Kids these days, am I right? They’re always going on about their video games on optical discs and complaining when their contextual button pressing doesn’t work. You know me. I’m old fashioned. Back in my day, we had to blow on our game cartridges and we had joysticks with minimal functionality and we counted ourselves lucky for it! That’s why when I want to play a real video game, I go to Yestercades.
“Yestercades? What’s that?”
Glad you asked! Yestercades is a retro-themed arcade, bringing to you all the classics of yesteryear. You can spend hours at Yestercades with ease. Yesterday, I met a guy named Joe who said that he discovered Yestercades last week. He has returned to Yestercades three times since then. Incidentally, Joe lives forty minutes away. I can’t think of a better recommendation than that!
Naturally, you can find all the classic arcade games at Yestercades. Some of the highlights you can find there include:
- Pacman (and Ms. Pacman)
- Centipede (and Millipede)
- Duck Hunt
- Tron
- Donkey Kong
- Mario Bros. (and Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World)
- Q*Bert
- Galaxian (and Galaga)
- Space Invaders
- Punch-Out!!
- Paperboy
- Asteroids
- NBA Jam
- Double Dragon
Indeed, that is a small sample of the sheer volume of games available, and those are just ones that have their own machines. Yes, you can relive the glory days of standing at a quarter-devouring arcade cabinet, only without having to feed change to the machine every time you get shell shocked while playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. In addition, Yestercades has a wide variety of pinball tables available for your enjoyment. IP is a pinball wizard and played all of them. Personally, I found the Game of Thrones and Roller Coaster Tycoon ones amusing. However, if none of this is your style, you can always play the wide variety of video game consoles, including the Atari 2600, the ColecoVision, the Genesis, the NES, the SNES, the N64, the Saturn, the PS1, the Dreamcast, and many more besides.
Of course, if that is too antiquated for you, you can always enjoy playing games on the Xbox One or Wii U (which may as well belong in a museum like the other consoles).
“How much is it?”
Another good question. Happily, Yestercades won’t hurt your wallet, as you might expect of a novelty business. Instead, it’s pretty affordable for the gamer without too much green. You pay $8.75 per hour that you are there. When you leave, the arcade charges you to a fifteen-minute interval (i.e. if you are there for one hour and fifty-nine minutes, you pay for one hour and forty-five minutes). Alternatively, you can get a day pass for $25 that allows you to come and go freely all day.
On top of the decent pricing, you can rent out Yestercades for parties. Want to give your son/daughter/niece/nephew/little cousin/small child who followed you home a party that all his/her friends will remember for years to come? Yestercades has some customizable package deals for you to choose. Plus, you always have the benefit of enjoying 80s decor and music videos playing in the facility. When IP and I visited there yesterday, we relived our youths to the sounds of Paula Abdul and Madonna. That was all in between pinball, Mortal Kombat II, Tekken III, and a Mario Kart tournament that we didn’t even know about until we got there.
“What else should I know?”
As someone from the New York metro area, I count myself lucky in having access to a number of things you can’t find elsewhere, and Yestercades is no exception. Yestercades has two branches: Red Bank, New Jersey and Somerville, New Jersey. Still, if you happen to be anywhere remotely in the area of either branch, I cannot recommend visiting Yestercades enough. The crowning achievement of my night with IP was co-op playing Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. We both played Michael Jackson in his “Smooth Criminal” suit, rescuing children from robots, thugs, and zombies while occasionally breakin’ it down and meeting Bubbles the Chimp to morph into a robot to defeat the evil Joe Pesci. That was something to tell future generations. If you get the chance, head over to Yestercades, where the games never end!
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