275 Arcade games, unlimited play, and $10 entry! Cidercade is a fathers dream for showing their kids the games they grew up on. Kids also are exposed to the old school nostalgia of being in an arcade, which is rare nowadays.
At first, I was just chasing my kids around making sure nobody abducted them and wasted their gas money returning them after an hour. This isn’t Chucky Cheese where you get black light stamps on your hands with a door greeter ready to verify who you are chauffeuring around. The counter at the front is basically to pay to get in and purchase drinks.
They do not sell snacks or food, but you are allowed to bring food in. My wife got some Little Cesar’s pizza door dashed in and I bought drinks there. The small cups are like $4.00 a piece but it is unlimited re-fills. Out of all the drinks we tried Mexican Cola and lemon-lime. Do not get lemon-lime! Straight sugar! It was so sweet that not even my eight-year-old could stand to drink it.
After lunch I got on WWE Superstars and broke a table over Macho Man’s head. Then using Ultimate Warrior, I Gorilla Press Slammed Big Boss Man out of the ring. My two-year-old and I then got on Tekken 7. I finally got to play as Negan from the Walking Dead. I own the game at home but spending money on DLC is few and far between.
Talk about a challenge. Try holding a two-year-old and play with a joystick on a fighting game at the same time. That should be difficulty “Daddy.” I do like the way they took a flat screen T.V. and hooked it up in front of an arcade box and connected it to use the arcade stick controls. Tekken 7 is not an old school game but is so popular that while other games like Mortal Kombat X have come out with predecessors like MK11, Tekken is going strong in the fighting game community. Quality over quantity, even though Mortal Kombat has the best fighting engine.
I did get to game with my four-year-old as well. A good chunk of time was spent on this Walking Dead game where you use a bow gun to shoot zombies in the head. We beat the first part and I had 137 kills! He had 1. Maybe I got carried away, but I felt like I was protecting him from the zombies. We played a shark game too and we pretended to try to save Captain Barnacles from a shark…he didn’t make it. Also, I found out that your kids heads are perfect for balancing your gun on to get better shots.
My eight-year-old thinks he has a world record now too. He was playing ski ball and got the ball stuck in the upper left corner, right next to the big 10,000-point hole. I told him to just roll a ball up there and knock it out. Well, when he did, he scored the 10,000 and knocked the other one losing adding another 1,000. So, he basically thinks he managed an 11,000-point shot when only 10,000 is the highest you can get.
He was so excited telling his mother about it on the way home. I didn’t want to ruin it by letting her know I hit the 10,000 three times out of my nine balls and two were back-to-back.
I always wanted to give my kids the full arcade experience and Cidercade is the closest thing around. The only thing that would make it more authentic is having to use quarters, ending up paying more than $10, and having some teenager whose mom drops him off at the arcade everyday come up to you on Mortal Kombat, beat you and basically take over your game.
Once Upon A Dad Time 