FunSpot Arcade is not, strictly speaking, the last arcade in America. But one day it will be. I say this not as a practical observation – surely there will always be some sort of underground, stand-up, coin-op, room where retro geeks can get their Ms. Pac Man on. But FunSpot is different, both practically and emotionally. It is Mecca for retro gaming, and famously featured in the documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. This is where North American players go to set records, and there is no other. New Hampshire once had five FunSpot locations, now down to just the one. We came to FunSpot as devoutly religious followers, eager to touch the machines of the famous place and grab a little bit of nostalgia.

I was surprised to learn that the business called FunSpot has morphed into the FunSpot American Classic Video Game Museum – a nonprofit. FunSpot claims that it doesn’t really make any money, and somehow manages to putter along at subsistence-levels, dedicating what they can in the way of profits to maintaining its aging stable of machines. This is why it will one day be the last real arcade: it has long ago ceased to be a viable business, and now runs on nothing but caffeine and love.

The place is really nondescript from the outside. That sounds like I’m being lazy, but nondescript really is the best word for it: a collection of linked pre-fab warehouses sporting absolutely no discerning markings or details from the outside, other than a too-modest sign over the few entrances. On the inside, it is like a tiny casino. It goes on further than you’d initially imagine, and there is certainly no shortage of classic games. To walk through FunSpot is to walk back in time. The coin-ops themselves have been restored and maintained as closely as possible, with the notable omission of the once-ubiquitous metal cigarette trays that used to adorn practically every cabinet. The lights are dim and red. The music playing over the in-house sound system is exclusively from the 80s. Token machines are stationed strategically where they can be accessed and re-accessed with a minimum of walking, and have plastic cups stacked on top for you to carry your credits, like a compulsive gambling fiend. You get 50 such tokens for $10, and they are metal coins, stamped with the year of their making, right up to present. (I took a 2009 token as a souvenir.) There really is no updating FunSpot; it is what it wants to be, and it wants to be in the Reagan years. The arcade machines are not exclusively early-model, but the vast majority are.

And sweet leaping jeebus, they have everything. Defender. Pac Man. Ms. Pac Man. Dig Dug. Galaga. Centipede. Missile Command. Mappy (so that’s what that is – I had never seen one before). Tapper. Frogger. And yes, Donkey Kong. In fact right next to Donkey Kong are Donkey Kong 2 and 3, which as far as I know are illegal ROM hacks. They are like church relics. Space Invaders is there, and I just stood and stared at it for a good thirty seconds. When’s the last time you saw a real Space Invaders machine?

And then more. Stuff you forgot you ever knew about: S.T.U.N. Runner (embryonic Wipeout). Hard Drivin’ and Race Drivin’. Operation Wolf. Black Tiger. The vector-based Star Wars game. The motion-based cabinets for Space Harrier and Afterburner. Dragon’s Lair, that shitty laserdisc thing that everyone hates and yet has been ported almost as much as Tetris. Oh yeah – Tetris. Original-flavour Russian model, check. Jungle Hunt. Commando. Hang On. PaperBoy. Arkanoid. Street Fighter (down for repairs, alas). Stuff you only dimly remember like Juno First and Crystal Castles. Ikari Warriors. Contra. It goes on and on. And that’s just the arcade games.

A solid phalanx of pinball machines adorns the wall of the main retro room: glorious, noisy, garish, chaotic. Downstairs are the carnival amusements. Whack-a-mole, skeeball, that sort of thing. They have a stand-up, four-player version of Hungry Hungry Hippos. They have bumper cars. They have a machine that is called You Always Win, that takes a token and spits out a variable number of tickets, redeemable for unbelievable crappy carnival-style prizes downstairs. We played about ten games of You Always Win, laughing at the sheer inanity of it, the cabinet shrieking ‘You’ve won!’ every single time. We played just to see if it was true that you cannot lose. It is.

They have enormous air hockey tables. They have a bowling alley. They have one-armed bandits.

It is simply everything you’ve ever seen in an 80s arcade, all in one place, zombified and re-animated.

Many of the machines don’t work right, something that you never complain about, because you would feel like the biggest asshole. I threw three credits into Black Tiger, remembering that this was a game I used to be able to finish on a single quarter. I didn’t even remember the name of it before, but it all came back when I saw it standing there. Alas, Black Tiger wouldn’t take my coins. You realize that there’s nothing the staff can do for you on-the-spot, so you shuffle away. This was a bit of a recurring theme. Gauntlet’s sticks were wonky. The aim on Star Wars trilogy wouldn’t go all the way across the screen, leaving you helpless as stormtroopers manage to shoot someone for the first time in their lives. The Space Harrier chair canted dangerously to the left on a sharp turn and never recovered. Part of the FunSpot experience is this acceptance of hardware failure: the shit is just old. Never built to last for fifteen, twenty, thirty years. Hobbyists and weirdos keep this stuff in the half-functional state that it’s in. So you don’t complain. Back in the 80s, if a machine ate your quarter, you’d probably yell your head off at a manger or token-imp. Not anymore. In this context, in 2009, you’re damned thankful for what you can get, even if you’re getting your ass kicked by a gimpy trackball in Missile Command, because you are playing original Missile Command, with a trackball.

That is why, on one of the first beautifully sunny days of the year, we went inside a decrepit old games parlour and scuttled about in the dark and noise, playing the most rudimentary video games, for hours and hours. And we certainly weren’t alone. This being a Saturday, the place was not deserted, but frequented by the kind of crowd you don’t remember from the arcade heydey: families. Lots of young kids, all of whom seemed to be having a fantastic time. There’s a sign out front of FunSpot that gave us a laugh when we first read it – “no swearing, no horseplay” (!). FunSpot has a policy of being family-friendly and they keep machines* that fit that criteria. It’s an almost-quaint notion, yet it seems to work for them. I found myself trying to check my own sailor utterances, surprised that I cared that much, even though there weren’t kids around me. You want to respect what they’ve done, the operators; respect the effort and the dedication that it takes to keep a completely outdated business alive out of pure blinding reverie and nostalgia.

The air of melancholy at FunSpot is palpable. The place knows that it has terminal cancer, and however long the remission lasts for, it can’t be forever. So for my part, I am thankful that I travelled all the way over to Laconia from Toronto – a 12-hour drive each way – because that’s not the part of the trip that I will remember and keep with me. Being there was like having your memory wildly looted, the dusty corners of your brain-attic exposed to sunlight again.

I’ll post some more pictures soon.

* there is an original Mortal Kombat machine, probably not totally in keeping with the G-rated theme, but what’s a torn spine or two between friends?