Fun N' Games in Wayne NJ Closing

[Cowutopia]

Holy shit I just heard about this from some guys over at www.the-nextlevel.com/board.

I am fucking STUNNED.
I used to work up 46 in Fairfield and I'd skip out for long lunches there ALL THE TIME, not to mention drag all my friends to movies there just so I could play some games. It was the closest place around for Air Hockey (I am in Paramus) since Sports World bit it. The 3rd Strike action was AWESOME.

Crap. I had the high score on the Ms. Pac Man cab. I used to go there just to watch people play the fighters, and always drop some money into Drummania or Virtua Tennis or Pinball. I think I'm going to fucking cry.

There's just..nothing left around here. 8 on the Break is a pain in the ass to get to AND it kind of sucks. I feel so empty. What the fuck am I going to do.



PLEASE inform me if anyone finds out if they're relocating. Please.
Also, the Palisades has some fun Laser Tag for small groups, and some air hockey tables in the waiting room along with some other junk games.
There's also a GREAT laser tag place WAY up 23 north called Laser One that is HUGE, with two floors, and has unlimited tag from 6-11 on thursday nights.

Palisades tag is 8 bucks but on weekdays you get 4 dollars off if you bring a scorecard.

[Cowutopia]

Man and I was going to try to write an article on the competitive fighter scene too. I had talked to a few 3rd strike players, there were some really good ones.

[Cowutopia]

If anyone knows where to contact the former owner I'd like to do an interview with him, and you could save me some phone calls.

[Rubentron]

I started going to Willowbrook Mall in the early/mid 80s. I had no idea about the closing and found out last month when I showed up for a quickie Japanese lunch at the food court and some arcade action. I was truly upset to see the place closed down. I can't imagine the hours and money I spent in that place over the last 20-something years! Until just last summer it was the place my friends and I would visit whenever they were back in NJ for a visit. Just a shame.

[TonyTheTiger]

Willowbrook Mall was getting so overrun with video game stores that I actually believed you!

It would be more awesome if they weren't four of the same store.

Great video Rob...people should check it out, especially those who fondly remembered the arcade.

On a semi-related note, with the recent closing of the FYE stores, the KB Toys, and the Suncoast Video store at Willowbrook ... I'm finding less and less reasons to stop by there.

Sure, there are like 10 Gamestop/Software Etc./EB/Funcoland's there ... but at this point, I'd rather support Joe's retail efforts with the lion's share of my game purchases ...

Sad, that was once my favorite mall. Not to big, not too small, great arcade, nice food court, and plenty of stores that served the movie/music/game/entertainment loving consumer. Soon it'll consist of just women's clothing stores and Gamestops.

To be fair, Suncoast should have gone out of business years ago considering just about everything in the store had a mandatory $10 markup. And Kay-Bee Toys is just a relic. I went into the one in the strip mall on Rt. 46 by Best Buy not too long ago and I smiled a bit because it just felt so quaint.

FYE was a coin toss. Sometimes you'd find good stuff for good prices but other times (especially with the games) you'd find something for double what it should be.

But if it's true that Fun 'N Games is actually just moving to a new location I'll breathe a sigh of relief. Especially if it's nearby.

It's pretty sad, really. The Great Escape, Sportsworld, another arcade I can't remember the name of in Edgewater, NJ, and a few others. I remember specific things about all of them because I can say "That was the first time I ever played Mortal Kombat 3" or "That was the first time six of us beat X-Men." Welcome to die, NJ arcades. Welcome to die.

Though, has anyone been to Wildwood recently? I don't know if it's still there (it was a couple years ago) but in the Boardwalk Mall in Wildwood there was a GIANT arcade. This place ruled. If you wanted to play it, they had it. There wasn't a whole lot of actual competition so to speak but the sheer volume of machines more than made up for it. How often do you find arcades with every Mortal Kombat, Soul Edge, Soul Calibur, and every Konami beat-em-up?

[digitalpress]

I think Fun 'n Games should move into the laundromat's space next door to my store. Then we'd have a game store, a comics/cards/action figures store, and an arcade all on one block. Then someone could take over the nail salon and the hair stylist and put in a decent bookstore and maybe an indy music store.

C'mon, I can dream.

Oh wait, since I'm dreaming - throw in a really good liquor store that also sells cases of soda. Put that where the pharmacy is now. OK I'm done.

[Greg2600]

Tony, I spent a week and a half every summer in Wildwood from 1989-1997, and can honestly say I was never really excited about their arcades. More or less the atypical boardwalk arcades (almost all Point-based) found in Wildwood, Seaside (except Flashback), Ocean City, Point Pleasant, etc. On the other hand, I wasn't really into playing vintage games while I was there, so I may have forgotten about those. In addition, just about everything in Wildwood was and likely still is a total rip-off. It cost our family (including airfare) only a few hundred dollars to go to Disneyworld in Orlando one time than Wildwood.

