Game On Retro Arcade — Attraction in Town of Smithtown

Don't get me wrong. I love video games, and it's a great concept but - nothing really stands out about this place except for the convenience of being located right in the mall. I have had the chance to visit a few times and the first couple times I was here it was great, but it seems to have declined in recent months.

The staff is generally hit or miss, once they have your cash it seems they don't care about the experience. They cram as many people in here as possible, which I get because they want to be as profitable as possible, so it gets unbelievably hot. I don't know if the mall is responsible for the air conditioning or the business, but one big fan in the back corner won't cool the whole place down. (These were things you would overlook the first few times as they were just starting out as a business, but how long does it take to get the A.C. working?)

I'm sure many people appreciate the lower price (I believe it was $20 before and now it's $15) but for five more bucks, I would pay it if they were able to hire more technicians or staff to repair the cabinets. (Again, to be fair I am sure finding people with that particular skill set could be difficult...) But- If I had to estimate, the day I went about 1/6 machines were not working, worked with limited functionality, or were being serviced.

These are, of course, the more popular games you were hoping to play. (Such as Duck Hunt on the arcade cabinet, and the VS Mario Bros cabinet which I was hoping to try) It would even be reasonable if they just had a "This machine is out of service" sign or unplug it/power it down so people don't waste time trying to play a broken cabinet.

On the same token (enjoy the arcade pun)- after asking staff for some help to either reset a game/cabinet they seem so annoyed. "These are old games, what do you expect?" There is no reason to be rude to customers, at all, at any point. As the saying goes, you had one job.

The unlimited play concept is great in theory- but some of the games have difficulty with that (e.g. Ninja Turtles arcade) which is great if it were running on token system or even time limited. Someone gave all four characters basically a ton of lives by hitting the buttons below the control deck a lot and it wasn't possible for my friend and I to really play one of our favorite games as a result. It also leads to many people hogging/monopolizing particular games for extended periods of time.

Lastly, in all fairness - the first few times I visited the arcade was impeccably clean, but again the last visit left much to be desired.

Some customers were coughing, sneezing and smearing boogers and snot on the Pinball machines glass tops which just grossed me out. I can only imagine what was on the arcade cabinets. Thankfully from what I could tell, food was not allowed in or it may have been worse.

I'm not going straight one star on this place because it did start off great but I think the quality of the experience has declined...

Game On has a special place in my heart ever since I moved to Long Island. I get high scores in Pac-Man, compete against my fellow competitive pinball players in the pinball machines for the on-screen leaderboards, play my hardest in Smash Ultimate, and get obliterated in Ghosts n' Goblins on the first level (I hope it comes back because I want to actually have a go at beating the entire game lol).

Massive selection of legendary arcade games, a small yet solid roster of pinball machines (Jurassic Park Premium is by far the greatest of them all with having been number one on multiple Top 5 pinball machines lists online), old school consoles to get lost into, and some table games. When I'm not playing on my PC and I get burnt out on online multiplayer games that I mainly play, I come here, and it's fun enough that the hours flow by extremely quickly when I'm trying to grind for the highest leaderboard score in Pinball alone until closing time. All this, combined with an entire mall, food court, treats and stores to visit, and it's a blast.

I made a lot of friends here, including my fellow pinballers who I talk to every day. Can't say my mother and aid isn't proud of me for doing this while outside in the arcade.

If there's anything I can say here in this review to improve the experience, it would be to introduce more games for all the old school consoles. The amount of modern pinball machines is perfect, but some fixes and tweaks needs to be done (Currently, Jurassic Park and Star Wars is perfect where it's at, the left gap next to the Demogorgon of Stranger Things has widened to a point where a ball gets stuck in it, The Mandelorian pinball machine has the most problems with its ship's right flipper getting stuck sometimes, one part of the right ramp's top part is missing, causing the ball to fling into random directions above the right ramp and ultimately not going down the pathway it was meant to go down to fully, and the right scoop not registering a given score even when the ball is going down the right scoop pathway, Godzilla is unscannable by a QR code and you can't play for leaderboards because of it, once the ball goes into the Deadpool left scoop, the ball stays there for twenty seconds before the pinball is forced to reset and unstick it. Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles deserves to come back. Overall a lot of stuff but I can see it all being fixed in the future). Super Mario Bros sometimes wouldn't work for a few hours or even a day because the coin system acts up, some machines I played a long time ago are missing buttons or inputs.

I originally was going to give this place a solid 4 stars, but with the membership giving you access all month for 40 dollars monthly, means EXCEPTIONAL value. 5 stars from me. I'm looking forward to seeing the business of this Arcade excel.

Edit: I must also mention that all the staff there are super nice and I’ve become good friends...

a fun way to spend some time...with a little bit of a disappointment.

first the good. im am as gen x as it gets. i loved seeing marble madness, zaxxon, robotron, asteroids, and berzerk all right there in front of me again like it was the mid 80s. i cant tell you how much time i spent in time out and peter pan back in the day. so for that reason alone this was 15 bucks well spent for a couple of hours of throwback fun.

it was a sunday afternoon and the place was clean the air conditioning was on, the crowd was good, enough people to be lively but not too crowded where you cant find a machine open. it was nice to see people enjoying a real arcade again...not one thrown onto a birthday place or bowling alley....but a real arcade that people go to because its an arcade.

now for the not so great.

video games are cool and all....but we can all play all these games at home on emulators. what i went for was the pinball. virtual pinball is fun...but not a substitute for the real thing. they have a decent selection, unfortunately all stern tables...which leads me to:

all 7 of the 7 pinball machines they have exhibited game breaking software errors during play. all 7 exhibited the SAME game breaking software errors. all 7...every game i played. there were constant issues with the tables not knowing how many balls were in play, not accepting input from the action button (one action button completely broken), lengthy delays (up to 2 minutes at a time) while the ball is caught in a feature but the game doesn't register it. multiball modes that only shoot out one ball at a time then get confused when the one ball drains...and it thinks you still have more on the field. all kinds of problems like these on every game.

if you hold down both flippers and the start button for like 10 seconds you can force the game to reset...but youll loose the ball you were playing.

anyway....all seven of the machines having these issues points to extremely poor maintenance. stern tables sometimes have ball tracking issues...but this is a whole other level.

TL:DR

cool fun arcade, good for wasting time or throwback fun...could use better maintenance on the only machines there that really require it. would i go back? yes....but i sure do hope someone gets on those pinball machines...they...