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LBX Collective
The LBX Show #30 - Gaming, Golf, Gourmet Burgers, and more!
Sponsored by Intercard!
On this week's LBX Show, BW & Friends explore significant industry updates, from Pac-Man's 45th anniversary to the latest in location-based entertainment venues around the world.
• Celebrating Pac-Man's massive impact with an estimated 300,000 arcade cabinets distributed during its prime
• Michael Shelton promoted to COO and Executive Vice President at IAAPA
• Traditional bowling alleys transitioning to boutique approaches with competitive socializing elements
• Golf simulation businesses rapidly expanding with The Back Nine operating 80 facilities
• CineTainment venues multiplying in Texas with massive entertainment complexes
• Retail stores like Nintendo incorporating interactive elements for enhanced customer experiences
• Collaborative venues emerging as Toca Social and SandboxVR partner together in London
• AAA Expo in China showcasing new arcade products with a notable decrease in VR attractions
• Portland's unique entertainment venues including Next Level's 700-game free play arcade
• Marketing strategies for FEC operators emphasizing consistency over immediate ROI measurement
To get the latest industry insights including the new Entertainment Social Arena publication, subscribe to the LBX Collective Newsletter at lbxcollective.com.
Tuning you in. Now to the LBX Show with your host, brandon Wiley, brought to you by the LBX Collective your community to connect, engage and inspire.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, welcome everybody to the LBX show for May 25th 2025. I'm your host, Brandon Wiley, and we have an absolutely packed show for you today, so we're going to just dive right into it. We've got news you should know. Then we're going to roll into a new open and shut with Kevin Williams. We're going to dig into some key trends, obviously the latest openings and closings, as well as some layoffs, et cetera. And then we're going to roll right into a promo pro tips with Chuck DeMonte. And then we'll have Arcade Corner with Adam Pratt, where he's going to actually cover the latest updates from the Asia Amusements and Attractions Expo in China. That just happened a week ago. And then we're going to have the latest updates from the road trip with Clint Novak. So he went to the Pacific Northwest of the US, spent some time in Portland, and so we're going to talk about some of the places he visited while he was there. So we're going to check out some pictures and have some good discussion around that. All right, so that is our layout for the day and let's do some news you should know, know, all right.
Speaker 2:Well, this last week, and specifically May 22nd, which was on Thursday, was the 45th anniversary of Pac-Man and Adam Pratt over at Arcade Heroes. This is arcadeheroescom and he's also our. You know Adam Pratt from Arcade Corner. He had a great rundown in the history of that, this amazing game that has had an estimated of 300,000. This is this is the rough estimate, we don't really know exactly, but roughly about 300,000 arcade cabinets distributed over its time in the spotlight and it's become the highest grossing arcade video game as well, and I thought it'd be kind of fun just to watch a little video. Adam did post this on his blog post as well on arcadeheroescom, but it's a little quick video about the Pac-Man arcade machine floor, a factory floor back in the 1980s from Midway. So let's take a quick look at this and, yeah, let's just give it a watch.
Speaker 4:And now the factory turns out over 500 Pac-Man games a day. So far, over 70,000 games have been made of Pac-Man. That's more than space invaders, more than asteroids. When it comes to video games, Pac-Man is king.
Speaker 3:The demand for Pac-Man, for new Pac-Man games, is probably greater today than it was four or five months ago. It's like a snowball rolling down a very steep hill. It seems to gather momentum as it goes down the hill, but I believe that a game of this type could reach 100,000 or more.
Speaker 4:It only takes about 40 minutes to put together a Pac-Man game at Midway's factory in Franklin Park. There really isn't much to assemble Some brackets, cables, lights, speakers and, of course, the TV monitor. But, as production manager Tom Andrus told me, this is what makes Pac-Man Pac-Mac. This is the Pac-Man logic board. And Tom tell me this is what makes the machine go. Huh.
Speaker 3:It's just the mass of integrated circuits, transistors, resistors, tangelings, capacitors and diodes Little things like that.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's awesome. Little things like that. I love that. You know you gotta love 1980s newscasters covering arcade games. So, anyway, that was you know. Congrats to Namco, bandai Namco for 45 years of just setting like being a part of the global arcade culture. There's probably not a more recognizable thing than pac-man. In fact I've got the, the lego pac-man, set here as well. That I've, uh, you know, had a chance to build about a year ago. So anyway, um, all right.
Speaker 2:One other thing I wanted to mention is part of News you Should Know is IAPA has. If you guys are not familiar with IAPA, it's the Global Association for the Attractions Industry They've announced the promotion of my friend, michael Shelton, into the role of Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President. So that is effective June 30th. And pull this guy up here. His happy, smiley face and you know his nice, shiny head, I'm sure he'll appreciate that comment. And in his new role he's going to oversee all of the regional vice presidents, which he just was. He was the regional vice president for North America and he's also going to oversee the safety and security leadership team and the global professional development group team and the Global Professional Development Group, and he's got 25 years of experience in the attractions and recreation industry. In fact, he was before joining IAAPA was the GM of Colorado's Highland Hills Park and Recreation District, which also includes Waterworld, in the Colorado Denver area, and since he joined IAAPA in 2018, he's had several roles obviously the one most recently that I mentioned with North America, and in that role, he was actually responsible for supporting over 45 member organizations, and he actually had to oversee the IAAPA Expo as well, and so it's one of the obviously one of the largest trade shows in the US, as anybody who's ever visited it knows, and so IAAPA will also begin the search for Shelton's successor as the vice president and executive director of IAPA North America in the coming days.
Speaker 2:But congrats to Michael, my good friend, and this is a little picture. One of my favorite experiences is always, every once in a while not every year, but about every other year I get to walk around one of the Florida Orlando parks hanging out with Michael hanging out with his daughter, morgan, and we have a good time just checking everything out. So anyway, michael, if you're watching this or listening to this, congrats to you, buddy. It's well-deserved and appreciated, so congrats on that. All right, that wraps up News. You Should Know. Next up, after the quick break, we'll have the Open and Shut with Kevin Williams. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon. Big hello and welcome to Open and Shut.
Speaker 5:And we have another crowded list of events and openings and just confusion taking over the sector. So I'll jump straight in.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 5:And, as always, pause the video if you need to see what we're seeing, but straight in, and this is an interesting one. This is a redevelopment. What we're kind of seeing now is what we were touching upon previously, with venues looking to revitalize themselves for the market but also adding, if they have the luxury of having external space. Stump Lanes has gone from a traditional bowling environment to a more boutique approach, dropped in $2 million for the facelift. The property has also gone through some upgrades, but it's a bit of bowling. It's a bit of what I would say competitive socializing. They've also increased their external Interesting that I think we will be seeing a lot more of this approach. So, rather than buying new, we're seeing the taking of an existing facility and giving it a little bit of TLC.
