Geeking Out in NYC - Part 2

Now for the exciting part: one of the most impressive arcades is waiting for you in the belly of Chinatown.

Packed into an L-shaped room, barely wide enough for a cabinet on each side, Chinatown Fair Arcade is a reminder of times past. It is a place where competitive gamers gather around arcade cabinets, place tokens on the glass and await their chance for glory. It holds at least 20 cabinets all sporting classic Capcom and SNK fighting games like Street Fighter 3, Marvel Vs Capcom, and King of Fighters. In addition, Super Street Fighter 4 is available running on a console, but still manages to capture the arcade feel through custom sit-down cabinets and some MadCatz Tournament Sticks. The cabinets work on a timer and depositing a token will buy you about 3 minutes of playtime. Not a bad idea considering the next best option is to import a cabinet from Japan. Throw in a few DDR machines, DJ Max Technika, Initial D and a Red Bull vending machine, and you are looking at a few late nights in this dank Chinatown arcade. It makes me happy to no end to know that in some corners of the world, places like this can still exist. We had to keep moving, but I left my friend Q a handful of tokens in hope that the next time we come to NYC; Chinatown Fair Arcade will remain perfectly preserved.

Another retail outlet, still a relative infant in the gaming space, is the Apple Store on 5th Avenue. Sure, it does not hold the influence Nintendo does, but it is still the most impressive Apple store I have witnessed. A large glass cube with a hovering apple at its core, you descend a staircase into the space below this “architecture as art” as it opens into a collection of iPads, iPhones and general iLife electronics. We walked down at about 11pm and it was busy, explaining why this outlet can afford to be open 24/7, 365 year after year. Playing an iPad for the second time, I really believe that Apple has an opportunity to become a competitor in the video game industry. Something that is holding them back though is the lack of the Gamecenter App, which I thought was suppose to release with iOS4. Nobody has mentioned it though and the operating system is currently running on my iPhone, with no Gamecenter.

     

There are some spots I missed, like the Sony Style Store or Toy Tokyo, but hey, just more reasons to go back to NYC. So remember, next time you are in the Big Apple, take some time to enjoy the culture of video games.

Photos by Lauren Doster, Sean Hinz and the Google image search