Being unemployed again I’ve been able to take a couple day trips to a retro arcade that recently opened up, Rusty Quarters. In Uptown Minneapolis, Minnesota.  It takes an hour and 2 buses to get there, but it’s been worth it.

I had been anticipating this place opening for a while and was excited to try out some of the classics.

I tried most of their games out. Asteroids, Burgertime, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Defender, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong (2 of them!), Donkey Kong Junior, Frogger, Joust, Ms. Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Space Invaders Deluxe, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Track & Field.

The first game I played was Crystal Castles. Never played it before. It uses a rolling ball for control of the character.  This game was pretty fun and the ball control worked well. Right away I was spinning the ball fastly to sweep up the lines of dots. I looked at the marquee game play instructions on many of the games I had never played or didn’t fully understand how to play.  And some just because they look cool.  This place has all the original cabinets for these games and some are pretty cool to behold.  Space Invaders Deluxe for example, uses a projection of the game screen onto what appears to be a thin cardboard scene of a city.  The best word I can think of to describe playing it is that it’s classy. Very classy.  I don’t recall playing Space Invaders with 2 buttons for left and right, either.

Another game with buttons for left and right was Asteroids, positioned just adjacent right to Space Invaders.  Space Invaders is also the game closest to the entrance. Where Rampage is also close but adjacent the store’s main window where there is a table and bench for players to take a break.  Also a fridge for Mexican coke, (AKA, the real cane sugar shit!).

Asteroids was a game that I grew addicted to almost instantly.  Before I played it I was watching another guy playing, almost beating the hi-score of 37k.  I saw him disappear and appear somewhere else and I said, “Whoa, what was that trick?” and he told me about the hyperspace feature.  I had no idea it existed.  I had never actually seen an asteroids cab and the way the game brightly lights shots fired was captivating to me. It’s cool how it brings so much focus to the game, the shots and how bright they are.  Also, the sound effects are awesome.  The music resembles something like Space Invaders, as time progresses in a stage it beats faster and the UFO enemies keep coming.

Later on I watched the same guy from Asteroids playing Burgertime, and there he explained some of the mechanics and how to play correctly to me as well.  I tried to play but barely got lucky enough to beat the first stage I think.

Centipede also sparked my interest a little more than other games on the first day. I don’t remember ever playing Centipede before.  It was also controlled by trackball.  At first, I didn’t realize I could move up and down in the bottom area of the screen.  I’ve played this one a handful of times and it’s still odd to me. Not exactly sure what my strategy is supposed to be yet.  Really odd, hard, but interesting shooter.

The DK and DK Jr cabs were a bit odd to me.  The joystick felt really mushy the way it was moved around.  It felt like it was broken but at the same time it was responsive if I held it depressed all in one direction.  The stick was throwing me off completely and I could only manage to beat the first stage in DK and DK Jr.  Are they supposed to feel like this?

All of the games in this arcade use American cabinets with American parts from what I can tell.  Including the Street Fighter Alpha 3 cab with its Happ parts and uniform American button layout.

All in all Rusty Quarters is a great little place to hang out and play retro arcade games.  They have cubby holes for you to store your backpacks or coats which I find quite handy and the table, (if only just one) is nice to have if you need to take a little break.

On the 2nd day I went, Space Invaders was glitching out on me, sadly.  A fake UFO will sweep across the bottom of the screen creating its own barrier.  Then about 5 seconds later all of the invaders rush the screen and I get an instant game over. Sucks man. I hope they fix it because playing that game is possibly the highlight of the place for me. It’s just so cool.