The Arcade — Local services in Brighton Charter Township

Just went here yesterday! What a blast! We usually drive almost 3 hours to another arcade in Brookfield, Illinois because we had no idea there was another arcade just an hour from our home. We love the one in Brookfield so they had big shoes to fill in our eyes. We knew that they had about a third of the games the other arcade had so we didn't really expect much. When we entered, we were first greeted by the employee at the counter. We didn't read the sign at the front that says CASH ONLY...He was very friendly about it and let us know there was an ATM next door. No big deal...My hubby went next door to the ATM while I hung back to survey the place. The games were wonderful!! Most in excellent working condition and great game play! They had about 30 pinball games! A few were not working but that was not that big of a deal. We mostly wanted to play pinball and of course I am a Turbo Ms. Pacman freak and love it! They had it and of course, I had to play until I scored the high score! Best game play for this game that I have ever played! Tons of retro games! Lots of games from Japan. My only problem with that is the language is in Japanese so I had no idea what I was picking when starting the race games! That made it kind of fun though! A little like Russian roulette with racing games! There were some games that I wish they had, they didn't have. There are a total of probably about 200 games and a handful were not in working order. This is actually a great thing! When you go into these arcades with old retro cabinet arcade games, you run into tons of them not in working order or poor game play. Remember, many of these games are 30+ years old! I could tell they take very good care of their games. I personally thought $15 per person was a fair price. I would have spend way more than that if it were based on quarters or tokens. I truly got $15 worth of pure enjoyment out of my visit. You get a wrist ban and can come and go as you please for the day. We spent a few hours there. It does get hot, but the video games generate a lot of heat so we expected that. The only thing that we didn't enjoy was that there were some parents there with a couple of little girls (5 or 6 years old) running around the second floor playing hide and seek or something. Running through the aisles while you were trying to play. The girls were doing that high pitched squealing that you think will shatter your ear drums or windows. Fortunately, they did not stay long. But really that is not the fault of the arcade so I will not mark them down for that. They really have no control over out of control kids with parental supervision. It was irritating other game players also (I was hearing multiple grumbles from other players). Once they left, it was a much more enjoyable time for all! We definitely will be back! Can't wait until the next time! Hopefully my high score will still be...

I went there for my birthday last week, as I have been an arcade junkie since I was 6 years old.

Pros: an EXCELLENT selection of games, including several I have not seen in arcade cabinet form since I was a kid (including a fully functional Rip-Off and Star Castle). There were tons more wrapped in shrinkwrap and not plugged in that I would have loved to see working.

Cons: When I walked in there I would have given the place five stars just for the games, ambiance and setting (80s music blasting was a huge plus, took me right back to that time), but I had to take one star off for several games and pinball machines either out of order or worse, not functioning properly. If you are going to run an arcade in this day and age, the games need to be working properly, especially when you're charging as much as you are to play them, which brings me to the reason why I took the second star off...

I understand that the business side of things requires you to "charge" more to play the games (two tokens for most video games, four tokens for pinball), and the cost is somewhat mitigated by giving out discounts (like 120 tokens for 20 dollars), but I think running the arcade with either a flat fee like Galloping Ghost in Chicago and putting the games on free play or going with the old arcade models like 5 tokens for a dollar (doing 6 on the weekends), 25 or 30 for $5, 50 or 60 for $10 etc. and setting the machines back to one and two respectively, would bring more people into the place and bring more business into the place... while the place wasn't jumping on a Friday night, there were quite a few people in the place. This place blows Pinball Pete's out of the water, and the potential for this place to be the best arcade in Michigan is there, but there needs to be better game maintenance and the "prices" need to come down. A slightly better location would help too, but its not...

Great classic arcade with a nice variety of classics and some harder to find games from the '70s through the '90s. Decent pinball selection, a few more tables than Marvin's. For a $20 wristband, you get unlimited plays on every game in the place, which pays for itself in less than 2 hours. Definitely worth the price of admission.

Atmosphere is... well, it's an arcade straight out of 30 years ago. '70s and '80s hits on the PA, the occasionally sticky joystick, regulars planted in front of their favorite game for hours on end. The only thing missing (thankfully) is the stale cigarette odor. No frills, just great old games, and some new ones, too. Crowd seemed to mostly consist of people who were probably arcade hounds back in the day, but there were quite a few families and teens there too. Everyone was friendly and seemed to be enjoying themselves. A great place to introduce kids to classic gaming.

Yeah, some games were either under wraps or out of service (I'm guessing they rotate games in and out), but you'd probably be broken down too if you were almost 40 years old and have been beaten on by disaffected hipsters more accustomed to playing lousy arcade imitations on their smartphone while soaking up $8 coffees at Starbucks. If you're looking for flashy ambiance, you can always go to the neon-streaked, kiddie-Vegas thrills of Dave & Busters in Livonia and pay through the nose ($1.00+ per play) for mostly newer games, ticket redemption ripoffs prowled by dead-eyed adults soullessly hoarding tickets for thankless children, and about a similar working to non-working game ratio. If you're looking for a place to enjoy some arcade games for an afternoon in a relatively low-key atmosphere, this...