New Arcade in NorCal (interest check)

Regional Matchmaking Pacific North
21

Screw that, you guys already have Golf Land

Im definitely excited about this. I work at an arcade and i cant stand the ticket / family fun riff raff i have to deal with everyday (especially since im a hardcore player myself). A player dedicated arcade that’s relatively close to where i live gets 400 thumbs up as far as im concerned. I know a lot of people from my area are behind me when i say that too

I like the part about incorporating stick builder displays and possible part distribution. That would be awesome. as far as KOF goes…Im big in to KOF games myself and although KOF XII is new and attracting a new crowd i know the core scene would much more appreciate KOF XI, also a KOF 98 or 2002 UM cab would probably work well too.

My main concern would be quality control, as far as up keep of the games and the rotation of new games. a lot of arcades neglect to take care of machines these days. its sad

If i could make a suggestion. Since most new title cabs (SF4, Blazeblue, T6, Kof XII) already come with sanwa set ups standard, getting candy cabs for some of the older titles such as GGXXAC, CvS2 would be awesome considering the fact that Happ sticks are becoming crappier as time goes on. MVC2 is an exception though…that has to have HAPP sticks… preferebly 360’s

Theres probably a few other older titles such as ST, games from the alpha series (alpha 2 or 3), and some of the old cross overs (MVC1, XvSF) that people wouldnt mind seeing either

Also, a beatmania or technica machine might sit well with the music game crowd…sorry for having soo much input. working at the arcade ive been workin at for the past two years has my head swarming with ideas for a place like this. lol

Accessible by bart is almost a must…bridge toll and city parking both suck

All in all i hope this plan actually follows through. It would be great to see an arcade like this open up

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this

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Get 3s, put it near SF and you will have tons of people. SVGL isn’t cool in my book.

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First off, I’m not trying to be a neigh sayer. I just want to bring this stuff off to be helpful.

It’s going to be tough for a lot of reasons, but two issues that pertain to arcade fighters:

-Some arcade games just don’t stay updated compared to their console ports. SF4’s console characters being tournament legal kind of screws with this. I’m pretty sure there is a legal gray area charging people to play a console game as if it were an arcade release (if you consolize some cabinets).

-The death of arcades has also ramped up the “underground” home gathering phenomenon amongst the competitive scene. If you’re trying to attract the super hardcore SF players, it may be difficult to get them to not just show up at their usual home spots (which are usually free and have the stiff competition and comradery (seriously forum software? You’re telling me comradery is spelled wrong!!!) some of us crave…and USE to get at arcades back in the days).

Good news is that non-HD based arcade hardware is dirt cheap now days. You can pick up some good old wooden CRT Dynamo cabs for a song with this fucked up recession in full swing. Ops want quick cash for junk. Collectors need to dump their machines for rent.

Even if it isn’t my spot for fighters, it would be cool to have a spot for shmups. I mean, I’ve never really experienced any sort of communal vibe from the shmup players. I’d like to think people that enjoy those games are willing to meet up somewhere, play some games and shoot the shit like fighting game fans.

25

Hey Myung,

It’s always been my dream to open up an arcade, but seeing as though it’ll probably never happen (sup, lack of money!), I’ll pass my ideas on to you in hopes that you can somehow pull off an arcade – any arcade in the San Francisco area.

First off, that’s an extremely respectable list of games and trying to get a little of everything is a step in the right direction, but you can also go a bit farther. You may want to look into picking up a few retro cabinets to hook in the older, and possibly more mainstream crowd. Simple additions such as a Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man, Tron or any other classic game could really help.

