Hey, welcome everyone to Today in the Scene by Indie Arcade Wave. I'm Joe, your host. And here on In the Scene, we dive into what's happening in the arcade space. From new arcade developers, arcade owners and operators, pinball, and just news in the space in general. Now, before we jump in, if you are looking to add a new Stern to your arcade, Star Wars did just come out, send me an email at indie arcadewavegmail.com, and we will get you one of those. If you're looking for an indie game or an ice cold beer, you can also email me there and we will get those to you as soon as possible. Now, this week we have an awesome guest from Texas. Uh, Mike is going to come on and talk about the Electric Starship arcade. I've talked to a few arcade owners in Texas, but I'm really excited about this one. Let's bring him in. How you doing, Mike?
Hey, how's it going, Joe?
It's going great. It's going great. Uh, I can't complain about this Florida Carl Weathers. I'm enjoying it. I'm sure it's just as hot down in Texas, but uh,
yeah, it's pretty warm here, but I do love Florida. Anytime I go, it's it's a blast. So,
it's it's a good spot. I'm not going to complain. Let's talk about Mike. Who is Mike and what are some of your earliest arcade memories?
Uh, well, my name's Mike Woods. I'm from Fort Worth, Texas. That's u a twin city with Dallas. So, if you're familiar with Dallas, Dallas Fort Worth, that area, this is where I grew up. Uh earliest arcade memories were gosh uh probably uh just like arcades in the like showbiz and Chuck-e-Cheese and then movie theaters. Tilt would be an early one uh for me. Um I just grew up really loving arcades and just the energy you felt when you walked into one. So uh I always dreamed of making an arcade. Arcades kind of died. So, the dream kind of died and then I saw the, you know, resurrection of maybe the retro arcade or the arcade with beer, that sort of thing. So, uh, dream woke up. So, here I am.
Yeah, I love that. We see this space continuously growing everywhere in the country, no matter where you go. If you're near I mean, I was going to say if you're near a major city, you can find an arcade, but even if you aren't, there are arcades all over the place. I'm thinking uh uh Bad Axe Retro Arcade like they're in the middle of nowhere Michigan
and they're the only arcade within like 50 60 miles of them. So there's there's people popping up all over the place. I'm curious about your personal journey. So did you start collecting the cabinets and then say I want to start an arcade or did you say I want to start an arcade and then let's find the cabinets?
You know that's what what you typically hear with an owner. you'll say, "Oh, I had I built my own arcade in my house, then I outgrew it, and then I had a partner and he wanted to, and then boom, boom, boom, we built an arcade." So, a little kind of on that that route. How it happened with me is I had, you kind of over my shoulder, pretty dark in there. But I had a little arcade uh setup for my kids. I have twin girls. If you've seen any of our YouTube videos, you'll see both of them on there. And I was like, "Well, we need to get a pinball machine and we need to get a fighting game and a gun game." And and on that journey, I um stumbled upon an auction where I bought a couple of games and I didn't know they weren't working. I guess I just didn't read the fine print. So, I got them home. They were both broke. Took me a couple of uh a couple of about a week. Well, that I fixed one that night. Took me about a week to fix the other one. And once I did, it kind of dawned on me that, man, if I buy these things broke and fix them myself, this might be something I could afford. Uh, the first arcade I saw that was different than what I grew up with, uh, meaning it had a bar in it was a place called Barcadia in Dallas. I believe it's still there. Uh, but it was more bar and had a few arcade games and they had built their theme basically around that. But their arcade games weren't it wasn't like a complete feeling collection. Number one. Two, they weren't the monitors weren't adjusted right. Some buttons weren't working. Some joysticks weren't working. And I remember this was about 2012. I told a buddy of mine said, "If I ever had this, this is such a great concept. I would just make it all arcade with beer instead of all bar with arcade games." So, uh, once I kind of stumbled upon that auction and, uh, saw that there was an affordable way to do it, at least in my eyes, then that that's how we started.
Yeah. I love that you had local inspiration. Obviously, you know, most I feel like most arcade owners that I talked to have been like, "Oh, I saw this one or I was on a business trip here." whatever it may be, you end up seeing the inspiration and then you say, "But I could do it better or I could do it cleaner or or you could focus on the arcade and then have the bar afterwards instead of the bar for the arcade." And I I absolutely love that. So, let's talk about your venue. Obviously, like Electric Starship Arcade, you have a unique space with a lot of games, a bunch of pinball, as well as a stage, so you have music in there and stuff, too. like kind of break down what someone would expect if they visited Electric Starship.
