ArCains — Local services in Liverpool

Visited as a group last night for my brother's birthday. We had a laugh and a good time overall, but they were the only ones who saved the experience. I previously visited around a year ago, but it seems that the issues from last time still exist.

Staff seem uninterested and do not have much of a floor presence. I'm sure it is easy for them to get overwhelmed, because there is a big customer:staff ratio.

Drinks are quite pricey, but it is expected in the area. There were only two toilets spotted in the building and they are not made clear where they are. Not a good place to visit for those with mobility issues, as there are only stairs and narrow corridors to navigate.

It would be appreciated if they actually put 'out of order' signs on the machines, rather than finding out ourselves. It started getting tiring to get excited for a game, only to be let down in the first few seconds because of a fault.

The machines could do with regular maintenance. It's very disheartening to approach one of your favourite machines, only to discover that there is a missing part, the game crashes or the trigger is broken. Most of the light gun games need calibration as well. I get it, it happens to every arcade, but at least other arcade venues aim to fix it as soon as possible and not leave it neglected.

The only machines which show some sign of good health are the emulators. However, a fair few had missing buttons or the end of the joysticks removed.

Even the non-electronic games have issues. You pay extra to play pool, and the ends of the pool cue were missing.

I totally get it. Not every visitor has the best intentions and will not mishandle the machines, but there should be some foresight by ArCains to put some preventative measures in place. The few ruin it for the many, but it doesn't mean the honest customers should continually pay the price for it.

I would not be in a rush to visit here again. For the price of the entry fee and the number of visitors since it opened, you would think that there would be improvements or an attempt to maintain their image. As soon as you are through the barriers, it's your problem and there is nothing you can do about it. You wouldn't expect this poor service in any other any other industry, so why should ArCains be...

I went to ArCains on a Saturday, which is when ticket prices are most expensive (£18 each). I would have been happy to pay this if it meant full access to all games, but unfortunately several of the games require you to pay once again, and others were broken.

This taken with the fact that it can be quite crowded, with the most popular games perpetually taken up by someone meant that at any one time, I actually didn't have a great choice of games to play.

I would say if you're going to have games like pinball & basketball that you need to pay extra for, at least don't have them on the ground floor. You have to pass through the ground floor before you exit, meaning most people will want to try one or two more games before leaving. The disappointment of finding you need to pay leaves a bad taste in the mouth right before you leave.

Several of the games had out of order signs on them, which is understandable; things break, and at least you can clearly see it's not working before you try to play. But there also were several machines that didn't have an out of order sign on them, but were in fact broken, meaning I would see an interesting game, sit down to play it, only to find it not working. Again, this leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially as there are precious few good games that were actually working, meaning someone was always using them. I suspect the reason there is no OOO signs on all the broken machines is because it would be obvious to anyone walking around the arcade that more than a few of them were unplayable.

Another nitpick: there's no cloakroom. This is probably fine in the summer, but going in the winter means you're carrying around your coat & umbrella everywhere while trying to play arcade games (it's far too crowded and therefore hot to simply keep your coat on).

The whole experience was just frustrating more than anything, which is not something I want to pay (£18) for! Especially given that there are bars within walking distance of ArCains that have Mario Kart and Fifa free to play for customers (and where the food & drinks are cheaper too). I accept that I've only been once and maybe just caught them on a bad day, but that just goes to show why a business needs to be on the ball all the time, as I won't...

Such a shame. As others have said, a lot of the machines are using emulations of old games and the joysticks just don't feel great quality for the fighting games. A shooter games had only one gun working. The ones I remember not working for 2 player were: The Walking Dead, Golden Gun, Rambo. Time Crisis 3 had one of the screens switched off so that was solo play too. We couldn't get Mario Kart to play multiplayer, they didn't seem to link up no matter what we did. Tekken 3 screen was bouncing up and down and the audio blaring from it was broken. One of the joypads on the N64 had a very wobbly analog.

It cost £18 for myself to get in and £18 for my friend so would have expected that all the machines would have been working for at least 2 people to play. The games that did work we had a laugh on. Just a shame really. There's much better places than Arcains if you don't mind an hours drive. Also, a can of drink that usually costs about 60p, costs £2 so watch out for that.

UPDATE AS I WENT AGAIN!

Games that were broken over a year ago are still broken in the same way. Rambo for example neither gun could shoot the right quarter of the screen meaning you couldn't actually proceed from the first wave of enemies. Controllers not working or are broken but a little usable for 2 player (For example The Walking dead player 1 controller was broken but there were a few others) That being said, the older machines (which I suspect are emulations rather than actual old arcade cabinets) worked fine. Supposedly shuts at 11pm according to this page but shut an hour early at 10pm on Monday 5th December 2022. There are just much better arcades like this out there if you look and Arcains needs to step up its game if it wants to compete. Very...