If you live in Socal and are also into arcade gaming (both retro and modern), one of the great weekend day-trips I’ve found is taking the Pacific Surfliner train down to San Diego.

Getting There

There are a number of departures in the morning, and while not as fast as a car when there’s no traffic, you can save your energy and do other stuff on the train. The timetable also works nicely since you can pretty much get there around opening if you want to beat the crowds.

Once you get there, you can either take the trolley or walk 20 minutes to the arcade. I prefer the walk since you can grab some food/coffee on the way.

Plus the view is excellent.

Value

So is this trip worth it and what is the cost?

Arcade Monsters games operate all on “Free Play”, you pay a set fee for entry and can stay for as long as you’d like. Its $25 to enter, or $35 if you want to be able to leave and come back.

Since there aren’t exactly a lot of “retro” arcades anymore, I’ll compare the value proposition here to Round1:

At Round1 a standard rhythm games is roughly 8.6 credits per play. If we estimate the value of a Round1 credit to be around $0.15 (assuming standard non-member $120 package for 777 credits), this would put 1 play at around $1.29. This means it takes roughly 20 plays to hit $25.

Let’s also say that a single play at any rhythm game takes roughly 10 minutes. Assuming you continuously played games This means $25 of Round1 credits would last you roughly 3.3 hours. So just this on its own, without considering anything else I’d say that this is great value just on its own.

But if you were to include transportation costs, assuming around $60 for a round-trip ticket via train, it becomes a little more difficult to justify since for the same price since you’d be able to play 46 rounds of something else at Round1.

However, with the variety of games in there (even rarer ones), I’d say this is still an excellent trip. I personally could easily stay 5+ hours in there (cause I’m a degenerate and they also sell food + drinks in there).

Quality

Most of the retro stuff is very well maintained and in great working condition. Also many of the modern games are networked and have card saving features.

However, it’d be dishonest to say that these cabs are in excellent condition:

• The Sound Voltex knobs are basically falling off, the switches don’t feel great
• The pads ghosts on Dancerush and the navigation keys are broken
• FutureTomTom drums have sensitivity issues
• Small things like how the stool for Ongeki doesn’t match the height of the standard seat.

Also it gets busy in there and is also a popular spot for families (kids get loud).

Conclusion

Overall, as a once in a while its great value. You get to try out a ton of games, some of which are even considered rare to come by in Japan. If you also just want to go in and hardcore grind out some CHUNITHM, I can see that as a pretty good option too.

Check out the list of games here

#arcade