You may also want to look into getting a second NeoGeo cab that could act as a more casual machine. You nailed the hardcore choices, but I’d look for a second along with games like Bust-a-Move 2, Magical Drop III, Twinkle Star Sprites, Windjammers and other accessible, light hearted multiplayer games. You could call this the “girlfriend” cab :wink:

The main idea that tied together my original arcade plan was to make it a community hub, and not just for fighters. Let’s say you find a good spot inside San Francisco. The local indie art and vinyl toy scene is exploding at the moment. It’d be very easy to reach out to that community and offer up gallery space for video game-themed art and sell prints. You could be like I Am 8-Bit, only I’d hope you’d actually share profits :rofl: That’s just one example of how to tie things together.

The main thing is to make the players feel important, and you can do this in a variety of ways. ArcadeUFO had it right by having a nice website available right away, complete with a blog that let everyone know what’s going on, from new games to maintenance and more. You could even setup a Twitter account and let everyone know what players are stopping by for comp. Regular tournaments and training sessions would be great too, along with high-score lists for score-based games. There are a lot of things you can do with a place of your own that something like a Golfland simply can’t.

Also, another idea … instructions. Arcade games these days are extremely daunting for your average person, so I’d suggest coming up with some kind of instruction cards to place on or near the games in case someone has absolutely no idea what they’re doing. For example, can you imagine your Mom going up and figuring out how to navigate the menus of Pop’n Music? You want to make your arcade as inviting as possible so that you’re not depending on just us jerks here at SRK for your profits :rofl:

I actually have some other ideas as well, mostly involving how to try and establish your tournaments and pick up out-of-town appeal, so if you want to pick my brain a bit please let me know. Also, if you’re serious, I can tip off the folks at ArcadeHeroes to link to your poll. They’re super awesome guys and they’re always willing to help out the scene.

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I’d travel an hour a week to go to this if I knew there was great competition here. The problem is with SVGL/SFSU/SJSU/UCDavis having SF4 Cabs there needs to be some sort of niche incentive for us to go to this new arcade rather than the ones we all already go to. Arcades are dead in Nor Cal. You need some sort of reason for people to go to this arcade other than just a few fighter games.

Serve boba and fried rice and you could make this place work.

In all seriousness - The regulars aren’t what you need to worry about. It’s the people that you don’t usually see in an arcade you should be looking to attract.

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Remember the two-part David Sirlin interview about building an arcade?or trying to and failing horribly. It has some great points.

I would also consider a way to make tutorials, guides and tips for the games available in some way; one way would be to print out some written guides (EventHubs.com, SonicHurricane.com, gootecks?s) and place them in a binder or something like that. You can always chain it to something to avoid people running away with it. It lets people develop an interest for improving at the game and might spawn new intermediates who will frequent the arcades.

And of course, a good website will help you tremendously in spreading the word and attracting prospective patrons. You could also create a Twitter profile or something like that and get people to follow it by announcing special deals and events now and then, which will increase the incentive to follow the feed.

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that twitter thing is a great idea. like if you hear some top players are going to be stopping by and announcing it ahead of time. im sure other folks would try to go

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FYI the new version of Gundam VS Gundam is already out

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  1. find a location close to a local college, hire students that happen to be hot girls.
  2. have them serve/work a counter with mediocre food/drinks.
  3. ???
  4. profit

Seriously though, Cater to your bread and butter audience (young males, casual gamers, kids) first, cater to hardcore fighting game fans second. You want to have longevity, and eventually make enough money to cater to specific gamers. Not to offer these niche games trying to win over a forum, then disappear in 6 months.

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Myung is honestly willing to do this thing, trust me guys.

However, this is my main concern: Is he going to make a return on his investment? That’s what it comes down to guys, if he opens an arcade and has no money to at least be reasonably profitable (after paying all monthly costs/expenses) then it’s not worth doing this project at all.

Here’s another thing: I love SVGL for getting SF4, but truth be told, it wasn’t a facility designed for our community. It’s not like Golfland is going to help sponsor any events either. With that said, Myung is actually a player in our community and is much more familiar with our niche demographic group.

