NQ64 Arcade Bar - Newcastle — Restaurant in Newcastle upon Tyne

Awesome, but loses a star because of the doormen hassling.

Well worth a couple of hours before the club on a Saturday night

Great range of arcade games and consoles. It has driving games, guitar hero, Dance Dance Revolution, shooting games, pinball, and loads of stand-up arcade games from Turtles, Simpsons to Mortal Kombat, and a few golden oldies like Mrs. Pac-Man, Donkey King, Space Invaders.

Bar staff are friendly, the cocktails are nicely made legit cocktails, and a good range of beers, although one or two more different tasting ales wouldn't go a miss.

The decor is fantastic, and the place looks as if I was zoomed back to an arcade in the 80/90s. It's also very spacious and spread out well.

High Scores: If the boss can find a way for the machines to save the high scores, that would be fantastic. People like me, and I know there are others, like to see their name in lights at the top of the high score list. And it will keep me coming back more, to spend more money to beat somebody else's high score if I've been knocked off the top.

Downsides.

Men's toilet floor gets a bit manky by the end of the night. Beer prices are on the high side above £6.

One of the doormen: Hopefully it was a one-off, but I've seen a couple of people being unfairly stopped by the doormen before.

It was 7pm, just got off the bus, was dressed nicely, going in to meet a friend. Walked in a straight line to the door, and the doorman stops me for being "too drunk".

I protest because obviously I'm sober as a judge and wondering why I was stopped. The doorman asks me to walk in a straight line up and down the street to prove I'm not drunk, which I do once.

He's still not convinced and asks me to do various other tasks to prove I'm not drunk. At this point, I can see that I'm a fool, and he wants to see me dance for entry. Basically just doing it for his own enjoyment because he's bored and wants to powertrip on somebody.

I refuse and am about to turn around and go elsewhere, then he nods to the door and allows me inside.

Hopefully it doesn't happen all the time, with people are being hassled and refused entry or they walk away. People want to play the games inside, not outside of the arcade.

If it happens again I'll just turn around and go to the other arcade bar around the corner and make that my home, because I come in a lot, almost every weekend, spend at least £30 upwards each time and always suggest to my friends to meet up there. Spend on tokens, a few beers and depending on how long I stop another round of tokens and beers. I'll just...

We visited during happy hour on a Wednesday and to begin with everything was pretty cool! I absolutely love the concept but we had issues with loads of the games.

Our first being that one mario kart didn't work so we lost the tokens for one player. We did tell the staff who did something in the debug menu and tested it, but there was no offer of our tokens back for even one player. Not even really an apology for the inconvenience.

We also found that many of the machines would just eat the tokens and not register them so you had to put in double the amount to play, and with no way to prove it, what could we do? Keep going back to the bar to report ANOTHER game not working?

We also found that it was very unclear on some of the games how exactly you could assign the tokens to the second player, so a few times it ended up being one of us playing while the other could only watch and wait for the next turn to use their tokens from the machine.

If they could fix the machines so that they register the coins properly, this would be such a great place to visit and we'd 100% be back We still ended up having a lot of fun but it was disappointing to lose so many of our tokens, so its difficult to say whether we would visit another branch or...

I like NQ64 and I would largely give it 5, but unfortunately it's the people going, rather than the business that's the issue.

There's a great selection of drinks, retro arcade games. Staff are lovely and it's generally got a cool vibe.

But heed my words if you are reading this and you are a gamer or neurodiverse go on a week day, or before 5pm Friday and Saturday. Because after that is it just tinder date central, lads/Huns looking for a quirky night out.

These people are loud, abusive and damage the machines and don't follow arcade etiquette. (Yes there is arcade etiquette and if you don't know that you are probably are out of the realm of gamer mentioned above). During these times I've been hit on and had drinks spilled, not the arcade vibe.

If you are wanting to do retro arcade games during peak times Friday/Saturday night, I'd recommend going to four quarters. It's a bit to nerdy for the Hun/lad brigade so it's got more of a relaxed atmosphere, with a community of people who enjoy games and the culture...