What was the name of the mall arcade where you grew up?

[BadMouth]

What was the name of the arcade in the mall where you grew up?
I lived 45 minutes from 2 different malls in opposite directions.

One was Dream Machine.
I can't remember the other one.

The local Big-T (Tastee Freez) had a good size arcade located in an adjacent room, but I don't recall it having a separate name.

For the youngins, an ARCADE is a commercial space that houses arcade games, not an individual machine. 

[Typefighter01]

Surprisingly, for me, the holy grail of arcades groing up was the one located inside of Canada's Wonderland in Vaughn Ontario Canada. Sure there were the bowing alley and pizza shop cabs, but the once a year trip to Wonderland always provided the most excitement.

Anyone on here ever play a space shooter at Wasaga Beach in the mid eighties just West of beach one in a small ice cream parlour? If you did, and remember it, let me know what it was please (long shot I know). Actually, the arcade at Wasaga Beach was cool too.

[thomas_surles]

I preceded the one at my local movie theatre. it had good games and then I could sneak in to an R rated movie.

[JDFan]

Around here there were a few :

Aladins Castle
Time Out
Putt Putt
Later on a Speed Zone
and of course the UTEP student Lounge that made me miss many a class when I'd start a missile command game and hit the 800K point where you got 255 bonus bases !! 

[WifeHatesMame]

Aladdin's Castle was my favorite. There was another one called Time something maybe? This was in Visalia, CA

[harveybirdman]

Pocket Change
&
Tilt

[JimmyU]

Just for Fun in the North Park Mall and Enchanted Castle which was a Chuck E Cheese type place.

[darryldale]

Growing up in a town of 30K in S/W Ontario there wasn't one in a mall but two arcades downtown.

#1 - Modern Amusements
#2 - Vegas

Bonus points to the person who can name the town.

[Vigo]

The Machine Shed


and I still think it was a cool name.

[keilmillerjr]

Tilt in the RI mall. When the RI mall started charging too much for rent (so I'm told), everyone abandoned the mall for the Warwick mall which was next door. Tilt moved there. That's when arcades started switching to lame redemption crap. Then it went out of business. Now there is no arcade.

[monkeybomb]

The Northridge Mall had The Space Station, which they eventually moved outside to make room for a food court.  The movie theater inside the mall had crystal castles, karate champ and a couple of others that I don't remember.  Across the street from the mall was the Malibu Grand Prix that they used in the Karate Kid.  Another place within bike distance was this odd restaurant called Flakey Jakes.  Gauntlet and Double Dragon were the big ones there.  That and of course melted cheese.  It was a burgers and fries place with a toppings bar and you could dump as much melted cheese as you wanted to on everything you ordered. 

[tigernut]

[Malenko]

Champions Arcade, Christiana Mall.  That was the big one, I still remember being in awe of how great Street Fighter Alpha looked.   Slowly changed about 70% of the arcade to redemption games then it died when they remodeled the food court.


There was also the Apple Lane arcade but it lasted about 3 months, started off as an expansion to a local video store, then it got converted to the "Adult Section". Apparently porn makes a fuckton more scratch than vidjeo games.

[yotsuya]

Castle's N' Coasters. Mofo is STILL kicking!

http://www.castlesncoasters.com/

[mytheral]

Stop N' Play

It wasn't in the mall but it was close to it. This is the spot where I fell in love with arcades. They gave you extra tokens for each "A" on your report card

I played many Simpsons and TMNT games here!

They had a mini golf course on the inside of the place as well.

I am happy to say, they are still in operation to this day!! http://stopnplay.com/

[JMB]

The local arcade in my town was called Spectrum. At nearby malls we had Just Fun and Dream Machine.

[pbj]

Dallas:
Aladdin's Castle
Time Zone
Westend at Deep Ellum


Houston:
Exhilarama - there was never anything like this and there never will be again.  It's now a food court.



Caribbean:
Time Out
Power Zone

[HaRuMaN]

Norfolk: Putt Putt
Va Beach: Flipper McCoy's

[mvolke1]

I grew up in Rochester, NY. Our neighborhood arcade was called Time Out.

You could bring your report card in from school and they would give you two tokens for an A and one token for a B. As soon as we got our report cards, our mom would take us there. Good times.

[BadMouth]

Hmmm....one of the malls where I grew up still shows FunTime arcade in the directory.

Gonna have to swing by there when I'm home for thanksgiving.
It would be pretty cool if it's in the old location.
I remember the layout of the place.  It had a smaller back section that was a couple feet higher than the rest of the place.

[n3wt0n]

We had a small arcade called Bill and Marie's on the main strip of our little town.
I remember it being slightly run down as a kid which means it was likely borderline condemned. It had some of my favorite games including a Chase HQ.

[megamoze]

Fun Factory.  It took up two store spaces!

It has since moved to a smaller venue in the same mall, but it's mostly ticket games now.

[phranque1673]

Wow, bringing back memories. Early 80's everyone had birthday parties at Gadgets. Sort of an early version of Dave and  Busters. The mall came and had Space Port next to the food court. Worked at the pizza shop there and every break was spent on Street Fighter 2.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Phreakwars]

I lived in 2 states (in the 80's) .. Here in Iowa, it was called "GALAXY", it was either them or W.C. Franks, in Nebraska, there never was one... we'd simply go to the different bars in town which had different types of machines.

[EvilNuff]

Circus Circus.  I got so many free tokens from being a straight A student.  They gave out 1 token for a B and 3-4 for an A on your report card.

