It’s game-on as we explore Arcade Club in Kirkstall which will soon be expanding to become an even-bigger Leeds gaming paradise.
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GamingTranscript
00:00 My name is Jason Rayner and we are currently in Arcade Club in Leeds.
00:06 We're just coming up to, in May will be our 5th anniversary.
00:10 Obviously for a lot of time through lockdown we were closed through it, but we've made it through lockdown.
00:14 We've added multiple new games to the venue, we've added new areas, we've changed areas around that didn't work so much.
00:22 And we've got other new areas coming soon as well.
00:26 Born out of a passion for classic gaming and arcade machines, the Arcade Club has grown from a small room to three huge venues driven by a passionate team and community.
00:36 Since launching in 2019, the Arcade Club at Abbey Retail Park in Kirkstall has given Leeds locals and visitors access to a library of rare and classic games.
00:47 The reaction has been absolutely phenomenal. Everybody just loves it.
00:51 It takes you back to a time in your life if you're of a certain age where you didn't have to worry about bills and things like that and all the boring adult things.
00:59 I genuinely speak to people who are of a certain age and they do actually get quite emotional because they've not seen some of these cabinets for 20, 30 years.
01:07 It takes them back to a time in their life when they didn't have any worries and they just went on holiday with their parents and asked for a couple of quid playing these games.
01:15 People just absolutely love it.
01:17 You kind of see trends of games that people play. There's a few games that you put in and you think people might enjoy them and they don't get played as much.
01:24 A lot of the time you get games that break for a long time because a lot of these machines are 20, 30, 40 years old.
01:30 We've got so many games in storage. Everybody's always got one game they remember playing.
01:35 The amount of times people come down, they'll always ask for a certain game and if we've not got it, we've generally always got it in storage.
01:41 One arcade game fan travelled from Germany to play just one rare game here and there are many regulars who aim to beat their current top scores.
01:51 We've got so many regulars now. We've got a couple of guys that come in and all they do is play one game every week and they're aiming to get the world record on it.
01:59 They're videoing it and streaming it every week. You just meet new faces all the time and then you get repeat custom from them and they're constantly telling their friends about it.
02:08 We're getting repeat custom from private hires from schools and things like that.
02:12 My go-to game is always going to be Street Fighter 2. I love Street Fighter 2. I love some of the Sega classics, After Burner, Outrun and Space Harrier.
02:20 One of my personal favourites is the Robocop arcade game which I actually personally own my own Robocop arcade game as well.
02:28 I couldn't give you an exact number but we're probably up to about 400 actual games in total.
02:34 The expansion, I can't say too much. We want it to be a bit of a surprise but we're going to have a much bigger eating area.
02:41 It's going to be a little bit more relaxed eating area because where we've got it now it's near the pinball machines which are very, very loud.
02:50 We're going to have a couple of pool tables and we're going to have a jukebox and things like that.
02:55 So it'll be a lot more of a relaxed area and there's a few surprises coming and it's shaping up and looking really, really good.
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