I have gone to Manchester to visit Arcade Club, the Temple of Retro Video Games in Europe, and the trip has reborn my inner child

All adventure usually involves a trip.This one has meant two: to another country and in time.

To the northwest of the United Kingdom is the greatest space dedicated to the Arcade Machines in Europe.It was founded in 2015, when the computer scientist Andy Palmer, realized that the back of his store, in which he accumulated dozens of retro game machines that he collected, had been small and that there was a possibility of creating something moregreat and important.

Thus Arcade Club was born, a club that has become a symbol of a past era.A kind of mecca for gamers and retro video game lovers, to which they should go at least once in their life.If not to reunite with the relics that occupied the leisure of their young times, to know those legends of which their older brothers or parents have spoken to them.Or specialized publications.

Arcade Club is not located in a bustling street in Center for Manchester.It is not like that colorful mincely room, which for some years was located in full Gran Vía.If you do not dare to drive on the left and opt for public transport, you must take a bus that leaves the center of the city of the bees and reach the peaceful town of Bury.It will take you an hour.That children do not fool you running, dogs and some street artist who plays some theme of Ed Sheeran or Oasis.Your destination is close.

After arriving at Bury's Central Bus Station, you have to walk for about 10 minutes and enter a mixture of suburb and industrial polygon.A man who sells food in a small van surrounded by waste in which it seems that he also lives left me frankly confused.But I hadn't missed.

There are no posters of the Arcade Club or indications that make it easily.Finally, between low houses and abandoned warehouses, I ran into the building that houses it.Cobo Calleja came to mind, the clandestine raves, those ships where the ‘snuff’ events of the Hostel movies or that pair of press conferences ‘In the fifth pine’ that organized an agency seeking to be original.

The truth is that an amusement park or a Disney resort did not expect, but neither was the club so ‘alternative’.The place is industrial and decadent.And that indie touch is precisely the one that gives it its greatest charm.

The building has been rehabilitated, but not 100%.On the right side an escape room has also opened room (the truth is that I do not find a better place for it).

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A Sonic figure two meters high (from a lifetime, not the hypertrophied for your movie) you receive you and mark your way, after going through the box office.

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The bottom plant is already full of machines, but not those that work.In the halls you can run into some that I do not know if they are in boxes, they have been removed, they do not fit in the areas enabled or are simply waiting for their opportunity to ‘leave the bench’.

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It is curious to upload the stairs of the Arcade Club and see through their smoked windows some houses attached to their laid clothes, a church or green mountains.In total, the center has three floors, although the ground floor serves as mere reception.

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I have decided to start my visit for the second floor, where only access to over 18 years is allowed (or 16 if they are accompanied by an adult).Although just crossing the doorway, I feel that my mental age has taken away two or three decades on.I recognize that I find it hard to locate myself a little.It is as if the story of video games will be thrown out of you.Lights, crossed 8 -bit music, fingers sounding buttons ....I had forgotten what it was to be in a recreational hall.

After throwing some photos, I stop to observe the type of people in the Arcade Club.In the adult plant you can find everything.

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There are people who exceed thirty and quarantine, twenty -year -old people, people who have gone alone, groups of two or three friends, girls, visitors with the classic appearance of Geek or Nerd, couples, hipsters, emos ... Emos ...

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On the left side of the stay you can find a generous selection of pinball machines.I begin to remember that everything that would happen on the big screen or girl ended up having her own pinball.Indiana Jones, File X, Dr Who, Star Trek, Terminator, Elvira ...

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It is time to live the experience of Arcade Club not only as a mere spectator.As in a kind of ritual, I tell myself that it is better to start around and then try some arcade machine.I also think that it is stupidity and that in my adolescence there were no preliminary need.

My first instinct is to go to the slot where the coins are introduced, but I quickly remember that they are not necessary here.I cling to the pinball to break the ice, while I am mimicing with the environment.

The lever, the balls, the vericuetos where the bulbs that flash, the small mechanical mills, the sound effects ... everything follows in its place.

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Play without the pressure that the game can end - all the ball arsenal collaps.That feeling of relief - but also lack of emotion - will be repeated again and again with each machine that puts your hands on my tour.

Righting to the time of recreational halls makes one remember when his time of stay in them depended on the coins he had in his pocket.Once they ended, the only sense of staying there was to swirling around a machine and seeing how others played.Maybe to cheer them up or to make sure they did not exceed our record (yes, that of the three initials were you).

This hub of the ‘little machines’ ends with those budget limitations.Arcade Club is like a retro video game free buffet.A ‘All You Can Play’ in full.Undo and press buttons until you get.For the 16 pounds that the entrance costs (6 pounds for children) you can spend a whole day playing what you want (or what you can).There is probably a time when your phalanges or view are resigned from the lack of habit.