Speaker 5:Moving on and the constant golf simulation business. I was doing some research for a client recently and it is amazing to see how many new entrants into the golf simulation sector there are. Most of them are going for the lounge approach and this new one, uh well, it's not so new. It wasn't on my radar until recently the black, so the back nine I want to call it the recently the back nine is actually 80 facilities in their retinue. And yeah, it wasn't on my radar.
Speaker 2:Not on mine. I've never even heard of these guys.
Speaker 5:Exactly, and that's something that we need to be mindful of, both in the golf simulation, the active entertainment and also esports. As I keep on going on, there are other areas of this market that could come along and eat our lunch if we don't pay more attention there is apparently.
Speaker 2:I'm just looking here there's like I don't know, probably 17 or maybe 17 is probably exaggeration like at least 10 in the phoenix valley and I've never even I've literally never even seen these guys, their logo, anywhere on any shopping centers anywhere. They've got some multiples in Chandler, multiple in Scottsdale. These are areas that I frequent and I've never seen these, these logos, anywhere.
Speaker 5:Now I'm wondering if you drove past one of these facilities and just treated them as another golf shop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe, but again, I like I don't even even recognize the logo, which I'm not a big fan of, but it but is um, yeah, there's even one in tempe, which is where my office is. So anyway, I'll have to go by and check one of these guys out this is go do a field trip for us take a picture in there.
Speaker 5:I I get the feeling that the majority of these facilities are golf shops, with at the back the simulator setup. But prove me wrong. Maybe there is a fantastic bourbon club at the back of all of these buildings.
Speaker 2:Well, if there isn't, then that's what they need. Oh yeah, that's what you don't know about it.
Speaker 5:And some of the other projects that I'm looking at in the golf simulation and active entertainment are actually going down that path of the gentleman's club lounge approach, but we'll touch upon that at a later date. This is a tricky one. Sometimes when I'm doing research for particular brands or particular areas, I'll open up the rabbit's hole of pain. So let's start at the top. Our friends at Evo Entertainment had a relationship with a company in texas. That company in texas parted ways with evo and took a number of facilities with them in the party. So evo entertainment still exists with their uh number of uh chains there. I think they have about seven or eight facilities that are under the Evo brand. Yeah, I think I'm right, but I will correct that. And the issue is I should just click my database. But the issue is that the Evo that was going to be developed in Huntington, developed in Hunton Hutto sorry, in Texas.
Speaker 5:Ground was broken. The facility was built but the parting of the ways so the new owners, or the other side of this divorce, as it were has kept it, as well as two other venues that were part of the Severance relationship, and they have rebranded this brand new operation as Hooky. Hmm, yeah, Hooky is, by all intents and purposes. Pull off that fantastically crafted brand and you are looking at an evo cinema attainment facility 72 000 square of 12, 12 lane bowling amusement as well as eight screening rooms and imax and some private space and fb. This is interesting. We literally have that situation where you have two parallel brands, now created by symbiotics. You know they've split, they're now literally the same approach to the market, but they're now going to go in their own sweet ways and, from doing the research into the company that has taken on this operation, they intend to roll out more than one hooky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't understand this. By the way, to confirm there is 10 Evo locations currently. Thank you, there are 10 here, but I don't understand Again the name. I get it. You play hooky, right.
Speaker 5:That's how they're playing it on their website. It's not good.
Speaker 2:No, it's not going to work for a movie theater, for entertainment anyway. You don't go play hooky to go watch a movie. You might go play hooky to go and do a competitive socializing thing or go and getting a drink or something like that. It is weird and it's the spaghetti moment.
Speaker 5:You look at what they've got in their facility and where the original Evo layout of this site, which is, as I said, is a brand-new site. It was purpose-built but obviously, with the separation, this particular operation wants to go their own way and build it their own way and they have laid it out their own way and they've made some fundamental errors which I'm sure they will find out. Now the doors are open Either way. Either way, it is interesting to see that Cinnatainment is a battleground that many people are fighting over at the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in Texas especially, there are so many Cinnatainment facilities in Texas. It's remarkable to me, In Texas especially, there are so many CineTainment facilities in Texas.
Speaker 5:It's remarkable to me. I think the CineTainment industry is going to have to sit down and have a come-to-Jesus moment with themselves about what they're actually offering. Some cinema operators thought that adding entertainment would be a savior to flagging box office. Some CineTainment are. We are in a locality that doesn't have any other types of entertainment. We are the only central anchor. Maybe we should add some entertainment to our mix. And then we have the final, which is we would like to get into the dave and buster's market. Uh, we also have a cinema market. Let's add a companion next door to our cinema.
Speaker 5:Those are the three main representations of CineTainment. None of those are business models that will survive without a lot more attention to the detail of what you are offering your customer base. Yeah, what you are offering your customer base, yeah, anyway, moving on and I'm zipping past some interesting ones, so please don't hesitate to pause the video and go back and look. I know you guys have been talking about Surge Entertainment in a previous LBX Daily. Well, anyway, louisiana gets a very big, uh, what I would call the maximum size of mixed-use leisure entertainment. 240 thou is square is a lot and it's. It's not just a um want to be carting facility. It's, you know. You know it's a bit of everything. I would say it is an Andretti's crashes into a main event if I was being flippant. But you know we have quite a considerable mix there of laser tag and mini golf and carting and VR and everything you know. I think there's even karaoke in the mix and escape rooms. There's a lot there. Thank you for the video. I forgot the bowling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot there. I think your take is right. And then, Reddy, you mashed with the main event, because I just don't know how they fill 240,000 square feet with just basically karting, bowling games and some sports sims.
Speaker 5:Multi-level karting, climbing wall, mass bowling facility and I think it's a 24 lane, if my brain cell works right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you have mini golf and you have ropes course and some soft play, Like it's definitely it's just jam packed. It's pretty insane.
Speaker 5:And if you haven't done your research, if you don't know your audience or your competitors, you could build the biggest white elephant known to man at that size. But how many are we up to now? I think I've got it in my slides how many? So this is their sixth facility. So obviously they got away with four. So we're getting to six, they get to ten. Call me up. No joking aside, we have to treat this quite seriously as a major player. I am not familiar with Drew. I'm told by friends that I've actually spoken to him once at a conference, but, uh, you know, he is an entrepreneur that has started uh in the grassroots of location-based entertainment, uh, and has uh thrown his name into a number of facilities.
Speaker 2:Uh, I look forward to crossing the threshold of a surge so we can see what this bowl of spaghetti looks like yeah, and you know, one of the things that you saw him there in the front in one of the videos we were playing, we we saw Drew Brees.
Speaker 2:I mean, he's a former quarterback as well and a former quarterback and so he's playing on his name and it seems to be doing well. Before they opened the entertainment venues, actually he had a lot of adventure parks. He still does have a number of adventure parks. I think there's right around nine, maybe.
