Hot take: The best retro games are hiding in old arcade cabinets at laundromats

I was stuck at Suds & Duds on 3rd Street last Saturday waiting for my clothes to dry and noticed this old Neo Geo cabinet in the corner. Dropped a quarter in and it was still running Metal Slug from like 1996, totally original hardware. The joystick was a little loose but the game ran perfect, no lag or anything. Has anyone else stumbled across a gem like that in a random spot?

3 comments

3 Comments

ward.kim1mo ago

Ain't it wild how the best finds are never where you're actually looking for them?

aaronsullivan1mo ago

That "best finds are never where you're looking" line hits hard. I was at a random pizza place in the suburbs last year with my kids and there was this old Street Fighter Alpha cabinet tucked behind the soda machine. Some kid probably spilled a drink on the coin slot ages ago and they just let it sit there. I wiped off the panel with a napkin and played two matches before the pizza was ready, no wait, no quarters wasted on duds. It's way better than those overpriced "retro bars" where they charge you ten bucks just to look at a Raspberry Pi in a custom cabinet.

fiona_kim1mo ago

I mean, I get the magic of a surprise find like that, @aaronsullivan, but maybe I just have bad luck with these things. I found a MAME cabinet at a laundromat once and the joystick was so sticky I couldn't even do a hadouken without it getting stuck in the up position. Plus those pizza place machines are usually beat up, like the screen has that weird burn-in from years of the same attract mode loop. I'd rather pay the ten bucks at a retro bar sometimes, at least they clean the buttons and the monitor is a proper CRT, not some dimmed down LCD in a fake shell. It's a trade-off for sure, but I'll take a working machine over a nostalgic piece of junk any day.