It is curious as the brain is configured in the same way as a similar situation that you lived before.One of my initial barriers in this Arcade temple is having some reluctance to play titles that I have no idea.Or whose game dynamics or movements do not control.But I am aware that it is something that comes from behind me.

In the ninety ages capable of going to a certain bar or recreational just because there was a game that you liked a lot or dominated.There was no place for inventions or to play any machine you didn't know.It was not allowed to be a cafre or a rookie, because there was always someone from the neighborhood near or looking.You could practice in solitude, to make you better, but always thinking of ‘Fardar’.That was social pressure, and not that of Instagram.And if you were alone, you could leave your brand in the classification, so that others knew you had overcome them.In the Arcade Club, that does not exist and you can play without all that stress.

The second plant also includes an area of PCs and different spaces to play traditional consoles.

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They have even had the detail of including some sofas, so that you have the absolute feeling that you are playing the play with your floor partner.

That would be impossible without being accompanied by a birra?Don't worry, because there is a bar you can ask for a couple of beers or whatever you want.That not only of ‘vicersar’ lives the man.

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In this space you can also find some machines dedicated to driving, shooting or rhythm or music.

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But what surprises this ‘level’ of the club, without a doubt, are the numerous Japanese arcades that houses.They are machines whose menus are totally in Japanese and whose way of playing will cost you to unravel.They usually have less public, probably because of the ignorance they imply, but from time as soon as a brave test.

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The bizarrest, by far, is one in which there is a real table that you must throw according to your anger level.On one of the screens appears a teacher who takes an important tantrum with his students.I have tried to play, but it is not easy to understand it.You don't know very well when you have to pour the table.

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Others are playable instinctively.Thus, I had a good time trying a Japanese arcade in which you have to play a drum with some drumsticks when you mark the screen, in the style of Guitar Hero.The striking thing is that there is a selfie camera that shows you how you do it in real time, but with filters that turn your face into a rabbit, a cat or something very kawaii.

30 years of arcade history

UPLACK ONE MORE PLANT IS ANOTHER POLDING ON THE RETROGAMING SCALE.The Arcade Club cusp, the third floor, is almost entirely dedicated to the arcade and the machines in ‘Cocktail’ format.This is an authentic museum with jewels of all kinds, in which you will make a three decades trip through the history of video games, being your protagonist.Hundreds of machines that you would not have ever thought about dreams together.The complete list, with some of your data, can be found on the center's website.

The clock stops.Game step step, title in title.I delighted with mythical creations of Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom ... I recognize that some seemed more fun in their day and that today the bad graphics, the length or the delay between which you press the button and the character are accused today.kick or punch.

It happens to me with Double Dragon, for example.It is like swallowing an episode of Oliver and Benji or the Knights of the Zodiac today.If before you, today they seem infumable at 10 minutes.

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However, it seems to me that other games still have the same charm.I take a good time to Golden Ax and I am not deprived of riding dragons or kicking dwarfs to get ‘magic’.

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Fighting games also brought me catching me.I miss Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter or Killer Instinct.

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One of the best findings I have encountered has been an arcade machine of the X-Men that allows six players to simultaneously play and that even allows you to take Dazzler.I regret not having come with more people just at this time.

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I test my memory and try to remember those combinations of buttons necessary to make some special movement or combo.Sometimes it results.I remember the times when I went to the kiosk for the Hobby Consoles to be able to buy me some of its specials, in which all the movements and secrets of each character unravel.There was still no internet and it was the only way to know them all and give the size against the friends.

The third floor is open to families or children, although only on weekends.Thursdays and Fridays occurs as with the second, and they can only enter over 18 years old.

Just at the entrance of the last floor there is a small bar where they also serve food, to satisfy the appetite of all clan members.

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I have to say that there is a different environment regarding the other level.On the one hand, it is beautiful and exciting to see parents with their children enjoying games that accompanied the childhood or adolescence of the first.

On the other, generational change is also perceived.Although a poster expressly prohibits it, some kids are dedicated to running through the grooved halls and shouting, as if they had a real sugar rush.They stop occasionally on some machine, they pound for a while and run again, without any fixed direction.As if they didn't really know what they are doing, or for what.

'Where is the touch screen or trackpad?'Many of these little monsters wondered.

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Almost without realizing it, I spent more than 3 hours at the club on Saturday at eating time.The visit is not overwhelming or you have to wait for someone to leave a free machine to play, as it does in the Next Level Arcade Bar, a pub in the center of Madrid that has a modest number of machines, but alwaysIt is up.

In this ‘tugurio’ Gamer next to Manchester you can try everything you want with a little patience.There are enough machines for all and, although there is a public, it is not massified.

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Although there is always some character that does not take off from a machine in question in hours.

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But those specimens have always existed...And they will always exist.

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Arcade Club has already become a small franchise.In addition to the center of Bury, they have also recently opened another space in the city of Leeds.Run to visit any of the two clubs, fool, before Brexit arrives.