Speaker 5:Active entertainment facilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, active play. Yeah, it's right around nine maybe.
Speaker 5:Active entertainment facilities, yeah. Active play yeah, absolutely. I think he's also dabbled in restaurants as well. But anyway, an entrepreneur all the same and we wish him a lot of luck in the mixed-use leisure entertainment market Carrying on. And our friends at PotShack, the latest of their US rollout rollout now.
Speaker 5:Putshack's an interesting one. We've had some numbers through about how their business is going and they have been shouting from the rooftops that they've seen a fantastic same site sales business that you know they're looking at expansion. But at the same time we've suddenly noticed that their mini golf experiences have got a little larger in their deployment and there is whispering in the grass that they are actually thinking about adding some other entertainment components to their venues. This one's quite a large one in Chicago 30,000 square, multiple floors. They're also trying out a new package where they're offering variable play model where you can pick how long you want to stay in the facility to play or whether you're just there for the cocktails.
Speaker 5:It is interesting that Putshack's management want to distance themselves from all of the other e kind of venues and say that they're seeing strong success and strong positivity from their audience. And you know, 21 facilities out there at the moment and we expect to be reporting on a few more more, but the originators of the puttshack concept have moved on to other, other directions, other fields, and we are touching upon the coming soon, the opening of the first pool house, uh, which will let us see if they've still been able to keep the magic from puttshack yeah, well, I won't go to pool house because that seems like grasping at straws, but.
Speaker 2:But to just touch on putt shack here, the average game lasting 90 minutes I've played. I've been to putt shack played a number of times and I would say the average game lasts about 30 minutes. Yes, nine, a whole course, and they have multiple courses. They have typical putt shack. I'll have about four, maybe six and a bigger one, so there's room to play. Typically we'll play two courses each one of your visits. If you're going to spend any real amount of time there, you've got to buy their food and beverage, so I would imagine that they have to be reliant on F&B as a cornerstone of their revenue model.
Speaker 5:I won't give away where I got the information from, but I was led to believe that it was a 60-40 split.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, it would have to be and that kind of tells us that if the 40% of the revenue is coming from the game side, then increasing the time of game isn't really going to help you if you want to try and maximize your beverage and food consumption. Whatever the reasons, they were very strident in their reporting, that they felt that they had a very successful model, entertainment model that was going to be rolled out. And to be that strident means that they feel comfortable with their numbers, and to be that strident means that you know they feel comfortable with their numbers. We will see where the next facilities are. If I'm correct, I think we will see another two American openings this year at least, and they will be working to get into those high 30s as quickly as possible.
Speaker 5:I talked about last time the Sega retail attainment facility opening in Shanghai and we have Nintendo opening up their latest retail store. I wouldn't call what Nintendo do with their stores retail attainment per se, as in having an interactive attraction, but that could be changing soon. Again, the whispering in the grass is that the new chain of nintendo stores going out will incorporate some level of interactivity, building off of the success that they've seen through the super nintendo world parks again. I would expect it will be a digital or projection-mapped war kind of entertainment on top of the retail experience. But again, be mindful. We have seen Nintendo have much success with their Nintendo stores. We are now seeing Sega throwing their hat in the ring. We've seen the Warner stores which have depended heavily on the Harry Potter in the Warner stores which have depended heavily on the Harry Potter and as we're recording this, the licensing expo is taking place and we are seeing a considerable number of big IP in the game and the fashion market looking at bricks and mortar and entertainment as an opportunity to extend their image.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a place where I could see Camp really coming in to leverage their expertise with the Nintendo IP. So Nintendo trying to go down their own path, working with somebody who just does retail team and so very well, and to partner with a group like Camp, like Disney has done for some of their you know, their, their lbc retail team and pop-ups. I feel like they could do. They could do very well with camp as a partnership you know.
Speaker 5:just to give an example, I could see what we have seen with the uh, the minecraft uh experience, part of that being pulled out and turned into a Minecraft toy retail environment. I could also see our friends at Toys R Us looking at having more retail attainment. Interactivity and gamification are going to play parts of the retail market. That's why we have the term gamification. Anyway, you just can't get away from our friends at Genda. So we had, you know, I was touching upon it a number of times but we're all under embargo. We couldn't go into much more detail.
Speaker 5:But Geico Europe threw its doors open at two facilities one in the Westfields. This is really very similar to what they've been doing in North America with the Kittleton brand, which is dropping a cluster of Crane and Gashapo in this case just Crane into an already existing retail space and taking a little bit off as their own arena. This is the first facility. They have about 30 units in it. It actually sits inside a Japanese retail and mall store that's part of a larger Westfields White City Mall and next door to where they've just opened up. They will be receiving competition from a brand new development that we're seeing in the competitive socializing market. Before I jump directly into this, I kind of jumped ahead of myself. Was there anything you wanted to say about the Geico facility?
Speaker 2:No, no, there's not.
Speaker 5:I didn't mean to assume, I'm sorry. The issue here is that Westfield has proven a little bit. This particular Westfield at White City has proven a bit of a test ground for competitive socialising. It is where Putshack there we go first launched their flagship site. It is also where we have seen other venues in the competitive socialising side test out and we'll go into more detail about that in the coming sound off. But regarding open and shut, we will be having, for the first time ever, a combined.
Speaker 5:We have touched upon this numerous times in our discussions that it was about time that single entertainment venues were going to have to flock together to share their misery, and so we're going to now see Tokosocial and the UK franchise of Sandbox VR merge together into a single facility, 30,000 square. They're going into a site that I'm quite familiar with that used to house the temporary pop-up for Army of the Dead when they were testing the waters. Regarding their location, it's an old department store, old Debenhams. Anyway, we will see what VR and competitive sports football, soccer, as long with a F&B, scratch kitchen and cocktail bar will look like when they're combined together Sort of for me like mixing pizza with hamburger maybe.
Speaker 2:Well, if you want to call it that, maybe oil and water, I don't know. I mean, I think the two target markets are very different. I think, right, maybe I'm wrong here, but I think the people who want to go and play Sandbox VR are not the people who are going to go kick a football into a screen. Again, I could be wrong. Maybe that is not being fair. We'll say, though adding F&B to the Sandbox VR model. I think will be a benefit to Sandbox.
Speaker 2:I think will be a benefit to Sandbox. Obviously, that was already a component of Toka Social, but I think Sandbox VR will get a lift from the F&B, being a component beyond just the bar, the RoboBar, like we've seen before, and I wonder if this is something I know. Toka just recently announced, just even a couple of days ago, that they raised $35 million in, $15 million in equity, $20 million in debt for their expansion and I'm not sure that this is part of that. Maybe this was already underway, but definitely.