Yeah, that's that's the great thing about the Starship is when you walk in, you know you're going to get quality games, you know you're going to get quality pinball, you know you're going to get quality beer beer selection. Uh, but what you don't know sometimes is if we're gonna have karaoke or if we're going to have DJs with drum and bass or if we're going to have a band playing unless you like follow us online and see, you know, hey, this is we're having a band on the 26th or whatever. So, that I think just a little bit of the element of surprise sometimes is really fun. And also, I just I think the bigger a net you cast out, the more fish you catch, right? So, I just would like to do a lot of different things and see what people really like. And sometimes things don't work great and sometimes things work great and then you can kind of focus on those things. And uh anything to keep the space from just being boring. Yeah. Uh, you know, a lot of a lot of places can open an arcade and put a bunch of games out there, but to keep them all working, keep them all tiptop, uh, and then also have the surprise of maybe you're going to see a band tonight or maybe we're going to sing karaoke, I think that makes it a lot of fun. And it's just that kind of variety that makes it a lot of fun.
Yeah, I I totally agree. I think the idea of walking into an arcade and there being a band or a DJ or karaoke or whatever is is pretty unique. You don't see that in a lot of places. talk about the the games that you guys have, right? You you have a pretty massive collection of of games and pinballs. So, what do you guys have in there and and what what in your eyes stands out in the collection?
So, uh we have about 140 plus games on the floor. It it's a it approaches 150 and it approaches 140 just depending on how big a game is and if it takes up two or three spaces or not. So, when I got into this early on, obviously I loved the classics and that's what makes you think of an arcade when you think arcade in the 80s. Uh, so you have, you know, your Donkey Kongs and Pac-Man and Galaga and and then into the 90s with Mortal Kombats and Street Fighter and Tekken and that sort of thing. But I found pretty quickly that while those games are a big draw to bring people in, they're all were kind of designed to be eating quarters and to move you through your change pretty fast. Like trying to get the money out of you. You average game of Donkey Kong. I mean, how long is it, right? It's pretty quick. So even if someone has the nostalgia of coming in and saying, "Oh my god, there's my favorite old game." They still get beat pretty quickly. And without that investment, if you're on a free-to-play format, without the investment going in, a lot of times people walk off after they get hit one time, you know, I mean, if you've in the pinball scene, you'll see it. People load up pinball, shoot one ball, it drains, they walk off, and then their balls are sitting there. Or they'll load up a four-player game and walk off. So, I found really quickly, you couldn't just depend on just retro classics. You need those. I think they're absolutely essential to make the arcade feel like a retro arcade. obviously, but you have to focus on the things that people can't necessarily do at home on a system or on their phone. So, I I learned really quickly driving games are important and shooting games are important because that peripheral, you know, whatever it may be, either a light gun or a steering wheel, uh, really drives home that experience. Then then after that, I try to focus on games that are multiplayer. another thing that you don't really feel the person next to you. You know, you're when you're elbowing somebody while you're playing Street Fighter, there's something to that that's fun. Uh, and you don't necessarily get that at home. Uh, so I focused a lot on that. Four player games like Simpsons and X-Men and Sunset Riders, games like that that would have four people or six in the case of a six player X-Men. And then even indie games like Killer Queen and you're five on five on that. That's a 10-player game. So, uh, learned that really quick. Um, rhythm games are huge. So, trying to have the right mix of those in there. And then, um, so I usually say the retro games bring people in the door. The modern games, like more modern stuff, like a big Jurassic Park shooter or just any modernesque type game. Trying to think of some other ones. Dead Storm Pirates, Jurassic Park, um, H2 Overdrive I think is the one. Batman. These are games that people can sit in and play for a while. So you get one set of games brings them in the door. The other set of game games gets them playing for a while and the right mix I believe is what brings them back to the arcade. Like man, we had a lot of fun. They had all these retro games but they had some modern games too and we just had a real good time and they want to be they'll be an ambassador for your brand and bring people back with them. So, um, that's what you would expect to see in the Starship is a really good retro classics, a lot of modern stuff as well, and the right mix, uh, to bring people back and introducing new games as well.