Another problem will be attracting demographic groups who are unfamiliar or interested in how our community works. How would we keep them intact or at least draw enough interest for them to become spectators/casual players/hardcore players? In a way, this facility is going to be much more than just a place for us, maybe it can be THE place for competitive gaming. I’d put everything into consideration at this point (everything is a broad term, so use your imagination).

Also, should the arcade be the primary source of revenue? We know the answer, so what other solutions are there?

Let’s try to be specific and really constructive here guys. (I know my questions are pretty vague, but I’ll post specifics about my own thoughts in the next few posts)

  • Crackfiend
32

Some small points:

Gundam vs Gundam - If you get the newest pods, WOW, you’d pull a lot of business. Nowhere have I ever seen Gundam Pods and honestly, I’d probably pay stupid amounts of money to play this game. (I haven’t been to GL as of late)

SF4/T6BR - These are the most competitive games for next year, by far. Two T6BR cabs would be nice (a viewlix especially) since the PCB price dropped and you don’t have to jump through ridiculous hoops like you have to do for the SF4 pcbs. Standard JLF(square)+OBSF/N is required because after working at UCD MUGA and having played there for a long time, some players will give any excuse to why they’re not playing well. If you give em the standard, they can’t say shit.

Razing Storm - UCD MUGA just got this and there’s always somebody on it. It’s pretty much Time Crisis 5, but plays like Crisis Zone. Pulls in a good 1000+ tokens a week during the very quiet summer. You could easily charge $.75/play since it takes forever to die.

Pump It Up - Don’t quote me on this, but I think the popularity of PIU has exceeded DDR because at that Las Vegas convention every year for games, everybody’s hoggin the PIU machine and nobody touches the DDR machine. Look into maybe getting PIU but ask around.

Initial D - While I myself don’t play it, the game pulls in 1000+ tokens a week easily. Slightly hard to maintain and expensive as hell, they’re definitely a risky investment, but seem to be worth the trouble. The card reader system is located incredibly poorly (we had to cut holes in it to access it).

Air Hockey - Easy to maintain and good profit, it’s easy to make some decent bank with 2 air hockey tables in a corner. Women especially hog these because they sure as hell won’t touch SF.

Really though, for all fighting games, make JLF square + obsf/n 30 the standard. MUGA gets complaints daily about p360’s in anything other than a MVC2 cab and it’s so fucking irritating, I can’t stand it. If you standardize, you also don’t have to deal with stocking a shitload of different parts (Korean + Happ parts are cloggin up MUGA’s back area). Food wise, fried rice + boba would be really nice to eat on the side. It’s not hard to cook (big ass wok + blender/mixer/shaker/lid sealer) and I’d easily throw down 5-6 dollars for a to go box. Make sure that when you do ranbats, you don’t set free play and charge a venue fee. It’s understandable to have to pay to keep a big part of your community alive (a centralized good arcade).

In terms of hours, you gotta have accessible times, afternoon to ridiculously late nite (11am to 3am?) cause some people have to work till pretty late. Free play specials (late nite, once a week) would be a pretty good way to pull new customers in.

GL and hope you go through with this. Davis crew would easily make the trip once or twice a month (maybe even weekly if ranbats existed).

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Something to think about since somebody above mentioned pleasing the non-regulars: Parents will come in with their kids, and the parents will feel out of place unless they see something they recognize. This ranges from Pac-Man to The Simpsons Arcade Game and includes earlier versions of Street Fighter and everything in between. I don’t know how much you would want to dedicate to this stuff, but I think it’s worth looking into since they are fairly cheap. Even if they don’t bring in a huge amount, maybe they’ll make the adults more willing to go for the kids.