Speaker 5:The announcements came very close together. We heard about the Toko London because this will be their third facility. They've opened the first one in 2002, which we walked around. The second one they opened up in Birmingham. The third one will be this one. The second one they opened up in Birmingham. The third one will be this one and they have a fourth one, uh, us facility, uh, under development at the moment, which I'm not sure if it's public knowledge, but anyway, take it on advisement.
Speaker 5:I am interested in the location where they're going to be going into, because they've got a fat burger uh, uh that I think it's either a five guys or a fat burger across the way from them. Uh, just a little bit further away from them they have a virtual reality, uh arena experience run by dive labs, uh, and they're in a very industrious mall. I am thinking, as you've touched upon that, because toka social has managed to raise some money and they've got a gun to their head to increase their rollout, that misery loves company and they feel that maybe having a companion competitive, socializing entertainment entity. I'm surprised they didn't go with immersive game box. I I would be willing to make a small wager that I'm sure Immersive Gamebox was one of the other companies that they've been talking to about that.
Speaker 2:And despite the issues that we've talked about before with Immersive Gamebox, I feel like it would have been a better match and a better fit for a social audience.
Speaker 5:I have a problem with a number of these companies in the sector, which is they are more about the franchise and less about the entertainment. I'm an ex-Disney guy. You would expect me to say that I'm an experienced guy, and your guest experience from walking into Toka Social Sandbox VR is going to be interesting. Especially, it's going to be a big venue, unless they are prepared to tear up their brand document briefs and really go in guns blazing and make this a unique entertainment experience and a multi-level guest experience, as in, if you buy a ticket to go into the VR, you get an automatic ticket to go and do the football. Then you could bring converts to your brands, people that would not normally leave the active entertainment shell to try something VR or vice versa, maybe pulled in. Either way. This is going to be fascinating to watch. We live in interesting times Moving on and our friends at Beat the Bomb, the Colorado facility, 10,000 square.
Speaker 5:I noticed from the video walk around of this site that it is much more competitive, social. It's laid back comfy chairs, cocktail areas, watching other people make a fool of themselves. The one big USB of Beat the Bomb is that moment when the finishing team stand around the balloon of pain and find out if they're going to get covered in paint or not. That now is being turned into a very big audience moment. So I think Beat the Bomb is really embracing its hospitality component. We're seven facilities in and growing. I know that we'll be mentioning them a couple more times in the next few months regarding new openings and we wish the team well there.
Speaker 6:Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 5:And then, oh, look more golf, right. And then, oh, look more golf, right. So everybody's now pounding their keyboards going hey, kevin, you've got it wrong. X golf is an american brand. Yes, you're quite right, x golf is an american brand. Who's just opened up an australian brand who have in Australia 30 facilities?
Speaker 2:Did you know that? No, again, like where are these places? Where are they popping up? It is amazing to me.
Speaker 5:Retail units yeah, under 10,000 square minimum, theming heavy on projection and watch with some cocktail capability. So just think, in the us there's over 140 for x golf. There is another hundred and something, something we've just touched upon. Another brand and another brand, and I'm actually thinking, for one of our sound offs, that I will just go through all of the golf sin brands and there's some new ones to add. I'm just adding a brand new one to the list that wants to throw their hat in the ring. The issue I have here is what goes up comes down, and if you have that many golf brands, you better have an offering that makes you stand out from the rest, or else your time is going to be limited on this planet. But again, at the moment in Australia they're about to have or they have. The doors were thrown open on the latest X-Golf offering.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean this is. I don't see anything I'm looking at here that's all differentiated from back, and I think you know the one we were talking about just earlier, and five iron is maybe the only one that's all differentiated from back, and I think you know the one we were talking about just earlier, and five iron is maybe the only one that's trying to do something interesting and different with their aesthetics, but again, they're adding a little bit of other, you know, some other attractions into their mix. But yeah, this, these guys, they're just some sims and I don't understand how they're the biggest diversity that's created in place.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I agree, and the biggest diversity, these guys do is they turn this the golf simulator, and I don't understand how they're not in place. Yeah, I agree, and the biggest diversity these guys do is they turn the golf simulator off and turn it into a hockey simulator or a football simulator, but other than that, it's still bring your clubs, hit the ball at the screen, have a cocktail and from the calculations we have from the golfing industry, the indoor golf business is seeing higher same-site sales as the outer home, so people aren't prepared to walk around the green as much as they were. But at the same time, this is a very vulnerable market if they can't come up with a compelling entertainment offering Going to the shuts and sales. This is the new addition, because what we're seeing is people up for sale or relocating going to Japan, and one of the popular shopping mall, traditional arcades, hasn't been brought by Geico, so again turned into a Geico facility. It has actually decided to leave this particular retail unit that it's been stuck in for the last 20 years and closed down. Oh no, oh no, it's not just closing down, it's relocating to a new venue that they feel is more applicable to their area and they're going to reopen there.
Speaker 5:So a happy ending to this particular story, but a very telling story that the rent and the landlords of some of these facilities. If you've been in the site for longer than 20, then you know the conditions are such in the market that you're going to walk if the landlord puts his numbers up, and that's something to bear in mind. We'll touch upon this, I think, a little bit closer to the end of the year when we have the shopping mall and retail conferences and we see how much of these guys want to put their prices up and get the shock of seeing people going adios, we have a facility for sale. So you can say we've had a close down but we have a sale. So if you've got, uh, 1.3 million burning a hole in your pocket, you can have a mini golf facility and small, small arcade site, five acres. You know they sold it off once for 700,000. They're trying to sell it for 1.3 million and it looks like they put a little bit of effort into it, but I'm just not seeing 1.3 mil there.
Speaker 2:I mean unless it's just the five acre land as well, right, I mean like five acres is not a small amount of land.
Speaker 5:That's not sitting on five acres.
Speaker 2:No, exactly, and that's why I'm wondering if the parcel itself is worth the extra added value based on other developments in the area. I don't know.
Speaker 5:I haven't delved too much into that. I usually wait until the property is purchased before I do the detailed research, but again, this is a trend that we're going to see in the market. Anyway, that kind of covers the stuff from my side. Have I touched on anything that I need to go back?
Speaker 2:on Brandon. No, I mean, there's so much going on and we skipped over I don't even know how many slides too Quite a few. It's amazing. I mean there's so much going on and we skipped over. I don't even know how many slides to open it's quite it's amazing, interesting times.
Speaker 5:Well, anyway, that's it from us and we wish you a good one.