Yeah, I mean, you hit on two things that I want to dive into a little bit more. I think having that balance is is very important. It's difficult to do. Not every arcade does it well, and it's it's great to see that you have a nice collection like that. Um, the two things I wanted to talk about was your payment model, right? because you are a pay at the door kind of arcade, right? You're a free play model, which I like. I think that's great and it probably saves you a huge headache on coin jams because that's a lot of the maintenance.
Um, and then the other thing is indies. You mentioned Killer Queen. So, let's first start with your your pay model, which I saw and I thought was an incredible deal. I mean, what is it? It's $12 for the day or 20 for the month. Is that right?
That's correct. So, $12 gets you in. You can play all games all day long. Uh, $20 gets you in from the day you buy it for a whole 30 days. So if you buy it on the 17th, it's good through the 17th of the next month. And also our sister arcade, Time Rift, it's good over there as well. So you can have two arcades. That was kind of even when we opened that, we didn't increase the price of the monthly pass. Uh so yeah, it's fantastic. I think it's the best deal in town. I love it. So it's a it's a it's a quality pass uh for folks that are, you know, I was I'm a single dad and my girls are 25 now. One of them's running the arcade right now while I'm not there. Um, and when they were little, I was always looking for something that was affordable for me to do with them. And I said, you know, when I was starting this, I said, if I ever get this arcade up and running, I'm going to make it inexpensive for families. So, even, you know, even in hard times, they'll have something they can do with their kids.
I think that's great. That's amazing. I mean, it it's it's so true. Like, my wife and I go to arcades all the time, and it's like you're paying at the door. We're there for like two hours, but we drop 40 to 50 bucks just for the two of us. Like, if we had kids, too. Like, that would just be
you'd be dropping a $100 for a few hours. That's that's crazy for me.
And I think that's that's so nice that you used your personal experience with your girls to to build this dream and and make it something that's affordable for other people to to enjoy in the future. Um, let's let's touch back on on the indie games, right? You mentioned Killer Queen. Are you familiar with other indie games? What do you think about the indie game scene for the arcade space? Is it important for the future or not?
I think it's huge for the arcade space and we have several indie games. Actually wrote a little tiny blog post on my website about indie games pretty recently and uh I have some opinions some serious opinions about the way indie games are marketed and kind of that the price format of where they're at and who they're targeting. Uh, but specifically in our arcade, we have Killer Queen, Retro Raccoons, Nidth Hog 2, I just got Po Perfect Pour in, and uh I feel like I'm Retro Raccoons. I mentioned that one. I'm not sure if I did. Uh, I feel like there's another one, too. I mean, we have Asteroids Recharge, which is technically Atari, but is it really? I mean, it feels a little indie, even though it's kind of a an out there brand. uh I mean or a known brand with a known uh but Atari is not the same as it was and I would view Allen one as indie to some degree. So I mean
yeah Allen one is definitely an indie studio.
We can argue that I guess in the comments but but I view that as as a little more of an indie game than it would normally be. It does have some I paid a little more for that one. That kind of goes me to the pay thing. I paid a little more for that one because it does have some nostalgic value attached to it because people understand what Asteroids is. But it's hard to pay a whole lot for some of these games just based on the fact that, you know, they're no one really knows what Perfect Pore is or Nith Hog or Killer Queen. I know in our scene, everyone knows what those games are, but if you just average Joe, um I'm introducing people to those games all the time. So, um I love them though. Retro Raccoon's another one um that like I said we have that's a nice four player, a lot of mini games that's a lot of fun. So, I think they're great. I love indie games. I wish there were more of them and I wish they were more in the price point of what you know uh under 4K. Anytime they get above 4K, I start you start getting into pinball territory and that makes it harder for um a family-owned and operated uh arcade to really dive in because I'd buy every one of them if they were in that kind of in that range, you know. So that once they get above that, it makes it tough for a a smaller place to purchase oranges. Yeah, I I totally agree. I think that's perfectly understandable. I mean, you guys are the kind of business that we're marketing to. You're where we want the indie games to end up. We want them to end up with family centers that, you know, it's going to be all ages. There's going to be drinks there because that does seem to help a lot alleviate the cost of these games.
And yeah, I mean, that's that's where we want to hang out. You know, so many of us indie developers, like those are the arcades we want to go to. We're not going to Dave and Busters. We're not going to Chuck-e-Cheese. Like, that's not really the scene that we want to be in. So, I think you raised a lot of very valid points there and they're definitely things that we can talk about, too. And, you know, I'm trying to get the whole scene on the same wavelength here and hopefully we can all move forward and and grow together.
