Interesting. They mention Guitar Hero, but no Bemani games, not even well known franchises like DDR. I can't really find much information other than what's present in those articles, although I did find something saying that it's 21+ after 10 PM (good news for me, because that means bar, which means open late.)  It certainly wouldn't hurt for me to go check it out, since I live two blocks from it and have been saying that Bellevue needs an arcade for years, but I'm also not really getting my hopes up.

Sh*t. This probably won't be a "regular" place for me to get my fix at with those kind of prices.

Gosha, do you know it opens on the 23rd? I'm 80% sure I'll head down Friday night to check this place out. I say lets make this a Bemani get together event, even if they have no bemani games (which I find highly unlikely). Then again, with the 21+ age restriction after 8 PM, I guess that's not very likely is it?

Notice it says 21+ After 8PM Daily on the website, and....

FUX! Guess they're not expecting hard core players to get their workout here. Oh well, time for some stylish freestylin' I guess. =]

Btw Gosha, thanks for being our awesome news hound. You seem to find all the awesome stuff.

Might check it out since it's only three miles from my place, but I do not have high hopes. Also:


lol...

I saw that and it made me LOL too.

I can't think of so many jokes to go with this but...I digress.

Suko, the next sentence from the article you quoted the price range from says that it'll open Friday.  

And according to http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2009/10/19/daily5.html
the place is open to 21-under until 10PM, not the 8PM cutoff from Lucky Strike's hours.

Yeah, my bad. I meant to say: do you know WHEN it opens on the 23rd?

Tony and I will go on Friday, and I think that Jon and Sara were going to come with us? If you want to meet up with us, Suko, we'd be happy to have you along! Same for you, n.

EDIT: I think enough of us are 21+ that nighttime hangouts at this place, should it be worth returning to, aren't out of the question, especially since most of the regulars who are under 21 tend to not be at arcades late anyway (I don't think I've seen anyone that I know to be under 21 at ACME after 9 PM or so in a very long time.)

This place is located in Lincoln Square, a fairly ritzy shopping establishment. To set context, you can buy a $5,000 dinner table next door.

They're SERIOUS about the dress code. The whole building is very uptight. The bar upstairs (The Parlour) is the only establishment I've been ejected from in my life (I had 1 beer and yawned; they cut me off and kicked me out).

I've been to Lucky Strike once, but my group was denied entry because one of us had ripped jeans (the expensive variety that come pre-ripped ). They'll probably treat you like crap unless you're wearing at least a button up shirt.

I hate to say it, but this place is very unlikely to be the slightest bit affordable or accommodating. Don't get your hopes up, and dress pretty darn well if you want to get in at all.

-ddrcoder

EDIT: The above comments apply to Lucky Strike in particular. Hopefully the dedicated Arcade mentioned here will be fairly accommodating.

I'll check this place out on Saturday since I'm going to Bellevue anyways

The general strategy seems to be that everything is brand new.  DDRX or Pump Pro would be possible under that constraint; other music games can't be bought new straight from a non-niche distributor in the US.  I have my doubts about any dance games showing up here; admittedly I sweat a lot more than most players, but players do sweat after playing a few sets, which is probably not in line with the image they're trying to give off at this place.  It's a tough call between lowered inhibitions from drinking + DDR = money and DDR = sweaty people != lounge image.

I guess discussing this doesn't matter since they're open today.  We'll be there in the early evening to check it out.  If they let me in.

I'm heading there tonight with Rain, Null and our respective lady friends. I'm gonna dress rather decent, because I don't want to drive all the way there and (perhaps) wait in line for a while only to get turned away.

I'm with Tony. I doubt they'll have DDR, because a vigorous activity like bemani (in nice dress clothes) isn't going to create that "image" they're looking for. I'm still going to go check the place out. However, I have a suspicion that within a year they're either going to A) Close, or B) Lighten up on their standards to get more people in there. Bowling and snooty people can work, but I don't feel that an arcade can. Of course, I might be wrong, and I suppose we'll find out.

What time are you guys going tonight? I think we'll be there around seven or eight.

I'll be there with Laura and Tony later. Hopefully there's something fun to do there!

Cool, I hope to see everyone there around 8-ish. Just look for the ridiculously tall guy with less ridiculously tall friends.

If I go I will wear jeans and a Portugal. The Man t-shirt.

Of course, I doubt I'll go tonight since honestly this place doesn't look like it's gonna be anything other than rows of racing games that aren't even good and Guitar Hero.

