
next. You will be missed.
GG.
Last weekend was California Extreme XVI, AKG and myself went to check it out. They had it at the Hyatt Regency again this year, but the layout was slightly different. If you read the post about last years show, all the same sentiments apply here, except we stayed for both days this trip. We made lot's of friends, played tons of games and had a great time! I took more pictures than it would feasible to show, but you can see the whole set on our Flickr page if you're interested.
Gizimnoic did a really nice walkthrough pointing out some of the more unusual games:
We picked up some killer schwag as usual:
Our sweet press badges.
Here are a few pictures from the show:
Some X-Men tables
AC/DC
Spectrum
Eight Ball Deluxe
Gigi
Corral
Foxy Lady cocktail pin
Star Castle cocktail
Star Trip cocktail pin
Electric YoYo
Cleopatra
Rollergames
Comet
Space Shuttle
A Pac-Man pinball game
Space Harrier
Pole Positions
Cosmic Venus (working movie prop)
Royal Guard
Thayer's Quest
Thayer's Quest control panel
Time Traveller
Genie
Jungle King
No one escapes the Black Hole
Joust cocktail
Heavy Metal Meltdown
Mini Pool
Thank you to everyone that helped make this show possible! Long live California Extreme!
Normally a game like The Pinball Arcade is something that I wouldn't find out about until it's already been out for years, but I got lucky on this one. Farsight Studios made a game in 2009 called Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection. I just recently got a copy of it for the PS3 and was pretty amazed by it, I thought it was a game that would do really well in the DLC department, but I couldn't find any tables to download for it. After looking into it, I discovered The Pinball Arcade.
Farsight Studios has made a new download-only pinball game with four tables to start with (Black Hole, Tales of the Arabian Knights, Ripley's Believe It or Not, and Theatre of Magic.) Farsight is claiming that they will release two new tables every month for the next several years, which is incredible. These pinball games that they make are so well done, that it's hard to describe.They are easily the best video pinball tables I've ever seen.
Check out a making of video:
...and the trailer:
I brought all this up to let you know about it, so that you don't miss out and also to mention that certain tables that they want to make have such high licensing costs that they can't really afford to make them.
Twilight Zone is an example. Farsight Studios has started a Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds for licensing the Twilight Zone table.
If you can afford to, please consider donating a little money to Farsight Studios for this project. I think it's important to chip in to help make things that are awesome.
That's all for now!
Play Pinball!
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