Let's talk about your collection, right? You have you have all these games. You said between 140 150. You've got pinball 2. I can see that Star Wars pinball in the background.
What games
my house in the my house there?
What games are you on the hunt for? Like if you had like five games that you were looking for right now, what are they?
Pinball specifically or just games in general?
Any of them.
Oh, um you know, uh sometimes it's parts that you're looking for. I just I put uh two War Final Assaults on the floor and I need a topper so people know they can play each other. Like if there was something across the top there, they make a topper. So, I'm having a hard time finding that. Uh the grid would be one that I thought I had one secured and it was sold. So, I would like that. That's a tough game to find. I like to find some of the obscure stuff. Like right now on the floor, we have um time traveler hologram game. We do have the six player X-Men. And uh we have a Journey that I restored not too long ago. Uh so, you know, just I like kind of the rare weird stuff. That's that's kind of where you get right when you start getting the collection kind of filled out. I got all these retro, I got this modern stuff, I got shooters, I got fighters, I got drivers. I want to get some weird stuff in there, you know, like stuff people don't see. So people will go, "Wow, I didn't know this exists. I just like seeing that on their face." Uh, some classics I don't have that I would like to have is Bubbles. I know it's silly, but I I love bubbles and I've never It just doesn't come up around here for sale. Um, I feel like there's another one, but uh it's it's it's escaping me right now. But anyway, I love those old Williams games. Uh um yeah, if we're getting like really crazy like Domino man. I mean, I don't I don't know. It's like wild stuff like that. So
yeah, I mean those are those are solid games. Bubbles is is a cool one. I feel like I see it
occasionally. It's not not very common, but yeah.
Yeah, you're right. You don't see them up for sale. Like whoever has them just holds on to them and I mean
it's it's a weird one. Um parts are definitely tough. I mean, I know in the pinball world, you know, you find a uncommon pinball and the parts are even more uncommon than the pinball. So, that that makes sense.
Pinball. Elvara Scared Stiff. I would really like to own one of those. Uh
I would probably just be on the floor for a short time and then come home. That's
that's how my pinball collection here is. It's stuff that's just made its way through the floor and now it's just like, well, I don't really want to just throw it in storage. I rather have it where I can play it from time to time. So, I got a little collection here. turn it on and play it in the other room. You know, why not, right? You're not using the other room. Just put some pinballs in there and play on them, right?
That's That's it.
Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on, Mike. Just uh give shout outs to social media, let people know where they can follow along and follow your journey.
Yeah. So, we have uh electric starship arcade.com. So, if you're local or you just want to read like little blog posts or see what we're doing or what bands playing, that's a great place to start there. Uh, the biggest social media I guess that I why I'm on is Facebook and everything's under Electric Starship Arcade. Um, we're we do have a pretty good YouTube presence. Uh, so you can come on and see when we're buying stuff for auction, when we are uh restoring a game. Those are usually our biggest videos is just game restorations, arcade tours. anytime I'm out of town or even in town, I've went to every arcade, every local arcade, and we've done a tour of them. So, if you're trying to see like, oh, I wonder what games they have there, you can go to our channel and just kind of go through the tours. Uh, so we have a lot of a lot of content on there, new games that we get. Um, I'm working on a video today that I don't know if it'll release this weekend or not, but we have the new Evil Dead pinball machine, and I I put some mods on it. So, uh, yeah, those I would say YouTube and Facebook, just under electric starship arcade.com would, uh, be the best places to find us.
Fantastic. I'm going to throw those links down in the description so you guys can check them out. Thanks, Mike. I do appreciate your time and I I love chatting the arcade. You're one of the few that I wasn't able to hit in Texas when we uh,
you come by. I think you'd have a lot of fun. Yeah, I I'm trying to go to Pinball Expo in Houston, so maybe we can make a little trip while I'm out there the arcade and check it out. But yeah, man. Thank you. Uh for anyone that's still watching, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. It helps us a ton. The wave will continue to grow. We can all ride it together. And if you're looking for a new Stern, including the new Star Wars, you can email me at indiearchcadewavegmail.com or indie games like Mike was talking about or Ice Cold Beer. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff, too. So, if you're looking for a game, feel free to shoot me an email. And until next time, peace. See y'all later. Thank you. [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music]