The problem a Fun n Games will have is the rent will be very high in a mall, and while a location within town is much cheaper, there is little parking and many towns have ordinances preventing outright arcades. Perhaps in a strip mall somewhere?

[TonyTheTiger]

Well every arcade in shore points has a good percentage of space taken up by skeeball and other ticket games where 10,000 earns you a blue pencil and 100,000 can buy a shitty toaster but the one I'm talking about is big enough where that doesn't matter.

As for the cost, NJ in general is expensive. But I don't remember the arcade machines being ripoffs. They weren't $.25 machines but what are nowadays? Just don't expect to get particularly great food in the area. I know a handful of places but in general it's all tolerable at best.

[videogamerman2k]

I just found this forum, and I still to this day, cannot believe that Fun N' Games is no more! That arcade sure was pretty good for the most part, though I'll admit that it did get worse towards the end of it's time, due to having too many of the same games that I really didn't care for, and that most of the good games they had that I liked were ones that I could already play at home on my console systems. It also didn't help that this arcade would almost always be swarmed with teenagers, who did pretty much nothing, but hang out, and loiter almost the whole time, which would get annoying at times.

I first went to this arcade during the mid 90's, though I didn't start going to it as often as I could, until very late 1999. I felt like I was in heaven when I was here then, as arcades were still pretty good in the late 90's, though were nowhere near as good as they were during the golden ages from the 80's, to early to mid 90's. I would come here at least a few times a year (I couldn't go here too often, as I don't live that close to it), though would be often disappointed with it, while hoping it would still be as good as it was when I first started to visit this place on a semi regular basis. I was one of the gamers who would come here basically for nostalgia reasons, over being interested in really playing the games here (especially since the games became so expensive to play), as I would often exit this arcade almost as fast as I would enter it.

I will admit that I found it pretty hard to take when I last went to the Willowbrook Mall (which was just after F.N.G. closed down), and saw the windows of this arcade "blacked out". I was also pretty upset that this arcade was in my opinion, starting to barely get a little better than before, and was about to (according to their website) get one of my all time favorite games in The House Of The Dead 4, which has yet to get a console release, and got Time Crisis 4, which I also like, and cannot play at home now, since I currently don't have a Playstation 3 system. I do hope that this arcade will relocate as they say they will one day, even though arcades (especially mall ones) are becoming as rare of a sight as payphones are these days. I also wonder what will become of the spot where Fun N' Games was located, and if it's somehow possible that the Willowbrook Mall will get another arcade in the near future? That would be pretty good, since this mall having an arcade would be better than not having one in my opinion, even if it won't be nearly as special as Fun N' Games was.

[annelid]

I used to live in Oakland, NJ and moved out of there around 1986 or so.
Anyways, does anybody remember the arcade(s) that used to be in that shopping center where Shoprite is?

There was one that the entrance was a Clown's mouth (freaky I know)..and the other was down the mall near where the Movie theater was (was being the operative word as it's gone now). ( btw, that movie theater is where I saw my 1st pg movie..in 1980...Mothers Day..the Troma film at! )The arcade next to the movie was a lot smaller but had fun games and all. I remember seeing the Kiss, Ted Nugent and Playboy pinball machines there...*big pinball fan here*.

I moved a town or 2 away and really never came back to Oakland until a few months ago. All my childhood hangouts are gone.

The roller rink - gone.
The movie near the roller rink - gone. I think it's a blockbuster now.
Sears Surplus - gone
The 2 fore mentioned arcades...gone and gone.
The 5 & Dime store near the train tracks (where I used to get my baseball cards and wacky packages stickers from) - gone.

Sigh.

I know there used to be a arcade in the Wayne Hills Mall. I'll swing by there tomorrow and see if it's still around.
I did goto a local Pizza place in Wayne and they had 2 new Pinball machines there!

[kevin500]

Now a days everybody wanted to play games.
not only the kids even the youth is attracted by this games.
So that's why no of games are gonna to be introducing day by day.
And i also really enjoyed playing games.
===================================
kevin500

a place for Drug Treatment.

New Jersey Drug Addiction

[jnoble]

I used to live in Oakland, NJ and moved out of there around 1986 or so.
Anyways, does anybody remember the arcade(s) that used to be in that shopping center where Shoprite is?

There was one that the entrance was a Clown's mouth (freaky I know)..and the other was down the mall near where the Movie theater was (was being the operative word as it's gone now). ( btw, that movie theater is where I saw my 1st pg movie..in 1980...Mothers Day..the Troma film at! )The arcade next to the movie was a lot smaller but had fun games and all. I remember seeing the Kiss, Ted Nugent and Playboy pinball machines there...*big pinball fan here*.

