Sherwood Park, AB
Yes the rumours are true, its official Arkadium Retro Arcade will be opening in late summer/early fall of 2019 in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada.
I can't tell you how excited I am to be involved in this project.
My journey started when I was 5 years old and my dad gave me a quarter at a local pool hall / arcade and I put in a Paragon pinball machine. From that moment I was hooked on pinball and haven't stopped playing since. As I got older, I was able to walk to the local arcade near my house and I was lucky to meet a number of life long friends just by hanging out and playing arcade and pinball in my early ages. Later on I was able to afford my own collection and have recently really gotten in competition pinball which has fueled my desire to bring pinball and arcade back into relevance in our city. I have met so many great people in this hobby and that is really the experience and passion that I want to bring with this new facility and open it up to a whole new generation.
The new facility will be all ages (yes, the only all ages arcade location in the Edmonton area). All machines will be on free play for one entrance fee, based on the same model as a lot of the Pinball Museum's in the US. It will be licensed, also serving vintage sodas and a small menu of gourmet hot dogs. We will have limited night time hours on Wednesday - Friday and be open all day on Saturday - Sunday.
There will be a special party room built upstairs that can be rented out for children birthdays, groups or corporate events. It will also be the home of a future pinball league for an awesome competition pinball experience, with tv's mounted over each machine and cameras that will show the action on the playfield. We also plan on having a steaming booth and a permanent setup and ability to easily switch from one machine to another for our bigger tournaments and league play. There will be a small bar area and over 20 pins and 40 classic arcades setup in the upstairs portion of the Arcade.
In the main floor there will be a bigger bar area, small food service with 20 pinball and 20-40 classic arcades for your enjoyment. The facility is just under 5000 sq.ft so there will be lots of room to operate. This is a retro arcade so this won't be all new machines, in fact there will be a lots of EM's, Solid States and Modern machines to make it a balanced experience and something where people can enjoy all eras of machine. The classic arcades will have all of the best retro titles, as well as many multiplayer classic machines for everyone's enjoyment.
The website is being constructed, facebook and social media feeds will be created as we hope to be able to promote it in the coming months. The renovations of the facility have started so we will try to provide updates as we can. Super excited to get this project off the ground and want to thank all of my partners who believed in the project and helping make this happen. We are really proud we have been able to do this with our own funds, no go fund me or handouts, we are all passionate collectors who want to the public to experience the best of the hobby and decided to take on the risk and see what happens.
Hope to be able to open the doors in a couple of months, so speculate away and we hope to see you at the grand opening when it is announced!!!!
Can't wait.
