Mostly just a copy and paste from Bits and Bobs before Zardoz started this thread, thanks Zardoz
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We don't have a single arcade left on the Isle of Man now, when I first came here in 1994 there were three big arcades in Douglas alone (one of which was really sizeable), with a very generous number of fruit machines and pinballs as well as fruit machines.
The bowling alley had a decent line-up too, and lots of big 'marquee' machines like that jetski one, big Daytona USA sitdowns, four player Manx TT Superbike and so on. (Manx TT Superbike was very popular here for obvious reasons, loads of pubs had them as well.)
On top of that pubs routinely had videogames and pinballs too, you could almost go out for an 'arcade day' just by touring the pubs of Douglas.
Over the years they've all gradually been lost and the last arcade closed, oohhh, maybe four or five years ago, and in tandem with that the other small arcades and locations with games around the island have been lost too.
There is still a cafe in Ramsey that has what could be called a 'games room' attached I suppose, but it's almost all just shitty old fruit machines (mostly on £5 jackpot) and a couple of videogames in the back. I'm barred from there anyway for 'winning too much' so it's sort of a moot point. That said it was a half-decent arcade back in the day, I remember there being a Data East Star Wars pinball in there, a Crazy Taxi, and a reasonable selection of other videogames. (You're going back to the late 90s there though.)
It's great that videogames still exist out on site in reasonable numbers, although I wouldn't make a trip to the Isle of Wight out of it, the ArcadeBlogger site is a wonderful read too, at least there are people out there committed to preserving these things.
A mate at work went over to Hungary earlier in the year for a holiday with his missus, they've got a pinball museum place in Budapest, flat fee to get in and then all the pinball you can eat. I could easily go there for a week and just spend the entire time in that one place.
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