Ok, not real as in dark, marquee lit dungeons of the late 70's and early
80s but something better than the storefront warehouses of conversion
hell of nickelcade. I was really jonesing to play some games at an
arcade so I took the family to Nickel Mania in Murray over the weekend.
I had driven by several times over the last couple years but the
redemtion games area that is visible from the street really turned me
off. I finally decided to give it a try anyway. The place was packed on
a Saturday afternoon lots of "new" games for the young ones but the
thing that got me was a very respectable classic collection of about 40
games and 15 pins in their orignal cabinets that A: actually worked and
B: appeared to be well maintained (Tron still had complete side art and
the black lights and marquee were lit) I think the only faux pas was
Galaga in a Galaxian Cabinet. Nickelcade it was not. Most classics were
set to 2 nickles and the pins were set at either 3 or 4 nickels. I
didn't talk to the people at the desk but it seemed like it was a family
run business. Anyway, we blew 2 hours and 80 (yeah, big spender) nickels
most of which went to redemption hell via my 4 year old. But it was good
to find an arcade with a lot of the 80s staples that weren't painted
black and actually had capped their monitors since 1985. It wasn't
perfect but it's the best arcade in Utah and the maintenance of the
classics was close to the quality of GroundKontrol in Portland (only 600
miles closer). There was nothing to get excited about collecting wise
but you never know what you might be able to dig up by talking to them.