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totoroslayer,
DON’T DO IT, or, if you do go ahead with your plans, really crunch the numbers and take a look at other successful arcades and how they sustain themselves. go to a golfland and see/ask how long it takes to get a return on a machine like tekken 6 or sf4. there’s a reason why these machines charge $0.75 or more.

as much as i want some1 to open an arcade, fanboys will not keep food on YOUR table. take a look at something like the bearcade. if that place was really making money, it would have stayed open. or the broadway arcade even. remember shgl - probably the most well known gl from socal? gone. these days, places like golfland, dave & busters, etc… they don’t make a majority of their money from the fighting games.

the culture in usa (imo) doesn’t support or is not enough to sustain arcades. it’s sad to say, but arcades are dying off. i’ll probably be the only 1 posting that’s discouraging you from going with this venture, but you need opinions on both sides.

35

HOOOOOLY SHIT you are awesome! Please do this!

Also, is there any chance of ESPgaluda II making the lineup?

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Bar please! Everyone loves alcohol!

37

Information is a bit off. Let me clarify.

Bearcade - Believe it or not, Bearcade made positive profits. It was constantly putting up good numbers but the retarded student body believed that they could rent out the bearcade’s location for even more profit. This was an incredibly stupid idea cause what ended up happening was the location didn’t pull in shit and now the bearcade’s dead. AWFUL AWFUL location, yet still positive profits is amazing.

Golflands - No surprise, MGL and SVGL do pretty well arcade wise. Roseville GL makes me want to vomit though. They have new shit and a good following so they’re undoubtedly positive.

UCD MUGA - Without giving out numbers (management probably wouldn’t appreciate it), the UCD MUGA makes goooood bank for such a small facility. Always positive ever year for the last decade, the games area alone (not the bowling/pool areas) pulls in thousands of dollars for the school monthly. We get an unnecessarily small amount of money to buy new games, which is why we selectively buy the biggest money makers, hence we profit (razing storm, ID 5? and Guitar hero this season). Our SF4 Cab which we purchased in November is paid off already (24k) and I make sure to always keep it running (no downtime for more than an hour or two at a time) because the revenue is that good. I THINK we paid it off like 2 months ago actually. It’s a 2 head to head korean cab setup we imported, not a viewlix or two astros.

SFSU/SJSU - Don’t quote me on this, but I hear they break even or are slightly up. SFSU’s location is AWFUL and SJSU isn’t great either (SJ downtown is a bitch to navigate). Both locations are very small and holes in the wall and don’t do well during off seasons cause of lack of traffic, which is why SFSU closes during summer I think? Without alternative attractions (pool is ok i guess), it’s hard to pull non-niche players into the arcade.

Fairfield Tilt - Old, falling apart (don’t hurt me mark :X), pulls in the mall browsers. Hard to make money as the gamer population just isn’t there to make money off of. No high student population like other arcades and in a not so popular town. Survives.

This is very very important. If you use TOKENS, make sure you have VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY distinct tokens so that people can’t bring foreign tokens in and use them. We lose at least $100 a week currently due to foreign tokens. Ridiculous profit loss, especially when we first got our SF4 cabinet. We prosecute heavily for use of foreign tokens (call the cops or student judicial affairs so that you get expelled).

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This guys is basically gonna make the mecca for fighting games.

if you build it they will come.

be sure its somewhat close to bart.

IF you hold bi-weekly tourneys then you will always have hella more people coming.

and do late hours. you have no idea how many people actually are still playing at like 3 in the morning.

if you just stick to your plan and do mainly fighting games, then a lot of people will come.

in my opinion sf4 has somewhat helped the arcade scene and it seems like a lot of companys are jumping on the fighting game bandwagon. Also sf4 has helped bring in a lot of new players who also have interest i other fighting games.

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Genius

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I would say do it in Oakland like the downtown area good location and perfect for public transportation. Im not saying that cause im from oakland but I always said we need an Arcade in the Downtown/Jack London area.

Emeryville will also be great nice quite small business/industrial city. Near Bay street would be perfect, prime location for business but could be very expensive for a storefront around there.

With me being from Oakland and all Ill still pick Emeryville over oakland both good.

Berkeley
SanJose
Vallejo

all close 30mins or less(with my driving)