Doubletap Beercade — Local services in Madison

Edit 10/20/2024: Just revisited and no change in quality for the pump it up pads. I must speak true to my nerd heart: this one machine that would make this place worthwhile is functionally useless to me. I will most likely not revisit. Thankfully it did seem like Tetris was back at full speed, so that's something.

Edit 10/2/2024: Just to clarify for a fellow 3-star reviewer (who very eloquently described the current issues with the machine): When I first visited, the Pump it Up machine was quite literally slow (under 60fps) and stuttering (unknown issue). It took them two or three weeks to fix it, but it did indeed get fixed eventually, leaving only the pads in awful condition. The last time I visited was a few weeks ago, and the pad sensors were 50/50 broken or slightly more sensitive than my first visit. To my dismay the more sensitive of them were on the outside corners... Additionally, the Tetris cab I talked about previously was almost completely unchanged, still running slower than it's supposed to, and still with a square gate on it's joystick (things that I brought to their attention via email) Anyways, I intend to revisit soon enough to see where things have gone.

This place is in it's opening week so I'm cutting them some slack, but both the games I played while I was there, pump it up (dance game) and tetris, were slow and stuttering. Pump it up in particular is a brand new machine. I'm an experienced player and I've never seen one run that poorly in my life. It was sweltering in there and I think the machines were feeling it too. I asked a non-bar staff member if there was any way to contact maintenance to let them know the issues I had but was told "it's already contracted out" and was immediately dismissed. I don't know how important his next task was but I thought he was rude. It's an arcade, and you don't think it's worth passing me off to the person who's job to listen to me about problems with the machines? red flag. it's worth checking out but I won't return unless the machines get some...

I’d be willing to bump up this review if either the Pump It Up machine gets its sensors fixed, or they bring Ice Cold Beer by TAITO back online.

I should start off with the good things, probably. Bartenders were nice, and the beer list was big enough to not feel super constrained in my choices. Always love me some Mango Cart.

I think another reviewer’s explanation of the problems with Pump were inaccurate, or badly articulated: the game does not stutter or freeze, but the sensors, especially on the front arrows, seem to be failing. You need to put an unreasonable amount of weight on them in order to avoid failing nontrivial charts (difficulty higher than S7—things go up to S28 or thereabouts, to put things in perspective), because you’ll fail to keep the arrow held for the long notes.

The penalty for dropping long notes is one of the most punishing aspects of PIU—more than a few of them can cut your session short and waste your Taps (what Doubletap uses as their credits). I wish it weren’t so, but as it is, this PIU cab is dead to me, and is most likely so to anybody who aims to play more than just casually.

The PIU cab is also offline, so I can’t save progress, but I’d be willing to overlook this if only the dance pads weren’t essentially busted. As things stand, you can play about 15% of the intended content because of the pad handicap. Most of the lower-difficulty songs are also the least appealing as well. I’d love to sink credits and brews here in the future if this...

Cool spot games seem brand new but the female young bartender was extremely rude and unwelcoming. We go to order a drink a the bar and this girl rolls her eyes and the in a stern voice asks “WILL YOU BR STARTING A TAB?! “ she hands over the mobile credit card processing machine and it didn’t work right the first time so she said we didn’t something wrong and rolled her eyes again and rudely took the machine back. It seemed like big inconvenience to ask for another drink so we just had one and left. I/0 and aftershock have much nicer staff. Service goes a long way imo. Won’t try again for a hot minute...