[DeLuSioNal29]

Everytime we went to the mall in Long Island (Green Acres Mall in Lynbrook, NY) we would go to the arcade while our parents went shopping.

Time Out!


Good times!

DeL

[ZexisStryfe]

Aladdin's Castle and Dream Machine in tiny Rhode Island.

[nitrogen_widget]

OMG!
I was racking my brain trying to remember & then you posted it.

so THIS!

[brihyn]

Yankton SD mall had an arcade named "The Depot" that was stylized after an 1800's era train station, including the change window.

And thanks to Vigo...I've been trying to figure out the name of the short-lived arcade in my tiny home town for a couple of years...The Machine Shed sounds eerily familiar. going to have to ask around if that was the name!

[gildahl]

Dream Machine (South Hills Mall, Poughkeepsie, NY)
and
Dream Machine (Dutchess Mall, Fishkill, NY)

Both late '70s to early '80s. At the peak, the DM at South Hills expanded to have a presence at both ends of the mall.

[Ginsu Victim]

Power Play at San Jacinto Mall in Baytown, TX (can't find a classic photo)



Also, not arcade, but they had a Nathan's Physical Whimsical....it was a blast as a kid. Photos from Sharpstown Mall:

[Mr. Peabody]

Anyone notice a Time Traveler at 3:15 in pbj's posted vid?



Now that is a playground.

Also, not arcade, but they had a Nathan's Physical Whimsical....it was a blast as a kid. Photos from Sharpstown Mall:

[RubberB]

There weren't many malls (or shopping centres, as we call them) in the UK in the 80s and I'm not aware of any that had arcades in them. The place to find the arcades was at the seaside, where there would be whole seafronts given over to "amusements". But as far as I remember none of them had clever names like the arcades in American malls. 

Given the British weather, a day at the seaside could easily become a day at the arcades! This means that for me, and I guess a lot of Brits of a certain age, the nostalgia of arcade games also envokes happy memories of family holidays.

[yotsuya]

There weren't many malls (or shopping centres, as we call them) in the UK in the 80s and I'm not aware of any that had arcades in them. The place to find the arcades was at the seaside, where there would be whole seafronts given over to "amusements". But as far as I remember none of them had clever names like the arcades in American malls. 

Given the British weather, a day at the seaside could easily become a day at the arcades! This means that for me, and I guess a lot of Brits of a certain age, the nostalgia of arcade games also envokes happy memories of family holidays.

You play a lot of games in Blackpool?

[RubberB]

There weren't many malls (or shopping centres, as we call them) in the UK in the 80s and I'm not aware of any that had arcades in them. The place to find the arcades was at the seaside, where there would be whole seafronts given over to "amusements". But as far as I remember none of them had clever names like the arcades in American malls. 

Given the British weather, a day at the seaside could easily become a day at the arcades! This means that for me, and I guess a lot of Brits of a certain age, the nostalgia of arcade games also envokes happy memories of family holidays.

You play a lot of games in Blackpool?

Too far north for me, it was places like Margate, Southend and Brighton.

[yotsuya]

There weren't many malls (or shopping centres, as we call them) in the UK in the 80s and I'm not aware of any that had arcades in them. The place to find the arcades was at the seaside, where there would be whole seafronts given over to "amusements". But as far as I remember none of them had clever names like the arcades in American malls. 

Given the British weather, a day at the seaside could easily become a day at the arcades! This means that for me, and I guess a lot of Brits of a certain age, the nostalgia of arcade games also envokes happy memories of family holidays.

You play a lot of games in Blackpool?

Too far north for me, it was places like Margate, Southend and Brighton.

Cool. Most of the stories I've read by UK gamers seem to be centered on Blackpool. One day, man, one day...

[mgb]

In the far-away exotic land of Milford Comnecticut where I grew up we had 3 main arcades plus many of the usual gaming spots like the corner store and pizza places.

We had Savin Rock which was alright. It was a little on the small size but quite full with arcade games and pinballs. It had a lot of windows though so it was way too bright.
This place closed around 84 or so and its been a walk in clinic ever since.
When it was open, it was definitely one of the cleaner more drug free arcades but now ironically the DR. at the walk in has been investigated for over prescribing drugs.

Then we had the Milford Recreation Center which we simply called the Rec.
It was a pretty big with a large pool hall, batting cages, a decent sized kiddie play area and a fast food restaurant.
I didn't go here much as a little kid and even as a teenager we tended to stay away from there because there were always problems there in the late 80s and into the 90s.

Last and definitely my favorite was Fun Factory.
It was at the mall but it stayed a true old school arcade until it closed in the early 90s.
It was at one of the mall by the Caldor.
It had its own separate entrance and you couldn't actually access it from the mall.
This was a true arcade with a good amount of arcade machines and a nice line of pins.
One thing I loved about this place was there were no or very few redemption games.
I was always surprised mall security didn't patrol this area of the mall more. It was a long dark covered outdoor corridor with a bunch of us long haired punks hanging out smoking.

[yotsuya]

To expand further, Castles 'N Coaster is/was the place, but I used to go to The Gold Mine at Maryvale Mall. Peter Piper Pizza was another favorite haunt.

[eds1275]

Command HQ was the "big" arcade in the mall, but if I really wanted some fun it was Castle Fun Park. It used to be called something else, fantasy land or something. And then there was the arcade down on the beach that was too dangerous to go to due to drug dealers...

[pbj]

Sharpstown mall is now this weird family oriented Mexican-American place that alternates between flea markets in department stores and very high end dress and suit shops.  It's guys in clown suits selling you churros for $1 and other dudes hustling $2.000 sharkskin suits.  Worth a visit.