Amazing Arcade in Portland?

[Trebeck]

Hey all,

Just came across this:

http://groundkontrol.com/arcade/index.php

Looks pretty badass to me.  Anyone been there before?  I live in Vancouver so I may have to take a road trip one day.

[wooowman93]

i jizzed in my pants looking at that list of arcades

[Trebeck]

yah I think I should get my passport sorted out soon.

[BASS!]

Yeah its pretty gungy but they do have just about everything. The cool thing also is its a show venue so you can see all sorts of stuff there.

[Neverending Project]

It's a good arcade, with lots of great games. They have an equally impressive selection of pins also. The problem I have with it is that the last couple of times I have been there, the games have been in such a state of disrepair that it made it pretty frustrating to actually play anything. I don't mean the games had Out of Order signs on them, I just mean they didn't work properly. In fact, now that I think of it, every game I played had some problem or another - some of them rendered unplayable (or just not fun).

So if you go, just have an idea of what you might be in for.

[Trebeck]

I'm not sure what you mean.
So is it that on one game the monitor has no red, the stick won't move right, sound turned off.  Stuff like that?  Kind of like a big office who won't hire an IT guy so every computer is in a different state of dieing.

[TheShanMan]

+1 to what NP said. Hopefully they are just behind on repairs and get things under control soon. I think future visits to me will be more for pinball than for vids for this very reason. Stuff like accelerator not working well on Pole Position. Battle Zone right joystick not registering the "down" movement. Paperboy's handlebars not working well at all. Stuff like that. Mostly control problems. Although I was there last Friday and DK had screwed up video.

It is an awesome place, but they need to get on top of these problems. The worst part is they don't put Out Of Order signs up. You can report problems to the guy at the bar and he'll give you a quarter, but how often do you want to do that in one visit? I'd be less irritated if they just had signs on the broken games.

[FrizzleFried]

That's Clay Cowgill's arcade...

[Trebeck]

Hey Clay, sounds like your slackin a bit.  Get on it.
Are the pinballs OK?  Usually they are the ones half busted up.

[BobA]

Quote from their website Blog.  I wonder if the full time tech they hired is still there?



So You Want To Open An Arcade…

September 30th, 2008

Seems like we get an email like this about once a month:

“I am writing first of all to thank you for the best arcade I have been to since ever. But also because I would like to start something similar in my own town. I am hoping you’d be able to maybe answer a few questions about how to get started and what kinds of things to avoid.”

Thanks for the kind words!  We don’t want to discourage you, because the world could definitely use more classic arcades, but…if it was an easy thing to open a classic arcade like Ground Kontrol, then don’t you think every decent-sized town would have one?

GK has been in business almost 10 years now, and for the first 6, we struggled to break even.  At first, it was run full-time by the owners, because there wasn’t money for employees.  Business came slowly, mostly by word-of-mouth.  Looking back now, it’s hard to believe we almost didn’t make it.  Luckily, we could afford to be patient through the lean years.

The biggest challenge has always been keeping the games running.  Ground Kontrol is, if you think about it, a hands-on museum.  We have games up to 35 years old, and they were designed to last only a few years!  Repairs can be challenging, and parts nearly impossible to find.  Luckily, 2 of the owners are electrical engineers, and the other 2 are software guys that know something about hardware, so there’s very little we can’t handle.  And we finally were able to afford to hire a full-time repair tech a few months ago (hard to believe it took so long).  Still, keeping 90 or so games running is a logistical nightmare, as you can imagine.

We’re lucky in that we’ve had nearly 10 years to build up a pretty decent collection of games.  It seems to be getting harder to find classic games in good condition.  The cheap ones got snapped up years ago, and eBay makes people think they deserve collectible prices regardless of condition.  And speaking of eBay, fuel prices make the cost of shipping games prohibitive.  So, you’re probably limited to what you can find in your local market via Craigslist, unless you’re willing to pay premium prices.

In conclusion, running an classic arcade is more a labor of love than a way to make money.  But Kevin Flynn has long been one of our idols, and there’s nothing better than living your dreams.  All in all, Ground Kontrol has been worth the hard work

If we haven’t discouraged you, then we’d like to wish you the best of luck in your venture!  Just don’t open a classic arcade in Portland - this town is barely big enough for one!

The CEO

[TheShanMan]

I wondered about that too, and yes, I've read that blog post. My beef isn't that they have games that aren't working. My beef is that they don't label the non-working games as such. Games that had problems the prior time I went, probably 2 months ago, were still not working last Friday. So there's no question they know about many if not all of the problems. So why not put an out of order sign on them? I'd be perfectly happy going there and seeing 1/4 of the games with a sign on them, because I know how hard these games can be to keep running sometimes. At least then I wouldn't have the frustration of dropping a quarter only to find that I can't control the game properly.

And just in case it isn't obvious, I love Ground Kontrol and am pleased to death that it exists so close to my home, even with this problem that I'm complaining about.

[ark_ader]

They need several  classic Laserdisc games and a Funhouse, then I'll vist.