Speaker 2:All right, well, that was a great open and shut. I mean so much, so much, so much going on. And all right, well, because we've got a packed show, let's dive right into the next thing. We got Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. Chuck, take it away.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. That is moi, and today I want to discuss with you the top four reasons why your marketing is failing Now. I talk with clients all day. Potential clients consult people in the location-based entertainment space, and these are common things that come up and why I see people failing Now, sometimes, coming from me, somebody that runs a marketing agency does marketing for location-based entertainment brands. Some of this seems like, of course, that marketing person is going to tell you to do more marketing right, but I am telling you I have no skin in the game with you right now. These are big reasons why your marketing could be failing okay.
Speaker 1:So, number one, you are obsessed with ROI return on investment. Now, while that matters and it can be beneficial to help you improve your marketing and understanding what's working so you could do more of it, it is not the only thing. You need to stop being obsessed with it. I covered last week the four stages of a marketing funnel awareness, consideration, customer and then advocate. They need awareness, and so somebody might see something from you this week and do business with you a year from now. Right, you plan to see them. Maybe they have a kid two years now, or you know they have a girlfriend, so they want to go on date night or boyfriend whatever. Right, you need awareness. So not everything is going to have an ROI. You're not able to take it back to that. Ok, but doing some marketing is better than doing no marketing, I promise you. I promise you it is better.
Speaker 1:So here's a good example. We use mobile tracking to understand how we can improve our marketing, to understand where our visitors are coming from. Okay, now we have a long-term client who we've done unbelievable work for. Okay, they've probably doubled their revenue. I've been working with them since 2017. They've done really well. Okay, over this last year. It's been a little bit difficult in the space, but for them, they've had a lot of two or three big-time competitors come into the space and they've definitely taken a hit because of that this year.
Speaker 1:So one of the things we do is, like I said, we track these mobile IDs. The areas that we are putting more advertising in are noticeably doing better. However, they are down as a whole. But if we didn't have the ability to track that, we wouldn't know that those areas are doing better. They are down as a whole, but if we didn't have the ability to track that, we wouldn't know that those areas are doing better and so where they're at revenue-wise. If they weren't doing any marketing, it might be even worse, because those competitors came in and so if you didn't have the ability to track like we track, you would go hey, what you're doing for marketing is not working, and that couldn't be further from the truth, right?
Speaker 1:So again, stop being obsessed with ROI. Stop doing one thing and going. I didn't see the return on that. It's like you don't necessarily see it right away. You do send out flyers, do Google ads? Right, people clicked on it. They saw your website. There is value there. I promise you you shouldn't do anything that you cannot afford to do, but you should be spending on marketing, right? A good range is anywhere from 3% to 10% of your of your revenue should be going into marketing. Okay, and again, I don't care if you can't track it. I promise you some marketing is better than no marketing. So, number one, you're obsessed with ROI. Stop being obsessed with ROI. Number two you're not doing marketing or you're not consistent.
Speaker 1:I spoke to somebody the other day. It's like no, we don't do email. I guess I get annoyed when I send email. When I get an email, I don't want to see it, and's that you shouldn't necessarily extrapolate what you do over onto everybody else. You do market email marketing as a staple strategy in marketing. You should be doing it as a location-based entertainment brand, and if you're not, you're definitely falling short, right, and so somebody said to me one time and I loved it, I've always sort of kept with me, like like I don't even care if I send an email and somebody deletes it. Every time they delete it and swipe it off their phone. They're seeing my brand name, right, and it's so so, so, true, right, maybe one day they might open up that email and they're gonna come into your location to do business with you.
Speaker 1:Right, so you're not doing marketing. Or again, you're not consistent. You post, sometimes on social media and then other times you don't, and sometimes you send it an email or you try. It takes consistency. Anything you do in life takes consistency if you want to be successful at it. Right, marketing is no different, right, so be consistent.
Speaker 1:Ok, number three you think marketing solves all problems. We have clients and potential clients that their, their surveys are terrible. People are saying they have a bad time there. They're not open on time, they're just they're not the best operators or there's just other things like that. Other clients saying competitors came in. Right, it's not going to necessarily solve all those issues. It's a new shiny thing on the block. It's going to take some market share for you. There's only so many people in your area to go to these, you know to come to your location, right? So marketing is not going to solve all issues. Like stop thinking it's going to literally make you know, make or break your business. It is a big part of it, just like everything else is a big part of it your operations, your HR, your finance and your all that. That's all a big part of business. Marketing is just one part of that. Stop thinking it solves all these other issues. That's number three.
Speaker 1:Number four is you have zero strategy. You're literally just throwing stuff at a wall and see if it sticks. This kind of relates to number two, about not doing marketing or not doing consistently. You try something. You don't think it works or you have no rhyme or reason behind what you're doing something, or somebody just says, hey, place an ad here, and you do it.
Speaker 1:It's like no think about where's your customer, who's your customer. Where are they? What is their customer journey looks like Like? What are some good areas to be in? Like social media we all know you're on TikTok Post on there, right? So just you need to think through that, have some rhyme or reason behind what you're doing and why you're doing it. Right, I'm telling you, you know, just you don't need to be a rocket scientist to do some of these strategies. Yes, some of it can get complex. To measure ROI to you know, know how to use the platforms, but there's a lot out there. That's very easy. And again, doing some marketing is better than doing no marketing. So get out there, start marketing. I promise you it's better than doing nothing at all.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, thank you for that, Chuck, and yeah, I mean I cannot. I cannot agree more with the whole concept around. Look, even if somebody swipes and deletes your email, they've seen your brand. So definitely, thanks for all of those tips there, Chuck. Coming up next, after the quick break, we're going to dive into Arcade Corner with Adam Pratt.
Speaker 1:If you run a location-based entertainment brand and want to attract more visitors, check out Radius. They use real-time location data and customized marketing strategies to help brands like yours stand out. Radius can boost your foot traffic and build a loyal customer base. Plus, they're offering a complimentary local market analysis to show you exactly how they can help you grow Curious, visit Radiusco and ask about your free market analysis.
Speaker 7:That's R-A-Y-D-I-U-S dot C-O WSco. Greetings everyone. I probably look like a stranger around here because it's been a couple of weeks that I haven't been around. First that started off due to a sickness and I was losing my voice and I still sound maybe a little bit like that because my nose is stuffy today due to a sickness, and I was losing my voice and I still sound maybe a little bit like that because my nose is stuffy today due to allergies. But then there was also a I gotten a car accident. Fortunately I wasn't seriously injured, just a concussion and some whiplash and everything, but that still happened while I wasn't feeling the greatest anyways. And so that's all just lots of stuff piling on, and there hadn't been a ton of news either to discuss up until the AAA show that happened in China very, very recently. So that's what I'm going to mainly focus on for our news today the AAA show.