I moved a town or 2 away and really never came back to Oakland until a few months ago. All my childhood hangouts are gone.

The roller rink - gone.
The movie near the roller rink - gone. I think it's a blockbuster now.
Sears Surplus - gone
The 2 fore mentioned arcades...gone and gone.
The 5 & Dime store near the train tracks (where I used to get my baseball cards and wacky packages stickers from) - gone.

Sigh.

I know there used to be a arcade in the Wayne Hills Mall. I'll swing by there tomorrow and see if it's still around.
I did goto a local Pizza place in Wayne and they had 2 new Pinball machines there!

My grandmother lives in Pompton Lakes and I used to go to that Shoprite when I was a kid in the '80s. I absolutly remember that arcade. I can't recall the name or any of the games it had, but I clearly remember it was at the end of the building facing the hallway. It's probably been gone since the early to mid '90s. I haven't been in that store in forever. My grandmother still shops there. When I was young, I thought it was cool that they had an elevator in the parking garage with some shlub being paid to sit in a chair and push the buttons all day for people

[jnoble]

..was also owned by the Fun N Games in Willowbrook. I used to get this card every year for my birthday that allowed me 4 free credits a week on any game I wanted. It worked at the Wayne Hills arcade too. I remember there was this black dude who worked there who always was nice and gave me way more credits on a machine than I was allowed. And then he got arrested along with some other people in a drug bust, I remember my mom reading about it in the paper.
The games they had that I recall was Paperboy, the very rare cartoon-graphics sit down version of Cobra Command, Star Wars, Mario Brothers, and before I stopped going there around 1991-1993, Out-Runners. That's another mall that I havn't been back to in forever!

[kainemaxwell]

I used to go there often with friends down when I lived in Verona. Not so much when I moved up to Dover, but I always stoppe din there to play games when I was at Willowbrook, even if I didn't plan to. Last times I was there though it seeme dlike the staff was having trouble handling all the kids, along with all the teenagers outside smoking and hanging out trying to dodge the cops.

Makes me kinda wish the arcade in the Rockaway Mall didn't finally close down either.

[SurfKahuna]

If this was in my neck of the woods I would seriously consider the SF Anniversary cab .

[jnoble]

I used to go there often with friends down when I lived in Verona. Not so much when I moved up to Dover, but I always stoppe din there to play games when I was at Willowbrook, even if I didn't plan to. Last times I was there though it seeme dlike the staff was having trouble handling all the kids, along with all the teenagers outside smoking and hanging out trying to dodge the cops.

Makes me kinda wish the arcade in the Rockaway Mall didn't finally close down either.

To be honest, I'm stunned the arcade at Rockaway lasted as long as it did. By all rights, it should have been gone 6 years ago. Arcades are by and large a thing of the past, and that one in Rockaway was never that great. There was one game in there however that was there from the beginning and they never took it out in all the 18 years that place was open: a very rare sit-down version of 'RadMobile" .. I wish I could have bought it from them before they closed! I remember rocking that game back circa 1991/92!

[DMB]

OMG I was playing on the computer thinking about Kiddie Karnival trying to find any info I could. I remeber going as a young child with my dad. Does anyone remeber the small four caged ferris wheel, it was multi colored and did not work?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Now a days everybody wanted to play games.
not only the kids even the youth is attracted by this games.
So that's why no of games are gonna to be introducing day by day.
And i also really enjoyed playing games.
===================================
kevin500

a place for Drug Treatment.

New Jersey Drug Addiction

Yes Kevin500, I would strongly suggest some of that drug treatment.

[Klisk]

I hate to bring this thread back to life, but it still pains me to this day that this arcade is closed, especially considering I grew up at that mall, and still go weekly. I remember lurking and reading this thread when it was first started, haha. I even just bought a house in Wayne. I have fond memories of the area, even though I always lived in Paterson.

It doesn't look like it's coming back, does it?

I keep hearing rumors from people that the owners plan to open a new arcade in the section where the Westbelt mall used to be (you know, the junky mall in the same lot next to Willowbrook) once it's rebuilt/revitalized. I think it's wishful thinking, though.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Yeah man, I'm still a weekly walker of the Willowbrook Mall ... it was my childhood hang-out for sure and I've enjoyed many an evening at Fun & Games.

It sucks that it's gone, really does. The games and pinballs there were SO well-maintained ... whoever the tech guy(s) was/were, my hat goes off to them for years of excellent service.

I have no insider info as to whether or not the owner is going to resurface with anything in this area but I recall hearing that he moved to another state. (maybe even somewhere in this thread).