Chinatown Fair Family Fun Center — Local services in New York

This is a damn shame. This arcade, a once highly regarded, extremely well known staple of NY, is now a sick joke, reduced to an absolute shell of its former self. I used to come here back in the day and it was amazing. Had such a neat underground vibe to it. Nowadays, barely anyone comes here, and whenever I do go, its almost completely empty each time. People probably realized they were getting scammed, and that they could get significantly better bang for their buck at Round1 or even crappy Dave and Busters. This place seems obsolete and should seriously close down because it doesn't offer anything of value to the arcade gaming community.

Here's why: the biggest issue is how exceedingly overpriced the games have become. You can easily load up $10 onto your card, only to have to run back and refill after 1 game. Thats obnoxious and insane. Also, their bootleg DDR machine often has problems or needs better maintenance, and many machines, especially Maximum Tune 5 don't work at all. The second and just as bad issue, is the staff. They straight up suck. NO way around it, they are inattentive, don't care about their job, goof around, and often disrespect customers. One time, a tall dude who was on staff and some insanely loud child who I figure was a family member to a staff person, were hogging up a game and all the space around it, causing massive amounts of noise, not caring at all about anyone around them. Just one example of the staff treating the place like a huge break room.

The garbage overpriced games, rundown machines, forgotten feeling areas, and terrible staff really cement this place as a relic from a lost era. It actually pains me to say this, but Chinatown Fair needs to follow in the other relics' footsteps and die off. We don't need a place like this. Please save your money, don't give it to them, and pick anywhere else for gaming such as Barcade,...

Very disappointed...my son used to love this place, although very small and no air... That is until tonight, he recently had surgery on his foot and asked to use the bathroom after spending money here and was told there was no bathroom and he had to go ask the restaurant across the street where he spent no money at, so that added to the rudeness the kids whom were running the joint was serving, in which you don't know because there are 8-10 people behind the counter and all of them seemed to be doing is chilling and conversing amongst each other, so much so they don't realize they have customers. So after waiting 10-15 minutes to be serviced after they finish choking down there 6 pizza pies, one decided to come help with getting a prize for the tickets earned, while he gave his friend with the booty cut shorts the keys to the bathroom, that they didn't have. I gave it 2 stars because it was once a spot you can take your kids, and they had a few nice games, but this is definitely not one of those places anymore, especially if you can't even get to a game with all of the workers friends sitting on the games or with chairs lined up against the games...mind you there is absolutely no sign up that says no bathroom, but a small 3x3 post it that was recently taped to the cashiers machine. Which no one uses because they...

Went here mostly to play DDR and ITG while staying in Manhattan. It's a pretty good place, Pump it up and StepManiaX are in a better condition and they had Pump it Up Phoenix, which was still pretty new at the time of my visit (Nov 2023). The DDR is a white cab, pretty rare to see outside of D&B or Round1 but could use some work. The panels had a lot of movement and the pads weren't leveled properly so they were shaky, it was better than the average random DDR but worse than Round1 or typical modded pads. The ITG cab was better, its a converted DDR red cab with tons of song packs downloaded and much better pads, but I would suggest getting some more modern ITG packs if they haven't already by now. I didn't try out sound voltex or jubeat, but they seemed to work well. The value isn't the best, but the location is great and it's not ridiculously expensive. Bonus points for staff too; the DDR had some issues starting up and ate our credit, and the staff fixed it quickly and gave us a couple free plays to make up for the credits we lost. If you're a rhythm gamer visiting Manhattan, I would definitely check...