Arcade Report: Kato's Kave in Anchorage, AK

[alfonzotan]

Yes, really.  I was up there for work recently.  Don't recommend Alaska in November; quite dark and cold, and every flight home is a redeye.  But still...

Kato's Kave is a small arcade sharing a site with a gas station (I'd guess he has about 1/3 of the building).  The owner/operator, Kato, is a certified arcade freak, a collector who opened the place up in part as a way to store his hobby.  Nice guy (although he's apparently persona non grata on KLOV for obscure reasons), happy to talk games, repairing games, and everybody's favorite topic of where they found cool games for cheap.  Video games are $0.25, some of the pins are $0.50.

It's a small site, I'm guessing around 15 vids and about half a dozen pins (but still far more games than you're going to find in most of Alaska; I happened to see the arcade at a nearby mall, which had very few games, and no classics at all).  Pac-Man, Galaga, DK, DK Jr. (this one was turned off due to lack of space), Track And Field, Time Crisis 3, several more.  The highlights for me were very nice Joust and Robotron cabs.  Sorry to say I didn't get any pictures in.  Pins included Terminator 2 and Dirty Harry, plus a couple more older pins that I'd had too many microbrews to recall properly by now (speaking of which, no public bathroom).  Everything that was turned on (a few games weren't) was in good working order, Kato obviously knows his way around a screwdriver and soldering iron.

Well worth a stop, if you happen to be way up there in the US version of the Great White North...

[ChadTower]

Nice!  Thanks for the report.