Live Wire — Attraction in Maungakiekie-Tāmaki

One of the things that I deeply value in arcades are how well maintained the machines and how usable they are. This arcade is extremely disappointing in terms of the WANGAN machines and the Pump it Up machines. I’ll address the WANGAN machine first.

3/4 of the WANGAN machines has very poor usability since there is no force feedback making the game very hard to play or just unplayable. I also have an issue with the steering wheel where it’s misaligned. This is by far the worst WANGAN experience so far in my entire life. Not to mention I’ve told the staff about the problem 2 months before this review and they said they will have a look. What do you know 2 months later the problem has still not been fixed.

Pump it Up:

Again poor usability since the step pads is very unpleasant. The machine requires me to actually physically stomp on the step pads which is very concerning from a Pump it Up pro like me. This not only will waste my stamina but also sometimes it won’t register the input. The pads should be if I just step on it, it registers instead of just hard stomping it which sometimes makes my feet sore. I’ll go out of my way to come visit and help with the usability with the step pads.

These 2 games are what I value the most and it’s disappointing to see these games have the worst usability and they have not been maintained at all. If Livewire decides to maintain more I might come back but for now I have to go elsewhere to play my favourite games. Truly disappointing for Livewire for not maintaining the top selling feature arcade games. If I could help I would add videos to show my problems but Google does not allow that sadly.

I’ll give an extra star for the food and service but for now this will have to stay...

Sadly, we have a very bad experience with the staff yesterday. I bought online to play bowling with my friends, and when I received the information in my email didn’t explain at all that was just one game, the only detail was booking made from 7pm to 8pm and arrived 5min early, which we did. After finishing the first game we noticed that we have to go to the front desk and tell them that our game was done. That’s when Paige, who was at the cashier explain to us that the booking is made for an hour but is only one game. We accepted and we decided to pay for a second game as by then it was 7:23pm and our line was “booked till 8pm”. That’s when everything went bad, she say she couldn’t sell us one more game, and we were insisting that my email said the booking was made till 8pm, and we still have 30min on our favour. She said I had to talk with my manager, and I say perfect I want to talk with your manager too. After taking a while she came back on her own and just said: I can’t sell you one more game. I asked her to talk with the manager, as was expecting the manager will show up, but she says is busy and can’t come. Was very poorly managed customer service, and the manager doesn’t show up even worst. We definitely...

I just wanted to give a huge shoutout to Toloa for his outstanding customer service at the gaming arcade in Live Wire, Sylvia Park!

From the moment we arrived, Toloa was welcoming, friendly, and incredibly helpful. He went out of his way to make sure everything was running smoothly and that we had the best experience possible. Whether it was answering questions or just being around with a smile and positive attitude — he was absolutely on point the entire time.

You can tell Toloa genuinely cares about making sure every customer feels valued and has fun. He was super patient with the kids and brought great energy to the place.

It’s rare to come across someone so dedicated and passionate about what they do. Toloa really made our visit memorable, and we’ll definitely be coming back thanks to the awesome service he provided. Live Wire is lucky to have him on the team!

Highly recommend visiting — and if you see Toloa there, you’re in great hands!

God bless...