Speaker 7:If you're not familiar with it, this is a photo of the hall where it was held in Guangzhou, china. Aaa stands for the Asia Amusement and Attractions Expo and, as you can see from that, this is the 21st time that it's been held. And what's interesting about it? In a way, it's kind of sort of like the Chinese version of Amusement Expo, but it's bigger than that. It's not quite as big as IAAPA. However, a lot of Chinese manufacturers do treat it almost like IAAPA, or at least how Western manufacturers treat IAAPA here. Western manufacturers treat IAPA here, and this being the show where they will debut most of their newest, hottest stuff, and so that's what we're going to try and get through here relatively quickly. It's a little tough because there was a lot of stuff seen, but I'll try and focus on things that are most likely going to be coming overseas Now. Of course, yes, there are still a lot of unknowns in the air when it comes to trade with China, and while a tentative deal had been announced, things haven't been finalized yet. So, since we're still kind of in that limbo not sure, but assuming that everything will work out and there'll just be some adjustments to prices hopefully slight as opposed to huge then we'll be able to go from there.
Speaker 7:But the first one that we'll cover is Wallop, and they've been around now for 35 years. Of course, they didn't really hit the US scene until, I would say, first time I remember seeing them at a show like IAPO was 2011, when they had their Storm Racer game or the first Storm Racer. I think they've done two of those, and I remember Kevin Williams saying that he felt that this Storm Racer game was the Space Invaders moment for Chinese manufacturers. This Storm Racer game was the Space Invaders moment for Chinese manufacturers. Now, over time, it's not quite played out in the same sense. Of course, you could still argue that history sort of repeated itself there, because after 2011, the prominence of Chinese game developers and manufacturers certainly has grown and their influence out west has grown quite a bit, as has their own market at their own domestic market, I should say, has really grown since then, and so they were celebrating that 35th anniversary and they actually held a really big event.
Speaker 7:Uh, one thing I should throw out really quick too is, uh, I want to thank ogashi, who sent a lot of the photos. He, he is a game developer that's worked for sega since the 90s and he attended the show and sent us a lot of pictures. But all of these photos from wallop with the tags on them they were sent to me from wallop themselves. They sent me over a thousand photos, and so I just can't use even, uh, maybe a percent of that. I'm using like 0.0002% of all that Uh, but there was this big stage event where they had, uh, higher ups in their company talking about it. Even George Petro from play mechanics was invited, and there's several pictures of him having some speech there. I'm not sure exactly what he talked about, but he was essentially the Western rep attending the show.
Speaker 7:Now, one of the things that we'll talk about in a second is one of the games does come from Rothrills and Play Mechanics that Wallop is representing in China, but we have several games and my apologies there for clicking on that and so first off is AlphaOp's VR Strike, developed by 3MindWave, which is based in Hong Kong. In the West this is being sold through Sega Amusements, but in China it's going to be sold through Wallop. Now, what's very interesting is the photos that we got, but in China it's going to be sold through Wallop. Now, what's very interesting is the photos that we got from this. In China have a very different cabinet than what was shown at both IAPA and Amusement Expo, although, to be fair, the Amusement Expo cabinet was the exact same one that the Sega had used at IAPA, and so there was no changes, as they were telling me at IAPA that they were going to have several changes made to the cabinet by the time it would hit production, but I've tried to find out. I haven't heard back yet as to whether or not these same changes will apply to the Western release.
Speaker 7:I think that this change, like you see here, one of the primary ones is, instead of having two screens mounted vertically to the cabinet, they're just using one giant display. I assume that's like an 85 inch, maybe a 70, 75 around there, but the other way it's big, and then it splits the signal from each player between the two there, as opposed to each having their own display. It's more for spectators anyway, so it makes sense to me that if this is more economical, might as well go there. Also, the marquee has changed. Instead of being this giant box with a cool flame LED effect in it, they've made it something that looks more traditional. But then another surprising change is they completely changed the gun. I mean now Three Mind Wave. They were the ones that came up with the idea of melding the VR headset to a gun in the first place, and at IAPA they had something that was lighter weight than VR Agent had, but this is even more lightweight. It almost looks like most of the weight is going to be in the VR headset as opposed to the gun itself, and so this would be, I would say, a pistol. But again, do not know if that is going to make its way to the West or not, or if they'll keep the rifle designed for the Western audience, but this seems like it's more comfortable. Just a guess. But one thing I should also point out really quick is that this is one of the very few vr games that was seen at the show, which is a surprise, given that in china they embraced the whole vr. You could, I think you could say trend fad of a sort a lot harder than most other um regions of the world had, certainly even more so than the west, and now they also don't have much there.
Speaker 7:Now, since we're limited to time, I'm going to skip over some of these, like this pokemon game uh, this monster, I unite. So this game is known as Kaiju Rampage over here in the West. I constantly get that mixed up with Kaiju Wars, which is by Raw Thrills, but LAI Games is carrying and representing this game in the West. I don't know at this time whether or not this new four-player cabinet will make an appearance here in the west or not which was translated as monster i3 unite. So maybe they do kai kaiju rampage unite here, if that is represented by lai game. But one of the photos included iron man, a guy dressed up as iron man playing this game. And so I assume that the software is going to be very similar to kaiju rampage, just with two extra players to it, maybe some slight other adjustments in the gameplay balancing, since you have free guns instead of mounted ones. And then, as mentioned earlier, the roth reels connection with wallop that came through here, with marvel contest of champions showing up in a completely different, more asian style sit-down cabinet than what we have here out west. Now I do not know what cards and characters are going to be available in Chinese. Of course it all is translated, localized, as they say there, but same concept, same game, as far as I know, aside from the different cabinets and the localization there.
Speaker 7:Then Wallop in the past had done one of these video basketball machines, like with alley-oop blitz, and so now they have this newer cyber hoop, but I was not sent details as to what might be different about that other than the aesthetic of it. And then Wallop also represents certain other brands in china, and so they're. They were showing off like taiko no tatsujin and some sega rhythm games, like the my my dx, which had been at amusement expo, and initial d and some other things that probably won't show up here in the West, although they'd also had a Jaws coin pusher game which I think had the Jaws license on it and I thought there was a photo there, but apparently it's been moved or something we also have. Bandai Namco had their own booth elsewhere at AAA where they did show off this new version of a Pac-Man kids basketball machine, a dual hoop. One Hoop doesn't move, of course. It kind of reminds me of the Sonic All-Stars basketball game, where that was a thing a while back and a motion version of Dead Heat Unleashed and a motion version of Dead Heat Unleashed. Now. I would assume that the Pac-Man game will find its way out west here soon, because Namco's been pushing what they call the Pac-Man Street series pretty hard. But there's no confirmation at this point whether or not the Dead Heat Unleashed motion version will also be available here or not. Not, but probably depends on testing and earnings and all that.
