For my mildly belated birthday, one of my friends put together a trip down to Funspot several months ago. If you haven’t heard of Funspot, it’s the “worlds largest arcade” according to Guinness World Records.
It’s an interesting place, both for the entertainments inside, and a secondary “vibe”. One of the first things you might see driving up is the electronic outdoor sign switch over from an image of Funspot’s mascot Topsnuf to the yet unanswered question “Who is John Galt?”
After arrival, if you need to relieve yourself and use the first floor bathroom, after exiting you may find yourself looking up at a large picture of Ronald Reagan extolling the virtues of video games for their values in training future pilots for the Air Force.
It’s an interesting tone.
I’m here to talk about the games though.
The Games
Funspot has several hundred cabinets, dozens of pinball machines, and just a general smörgåsbord of other types of arcades. I absolutely can’t review all of them, and I’m not going to try. Instead, I’m just going to section them off, and give my opinions on the various parts of Funspot.
Pinball
There are two general areas for Pinball, a set of old machines, and a set of standard more modern ones. Despite having a lot more machines, I think I generally enjoyed Capital Pinball‘s more.
A big part of this is because when the machine breaks, at Capital Pinball, I’d flip turn it off and on, and at Fun Spot, I’d have to find some exhausted looking employee to fix it, which might not necessarily happen. Two quick shoutouts on machines, first to Gottleib – World Series, the first Pinball machine where I managed to never even score a single point, and Joker Poker, a machine one of my friends quite liked.
Mini-Golf
There’s a self-serve indoor mini-golf area at $5 a person. It’s not the most inspired mini-golf I’ve ever played, with most of the holes being fairly basic straight shots or maybe only two bounces. There are no real gimmicks or super clever designs, but it’s perfectly serviceable, good for maybe one play through total.
Arcade Machines
There’s a lot of old arcade machines. I actually don’t have too much to say on these, as I probably spent the least amount of time on them. Old arcade games are fascinating to me from a technical and design perspective, but as gameplay experiences, I tend to find them a bit underwhelming. Also, a few of the ones I did try to play just kind of ate my money and didn’t start.
That said, my friends had a great time with Tetris and Smash TV.
Air Hockey
Air hockey probably the best token to fun ratio. There are three giant sheet metal air hockey tables, two of which mostly work. There are a few spots on the table where the air doesn’t come out, but overall, it’s Air Hockey. You smash the puck, try not to injure anyone, and just generally have a good time.
Skeeball
There’s a row of Skeeball machines, most in reasonably good shape. They’re an excellent place to watch an 8 year old just absolutely wing a chunk of plastic at the wall, an environmental storytelling explanation of the “Management reserves the right to limit players” sign. They’re a terrible place to earn tickets though, with a max of 10 for a perfect score. Overall, it’s Skeeball. You either know if you like it, or you spend a single token to find out.
Daytona
Okay, so this part was actually kinda cool. There were a bunch of Daytona machines, and they were all hooked up together. We had one bit 7 player game, and that was fun. Also, I got run off the road.
Ticket Counting Machines
Sometimes they count your tickets correctly! Sometimes they don’t. A lot of the time they break, and some kid in a high-vis vest has to come over, crack em open, and unstick the machinery. They still look super cool.
Prize Wall
I mean, it’s an arcade prizewall. It’s not great. I’ll be real here, I had slightly higher expectations from the “World’s Largest Arcade” bit, but like… not much higher. Maybe expectations is the wrong word, and I meant “hopes”. I had higher hopes for the Prizewall.
Like, you could have some Magic cards? Or maybe gold bullion. Instead, this is your general prize wall. There’s some candy, there’s T-Shirts, and there’s a few other things. But I think we turned like 40,000 tickets in 10 cups of candy and T-Shirt.
Overall Thoughts
Frankly, I’m a little underwhelmed by FunSpot. While the number of machines is incredible, the cost to play and ease at which things break was disappointing. I enjoyed getting to hang out with my friends (you were all awesome!) but I’d probably choose to bring folks up to Capital Pinball instead for my next birthday.
If I’m being honest, part of this is also the weird super-right wing vibe the place has. Maybe if it was a different time, I would feel differently.