Let me preface this by the fact that it was a Wednesday night and it had been raining so not a lot of people were out and about.
I actually thought the town of Ephrata was kind of cool.
Granted I only saw it at night and it was raining, but there were a lot of really cool old building and it had this neat old town vibe that I really don't get to see much where I live in Arizona.
I thought their location was pretty descent as there is more than ample parking with two parking lots adjacent to the building.
Anyhow, went inside and got a wrist band.
Steves wife or girlfriend was working the table at the front and was really quite nice.
FYI, she did not charge me upfront for a pass and I payed at the end for the amount of time I stayed.
I stayed under an hour so she prorated me and it was around $7, which I thought was fine.
All BS aside I thought the place was descent enough.
I'm not really a snob when I come to playing games out on location, I'll play just about anything as long as its working properly.
If I were local I would go there from time to time to kill an hour or so.
Yeah, maybe some of the games were a little rough, but the place was full of pins and arcade machines and its a fully stocked arcade.
There were a few solid state pins and the rest were EMs, but most were working.
I went down the line and played every pin that was there and for the most part they were all playable and fun.
A few were a bit rough, but totally playable.
I love his Williams Sorcerer which was cosmetically not the best(a bit beat actually), but the machine played just fine and I had fun with it.
I think only two of the pins were down, so it sounds like he's actually making progress getting things up and running.
There are a lot more arcade games than pins.
It looks to me like he's spent some time acquiring some new machines.
There were a few sit down driving games and other and other things that looked like they were being staged to get integrated into the lineup.
Not really anything special or rare in the arcade games, but most were working and there were some descent titles that are fun.
Quite a few are old operator conversions, things like Rush N Attack in a Williams cabinet etc, but whatever I like that game.
I think if he can manage to stay in business for a few years and continue to reinvest profits into new and better machines he can potentially build this into something.
Yes, it was a little musty but to be fair it was raining out and the place has a bunch of old EM games in it.
Not the best arcade I've ever been to, but pretty far from the worst.
Anyhow, I thought it was descent and wish him well with it.
I know we all like to poke the bear here but I hope he builds this into something.
It will be interesting to revisit in the future and see what he does with it.
BTW, Steve was actually there in the back doing repair work on some boards with a Hakko soldering iron, so the kid is actually working on fixing his stuff.
I walked by him but didn't say anything, I figured just let him work.
It looks like I may be coming out this way a couple times a year for work related stuff, so if I do I would check it out again.
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Pittsburgh, PA