Speaker 7:But that wasn't all from AAA, and so Eunice is another big name that's also been around for 35, 36 years now I think. They did their big 35th celebration at last year's AAA show and they also had a really nice booth. It's like the Eunice and Wallop spent a lot more money on their booths for GTI or AAA than they do at IAPA or Amusement Expo. For sure it would be nice one year if they could set up their booth in a similar way. But I understand it's probably a lot more economical to do it on your home turf than it is to do it overseas. Understand, it's probably a lot more economical to do it on your home turf than it is to do it overseas. But you know they hire actors, dress them up, set up props, have big stages, sometimes with tournaments and all that jazz. But here they were promoting neon rush which last I checked is still not available here in the west but it will be coming there.
Speaker 7:The unis has been focusing more on their monster cart game. That, as far as I heard from uh iapa, was a big success. They had this amazing universe game which is sort of like an answer to minecraft dungeons, but that's probably not heading out this way so I won't spend time on it. And same thing with picture book land, which I was told is like castle crashers a little bit, but it also is like Minecraft Dungeons Arcade, where it will vend a card based on one of the characters that you can collect and go with. Eunice did have some photo bands. In fact, quite a few manufacturers had photo bands, and so we weren't able to get photos of the whole cabinets, but Oga sent a. You know this. Here's what the upper display looked like. So here's another racing game from unis where you're riding dragons, uh, so we'll have to wait and see what that one looks like. Or there's this game, super flyboard, which is based on the old journey to the west novel, or known as monkey, or maybe it's like monkey king here in the west. And then unis is also um in bed with Roth thrills and playing mechanics too, with stuff like they've done cruise and blast motion over in China before for several years, and they're going to be representing a top gun Maverick on them.
Speaker 7:There's ace amusement. Now, if you're not super familiar with ace amusement yet, a lot of their products have ended up here in the States through other manufacturers or over in Europe. Udc is a company that often carries a lot of their stuff, and so they've become a very prominent developer of game content out there, but they had a photo ban on a lot of their stuff and so we weren't able to see everything. But not everything was photo banned, like this new jet ski game which, uh so coastal amusements just released wave riders extreme. That was designed by ace amusement and so it looks like jet ski racer will also come along with more water sport racing, but instead of standing up like in wave riders, you sit down on this one like you're on a jet ski and as a motion base.
Speaker 7:But because of the photo ban, oga fortunately sent a. He grabbed a catalog which was able to, and then took photos of that to show us what else they had on hand which had the photo ban. So here is wild hunting. They had on hand which had the photo band. So here is Wild Hunting, heart of the Hunt, which is an answer to Big Buck Hunter. It's really the first time somebody's developed something that's kind of a response to that in many years. But whether or not that will be able to challenge Big Buck's dominance over here, I highly doubt that.
Speaker 7:They also have their own answer to Drakens Realm Keepers by Adrenaline Amusements that they call Dragon Kingdom, where they are using the two screens, just like Alpha Ops, vr Strike was doing, and motion base and stuff. I just hope they have a leaderboard, because that's my big criticism of Adrenaline's Drakens is there's no leaderboard. So it's like what's the point in having a score if you can't register it at all? I don't get that trend. They also have some racing games like racing extreme with two different models, and bikers madness. Now again, with ace being so prevalent out there, there is a very good chance that all of these games could end up here out west. I just don't know through who it might come. We'll just have to wait and see. Um, but just rushing to get this segment through, we have one last one to take a glance at and let's go here. Oh yeah, by the way, papa shot elite, which debuted at amusement expo. Elite, which debuted at Amusement Expo 2025, is available now. So a lot of the other companies there. So the jury's out on whether or not any of these games will show up over here.
Speaker 7:There's a lot of rhythm games. This Arker Amusement has been really into rhythm games. They've had their own answer to Sega's my my for a long time, where instead of a circular screen, it's a hexagonal one about hui. Some of their content has been sold over here, like hypercross by sega. Amusements was developed by about hui and they're carrying speed rider 4 dx, which was developed by igs, and igs developed, I believe, moto Blitz DX, which is why the cabinets look very similar to each other, except for the LED dot matrix toppers there. But Speed Driver has been pretty popular over in Asia for a long time, kind of an answer to the likes of Maximum Tune and Initial D. Dragon Knight is another game. That's another answer from Malhuy about dragons, and so everybody's wanting to do a dragon game. Right now HY Technology represents Three Mind Wave and sells Apex Rebels and some other games there, including Bop it, so they have kind of a relationship with Sega going on. Lillian is a company that also focuses a lot on rhythm games, but because of music licensing I just highly doubt we'll see any of those Super Win. They've had games represented out west through like LAI games such as Smash DX, but they had this new game called the Future, which looks like it's trying to be a little bit like minecraft going on, but also these new racing games.
Speaker 7:Personally, I think when it comes to this uh trend of dual screens. I'd rather have this sort of uh vertical screen. It's not curved um. It's like if you want more real estate, they make the screen so big now that they are almost widescreen in a sense, but also you get that extra height out of there.
Speaker 7:This one caused a little bit of controversy. I was talking with kevin williams about this. The creators of this said that they were going to send me a press, really, or press kit, with more details on this. So the reason why this is a problem is because king of fighters has not been released to arcades in a very long time. Snk has never authorized that, but apparently there's something about an snk chinese division, an snk japanese division and some other entity there and everybody has to have their say. So what I've been told is that this is licensed but only supposed to be sold in china, not supposed to come out overseas.
Speaker 7:But because it's King of Fighters, which is well known amongst a lot of gamers, that caught the eye of many out there and it's a decent looking cabinet, as long as it doesn't break down. You know, there's also this crazy drive by Yudo Games and Saga of Night where you ride on a horse, more rhythm games, and this is the only other vr thing that I saw, which again is like vr agent, where it's melding the vr headset to the gun but like free roam or just putting on a vr headset. It's not there, uh, or at least all the photos we were sent. We didn't see anything like even something like this. Like years ago this probably would have had a vr component to it, but now it doesn't and so just really seems like the bottom's falling out of that.
Speaker 7:Here's a cool concept where you have rc cars with a camera on them and then the arcade cabinet allows you to see the camera and you drive a real rc car around the racetrack. It'd be cool to see more of that come out here. A concept like that was done by sega way back in the 80s. And then this last interesting one was, uh, kind of like a melding of a 1950s golfing game uh, electromechanical golfing game with new age technology where you control this little uh golfer here to hit the ball up. There's just the only thing weird about this is they didnfer here to hit the ball up there. It's just the only thing weird about this is they didn't seem to fix the carpet down, so it's got all these ripples. It's like. That seems like the worst thing you'd want for golf, but yep, that is the AAA Expo. This segment went a little bit longer because we had a lot to cover there, but hopefully that gets us up to speed. Thank you for watching and we'll see you next week all right.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for that, adam. Another great arcade corner. It's been a little while, so thanks for coming back in and getting us up to speed, especially at all the stuff that's happening out in asia. So really appreciate that. And all right, we're going to round it out with a road trip with clint novak to portland, oregon. Let's take a road trip with Clint Novak to Portland, oregon. Let's take a road trip with Clint.
