Visiting The Outpost Arcade in Chandler, AZ

My friends and i visited the brand new Outpost Arcade on August 16th. It’s small, but cozy. No booze at the time of the recording, which was a shame because I could’ve gone for a beer if one had been available. I settled for an IBC Root Beer instead. Lots of great pinball games and video game cabinets too: Tempest, Star Wars, Tron, Marble Madness, Joust, Afterburner II, and a couple of games I’d never seen before!
https://www.theoutpostarcade.com/

From left to right, here are Star Wars, Tac/Scan, Robotron 2084, Joust, After Burner II, and Centipede. I’d never seen Tac/Scan before and it was a very cool vector graphic game by Sega! I also didn’t know that there was an Atari 2600 port of this game which uses the paddle controller. Neat!

Here I am, playing Tron. It’s one of my favorite movies, but I admit that the game is only so-so. As a kid, I really enjoyed the successor, Discs of Tron, far more. That said, this game cabinet is an exquisite work of art, with all the glowing detail which matches the movie, and the blacklights that create that fantastic glow. These two aspects really capture the ambience to the movie so well.

This really matches the Syd Mead/Moebius design work of the Tron movie so well.

Star Wars. Oh, heck yeah!

Somehow, the arcades when I was a kid only had Asteroids and not Asteroids Deluxe. The 3D look to Asteroids Deluxe is quite exquisite, with the background and the vector graphics projected onto it. Fantastic.

And of course, plenty of pinball goodness. I really liked the Doctor Who Daleks.

My friend Lou knows this Star Trek: TNG pinball game well. How appropriate, since he’s the biggest Trek fan I know.

A visit to TiltStudio Arcade at Arizona Mills Mall in Tempe, AZ

So while I got to spend time with friends on my recent trip to Arizona, on the day which I visited Andy’s Hobby HQ and Book Off, we also went to AZ Mills Mall in Tempe. TiltStudio is there, and this is where I found the Pac-Man Capsule Factory I posted about earlier. Tilt is what used to be Gameworks which opened in the ’90s when I was in college, and I took videos of Gameworks back in 2010 in the early years of my YouTube channel. Here is the playlist for those videos. At the time, the guy who ran that arcade was focused on bringing in many arcade cabinets from Japan, including an incredibly awesome air hockey table I’ve yet to even come across in Japan even.

Tilt now focuses on a great selection of pinball games, thus the name.

This is cool! It’s a Beatles pinball game. My friend Kevin is a huge Beatles fan, and so is my wife.

An OT Star Wars pinball game! Righteous.

Ghostbusters pinball!

This is a JIBUNGOUS UFO catcher! Holy crap. I had to have my picture taken with it.

Tilt also has a nice collection of some great classic arcade games. The rest of these photos are a collection of pictures of those games.