So, they have a brand new Pump Pro. It's a dollar per play, unless you do the deal where you put lots of money on the card, and then it comes out to something like 66 cents per play. Three songs. I have to say, I don't think this place is going to end up being a complete shithole. The staff seemed VERY attentive and legitimately interested in machine condition... I played a game of Air Hockey with Tony and some of the shots I got in on him didn't register. We told the staff and they said they already knew and were planning on fixing it!

My only real complaint about the place is that, for as much space the building had, there weren't actually that many games. It's nice to not have the noise of the machine next to you overpowering what you're playing, but I felt like there was definitely room for, say, another dance game. All and all, I would say that this is a great location if you want to play Pump, and may become one of my regular dance game haunts, as I happen to live three blocks from it. However, if you had to drive to get there, it might not be as totally freaking awesome, since there aren't that many games that would appeal to people on these forums - pretty much just Pump Pro and Air Hockey (and by the way, that was the nicest Air Hockey machine I've ever played on. EVER.) It gets a 4 for now. This could easily go down if they don't fulfill promises to keep their stuff up to date, but it could also easily go up if they prove to be exceptional in the service department.

I never saw you there, Suko!

There was a nice crowd watching us play PIU for a while. About 15~20 people at one point, including several of the staff who stopped to watch.

The place is nice without having to worry about kids or shady people who want to mug you. It doesn't have a great game selection though, so small arcades (like Bill's) don't have a lot to worry about. There are no imported games, and sadly no Dance Dance Revolution. The crowd this place attracts is only similar to that of Gameworks' bar crowd. I can see Gameworks taking a hit if they don't get their games working for casual people over-21.

I posted a [lengthy review of Power Play] - check it out if you want the full details!

Oh my god they have Pump Pro. I'm so going here tomorrow. Jose aka BCIO is gonna flip since he's a PIU freak

Oh shit, Pump Pro? Time to figure out the ideal attire where I won't die from playing too much. If anyone wants to go this evening, let me know.

Edit: Seems like khakis and a fitting t-shirt will work.

Tony didn't dress up at all and they let him in just fine - all he ever wears is a tee shirt (and not a tight one either, but that's because he's HUGE) and khaki shorts. Just make sure nothing that you're wearing has holes in it and you'll be good.

To elaborate, we told them we were having issues with one of the tables, and they told us (correctly) which table it was and said they were going to get it fixed as soon as possible.  The guy we told that to was behind the ticket counter, so he could have been a tech making himself useful when nothing was having huge amounts of trouble or he could have been some regular staff member who just works the ticket counter; either way, it's good that there was someone easily found who paid attention to what was going on.

As for the dress code, until they go 21+, they seem relatively lax; lots of families were there, and while I didn't see anyone I thought was breaking the rules, it's just hard to enforce rules like that when kids are involved.  There was someone watching the door pretty closely, but I had no problems in a t-shirt and cargo shorts like I normally wear to arcades.

Until they go 21+, you can't bring drinks over from Lucky Strike's bar, so it does feel more like a standalone arcade than an extension of LS (you can go between the two without leaving, but only through a small opening all the way up front, so they do feel pretty separate); I have a feeling they're going to ease up during the day and play up the lounge feel once minors are gone.

The low game density could go in one of two ways.  Either they did that to keep lots of gathering space available or they want to feel out what's successful and augment the selection as they know more.  For the latter, you do have to note that this kind of arcade is rare (GW being the only current competition for the PP model, and they still seem to be more arcade-with-drinks than lounge-with-games, so it's not a perfect match), so it would be smart to see what your clientele tends towards before filling the place with very expensive hardware.

If anyone can talk to the techs, maybe you could suggest some games they should get.  Did they happen to have any fighting games?

I saw a few fighting games, but I didn't keep stock of what they were.

But they do have skeeball!

Gotta say, I love shiny brand new pads.     As this is one bus ride away, I think I'll be frequenting this location.

Now someone needs to tell me all the good charts on PIUPro.

(Also, we unlocked everything when we were there last night.)

We haven't unlocked everything.  We've entered the 5 codes we could find using our phones (4 songs plus the Warp8XM course), but those came from piu-pro.com, which indicated these were 5 of at least 11 unlocks (I believe every code is available now, I just haven't looked deeply enough).  Plus there's the 12 songs from the Encore patch, that we'll need to convince them to get and install.  BlueSS talked to the manager last night and got his card, so it would probably be best to have him run things, if he's willing, rather than random players asking random employees until they get annoyed with us.

Went back today, nobody seems to watch the door during the day, so dress code probably doesn't matter as much until nighttime, but we'll see.

Also, I finally started getting good scores again today, so have fun with my Monkey Fingers score, everyone.