A new arcade in the Dallas area

[Steve W]

I went to Grapevine Mills Mall in Grapevine, TX this afternoon (the Hilton hotel next to the mall is where the Texas Pinball Expo used to be held, for those of you familiar with that event) and discovered that they have closed the big ice skating rink that used to be at the southern end of the mall. They have filled that space with a place called Round 1 Entertainment. It has bowling alleys and pool tables, but the rest of the massive space is one gigantic Japanese-style arcade. It's big. Really big. There's a lot of redemption machines by the entrance, but the farther in you go the cooler the arcade cabs get. Several of the games are Japanese language only, which I thought was weird. They've got fighting games closer to the back near the pool tables, loads of crane games, and a large amount of those Japanese photograph booth type things.

If you're in the area visiting the Video Game Museum over in Frisco, you owe it to yourself to stop by this place and give it a go. It was pretty damn impressive. It was pretty busy too (although I waited until people were out of the shot before I took the pictures). Here's a few pictures I took just to show the scale of it.

[Gamevet]

I used to go to Sega's Gameworks in that mall. I still have a long sleeve shirt that I'd bought from that Arcade.

[Steve W]

I never cared too much for that Gameworks, it seemed to be mostly kiddie redemption games. It's gone now, anyway. So much of that mall has changed - the indoor skatepark across from Gameworks is now a LegoLand, the J.C. Penney outlet is a day-glo mini golf course, the old Virgin Megastore space has changed hands a few times, Books-A-Million, Hot Topic and GameStop have all moved to different locations... At least, for the moment, there's a new reason for me to drive all the way up to Grapevine just to go to a mall. If they would only add some pinball machines...

[otaku]

nice new arcades are always nice to have. not sure i've been to a gameworks maybe in seattle? i recall they had a big sonic air hockey table. anyway love that transformers game!

[Gamevet]

I never cared too much for that Gameworks, it seemed to be mostly kiddie redemption games. It's gone now, anyway. So much of that mall has changed - the indoor skatepark across from Gameworks is now a LegoLand, the J.C. Penney outlet is a day-glo mini golf course, the old Virgin Megastore space has changed hands a few times, Books-A-Million, Hot Topic and GameStop have all moved to different locations... At least, for the moment, there's a new reason for me to drive all the way up to Grapevine just to go to a mall. If they would only add some pinball machines...

Yeah, I do a lot of work for stores in that mall. The Game Works location is now an aquarium tour and Lego Land has taken over the space that was once the skate park. Game works had plenty of arcade machines like the 6 player Indy 500, Sega Rally, 4 player Daytona, Jumbo Safari, Jurrasic Park, Desert Tank, some light gun game that raised you up as you shot at the multi-level screen, some old arcade classics, 6-8 pinball machines and a few games by other companies, not named Sega. Game Works was pretty cool, but the real problem was that the games never changed over the many years that it was open.


I was setting up the network for a new Helzberg Diamonds in the mall today. So, I decided to drop by the arcade on the way out the door. There's way too many ticket redemption games in there. I liked the large exotic cab games like Aliens/Predator game and the Sonic and Mario at the Olympics game looked interesting. I didn't have time to check out the lower level with the bowling lanes, but I didn't see anything that stuck out.

It looks like a pretty nice arcade. I might stop to play some games when I'm there and have a little more time.

[Rendclaw]

That place reminds me of a game room in a bowling alley in town that I went to recently. The last time I went to this bowling alley it was old and a little run down, but this time everything was open and airy. It had a bar and restaurant that was pretty contemporary, but to the right there was an open and airy arcade. Encouraged, I walked on it, hoping to see a good mix of new and classic games, but it was not to be. Like Gameworks used to do, all games have cards instead of tokens or quarters, and about 85% of the games with ticket-based. I understand the need for ticket games and their place in an arcade even if I disagree with it), but hell, save a space for the old school. 5 machines, 10 would be better. But no, it looked like that pcture, minues the Japanese arcade cabinets... needless to say, I was disappointed.

[Gamevet]

They've built one of these arcades in the Parks Mall in Arlington, as well.