Underground Retrocade — Local services in Dundee Township

Owners appear to have an adversarial relationship with customers. Feels like you are paying for the "privilege" of being there Rather than being invited in to relax and have a good time.

Context - We last came here in 2019 and loved it, spent probably 8 hours over two days in the pinball room and on active games like ski ball, basketball, etc. Paid the $15 entrance fee twice per person so spent $60 and felt very worth it.

Came back for the first time in 5 years and price has gone up from $15 to $20 so $40 for just one day for a couple. Ok, I understand inflation, but they have also moved the premium pinball machines out of the free play area, so it's also shrinkflation. Even if you pay $20 to get in, it's still an extra cost on top of that to play pinball. This is NOT on the website and we drove an hour to get here.

Added, there are way fewer active games like ski ball, basketball, motorcycle racing that are easy entry than there used to be. Truly only worth it if you like 80s button and joystick games, but even then it would probably be cheaper to just spend $5 in quarters on what you play each hour than the hefty fee.

The real downer for me was watching a family of 5 come in with just two kids who wanted to play. The cashier (very nicely!) said they'd all have to pay. Asking $100 for a family that would probably only spend an hour in the arcade, with very few games they could all play together. Three of them turned around and left, they couldn't enjoy the day together.

Lots of machines are out of commission and have signs with essay length paragraphs disparaging customers who dared to enjoy them too much. We left after less than 45 minutes because with all the signs around it just didn't feel welcoming anymore.

Idk, if this place had a family pass, or just switched everything to pay per play, or treated the place more like a game room and less like a precious museum, allowed people to take drinks back to the arcade area like most modern arcades do, they might end up making more than $20 a person in repeat and walk in business. We...

What a cool place!!

At Easter, my wife and I gave our sons a bunch of coupons they could use whenever they chose. Yesterday, my younger son gave me the 1:1 with dad, a night just the two of us. I asked him what he'd like to do and he said "let's go to an arcade!"

I'd heard of this place just randbomly searching Google maps and I suggested it, and I'm glad I did, because this place is way cool.

Old school arcade games, pinball games an air hockey table and a LOADED jukebox!! A skeeball machine too.. that got a lot of play. Q*Bert was nearby, so I played that while my son rocked the skeeball. We played air hockey where I got my butt handed to me five times (I used to dominate at that game)...

There's even an upstairs, which I didn't notice right away, but it has all sorts of cool stuff. Mortal Kombat 1, II and ultimate 3! Simpsons bowling, which I'd honestly forgotten about, but it was still cool. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a classic too!

I'd also like to say thank you to this place for having a WORKING machine of Carn-Evil. A cool shooting game from Midway. It was a favorite back in the day, but coming across one that actually works is hard. There's a place, I won't say the name, but it rhymes with "shmalloping shmost" that has this game out on the floor, but it never freaking works. So I appreciated the hell outta being able to play this again.

And EXTRA props to the owner/operator who's name I didn't catch, so I apologize... but something else struck me. It's small, but as a parent, it means a lot. We went to get a drink and my son said "Pepsi" I go "Pepsi?!?!" Just being silly... the guy looks at me and goes "is that OK?" It's the little things, not everybody would do that. So thank you.

Overall, great time. Will definitely be back. As soon as we got home, my son ran to my other son going "you gotta go to this place with dad you'd love it!" So yeah...

Imo, this place is probably a 3.5 star establishment. I've been spoiled with freeplay arcades that include their pinball machines in the $15-$30 unlimited freeplay. I knew going into this place that their pins were token play and tokens were 2 for $1. Still when I forked over $10 and he handed me a tiny plastic shot glass with 20 tokens I was like...aww dang that isn't going to last very long. I had just spent $20 the day before at a similar establishment and played for almost 5 hours. I was here for about 45 mins.

They had 15 pins, all appeared to be operational. Some newer Insider Connected Sterns like Foo Fighters, Mandalorian, and Stranger Things. They also had the new Pulp Fiction pin from CGC, which was pretty cool. However, most of their pins were 20-30+ year old classics- which was just fine by me! I love the classics. Games such as Lethal Weapon 3, Comet, T2, and Ghostbusters. Some of the classics were in pretty rough shape though. I would imagine the older pins were probably at one time (and may still be) route pins, spending most of their lives rotating in and out of taverns, bowling alleys, and other arcades. I don't think any of the older pins had new or upgraded lights as they all seemed very dim. The place itself was pretty dim actually. Where there was light it was directly over the pin causing glare on the glass.

Older pins were just dirty in general, inside and outside. Playfields were dirty and grimey. Some slow and sticky flippers. Drop targets that weren't working at all. The Ghostbusters pin seemed unlevel left to right.

I'm not sure what the cabinet games looked like as I was only there for pinball, which is at the very front of the place. I do think the arcade is unlimited freeplay though for $20. Overall, not...