Speaker 6:Hey guys, it's time for another road trip. My name is Clint Novak from A&A Global, and last week I was in Portland, oregon, and so we are going to go over some of the locations that I was at while I was out in Portland. First up was Wonderland, which is this is a new location. They have several locations. This location is south of Portland, in Salem. It includes a couple of rides to attractions Laser Tag, which is not quite open yet, they're still working on it, and then it has this massive indoor go-kart track by 360 Karting and it is just a massive, massive track. Really cool lighting as well. The whole track has custom lighting, has a big screen TV above the track and really really cool track. I mean the lighting itself is. I was just mesmerized by they can do it like a light show on the track, so they just like attraction mode, like if there's no carts running, they just turn it on. It does this crazy light show with sound and speakers and all the crazy stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, you know, Andretti, does they kind of have like the light bar that goes around, it signals and it's green, it goes yellow, it goes red, signaling different times in the park? But I just love how nice this looks lit up and I love the light show idea as well.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and when you're looking at the cars in the pit too, they have. The lighting is in the pit as well.
Speaker 6:So you can see the lighting effects. The blue, yellow, blue on the cars really look slick Up. Next I stopped by J&J Amusements. They make go-karts. They're based out of Portland, oregon. This is Dan from J&J Amusements. When I was working at Funland of Fredericksburg, we purchased J&J carts so I wanted to stop by say hi. He gave us a tour of the factory, which was really, really cool. I got to see these are Castle Fun Centers go-karts. They have a new multi-level go-kart track going in in New York and so these are their carts getting ready to be shipped out to them as they finish up their go-kart track.
Speaker 2:So do they do custom body designs as well, for different places, depending on how they want, or do they have their standard body design that they like to do? That they, that they do and they just do like custom colors, maybe for the location.
Speaker 6:So you have several different body types you can choose from. I don't know if you can customize the bodies themselves other than paint scheming and stickers and such that you put on, so I don't know if there's actual like if you wanted a custom body. I don't know if they do that or not, but these were all custom colors to match the castle color scheme. Yeah, very cool. Up next, claw City.
Speaker 6:I don't know if you guys are part of the Facebook operators group, but James is posting all the time about Claw City and his locations that he has in Portland, oregon, so I wanted to stop by and see what it was all about. This is a Clawcade. I don't know if you guys know what a Clawcade is, but this is a 100% merchandise arcade. He does have a few video games in this location, but really what you're doing is you're trying to win plush out of the games and if you win the plush out of the games, the plush then turns into the tickets or monetization that you would use at the redemption counter. So you take the plush that you win, you go up to the redemption counter and then you trade that plush in for prizes or bigger plush so you can take, like, let's say, 10 small plushes and turn it into a medium plush and then 10 medium plushes for a large plush. So it's a very unique concept. That's just kind of taken the US by storm. It's going everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 6:The big plush above the the clockade, there are the games there.
Speaker 2:That's what I was going to call out is I love their theming, that they've done by putting the different plush and different elements on the ceiling as well, like they've done a great job really branding this also with the claw city brand everywhere. Some of these claw machines will also have, like, the marquee that can connect all of the different claw machines across the top, so you can like have a single branded marquee instead of having to have the claw city across each on top of each crane. But it's I love the midway style upgrade that they are doing some of these clock gates. Now, like you mentioned, right, you can get 10 small plush, get the bigger plush, very much like if you're going and playing midway games, uh, at a state fair or somewhere like that where you can, you get a couple of smaller plush and you can eventually win the bigger plush yeah, and the the class city.
Speaker 6:They have the baskets and stuff that you can carry around, the plush but they also have these bags, these drawstring bags. They're bigger than a backpack, so it's it's a big bag with the drawstring so you can still carry it around like a backpack. Uh, with their logo on it. It's plastic, so it cheap. It's something that you can just walk out of the store with and they'll let you take it. But it also is a billboard for what you have. You have a whole bunch of stuffed animals. It's in your bag and it says Claw City on it, so I love that idea.
Speaker 2:This is brilliant. I haven't seen this implemented anywhere else yet besides Claw City. Have you seen this concept with the clear bag else yet?
Speaker 6:besides claw city? Have you seen this, this concept with the clear back? I've seen the, the shopping carts. I've seen the. Just, they've given you a clear garbage bag that you just throw everything in and you get to keep the garbage bag, but it doesn't have a logo on it. But this is genius, uh, the drawstring. I love it. Uh.
Speaker 6:The next location I stopped at was big owls. Now, now, this was a Clint's Corner filming location, so they were treating me to some food and some fun. I got to do some bowling here. When you walk into Big Al's, it's massive. Look at how big this is. The pictures I don't think do it justice. But this is two levels you can see. The arcade is on the second level with the redemption store up there. Bowling is on the first floor. They have two different areas of bowling as well. They have regular lanes and then the premium lanes. The premium lanes have more lighting effects and cool stuff going on. The thing that blew me away about this place was the food. They again treated me very well, got me some pizza, got their burger of the month, some tater tots and then this massive plate of nachos. They do everything big at Big Al's. This massive plate of nachos probably could have fed 10 people and they insisted that I had to try it and I probably finished one-eighth of the nachos.
Speaker 6:And it was amazing. It was so, so good. What was on that burger.
Speaker 2:Was there mac and cheese on top of that burger?
Speaker 6:It was bacon mac and cheese and then a onion ring that keeps the mac and cheese inside the burger, and so, yeah, it was delicious, very, very good. The restaurant is located in their sports bar area, which, again, is massive. It's two levels. There's kind of a private sports bar up top where you can see the windows there, and then there's the dining area down below with the huge big screen TVs that they can split into fours so they can do what's your four, eight, nine, ten, twelve different games going on. So if it's football season, this is a great place to go. They also have an adult gaming room off to the side as well, which is where you have, like your slot machine style games, so you can go in there and play some adult games.
Speaker 6:Like I said, the premium lanes this is the premium lanes area. So the upgraded furniture, brunswick bowling, the light package they don't do spark on either of the bowling lanes, but they do have the upgraded furniture on the premium lanes here. Of course, the arcade itself they have some Big Owls merch there. The Sasquatch being a big thing in Oregon, I assume there's been some Sasquatch sightings up there. Of course, of course. And one cool thing is in their adult area up top kids actually can go in this area until, I think, like a certain time, and then it's adults only and there's a bar, and this overlooks the sports bar tvs. They also have a free play arcade, classic arcade. They can go up and play the classic games. Uh, they're just on free play. They don't accept tokens or anything, you just press and play. And so I was up there playing Pac-Man for probably a half hour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had to do it too for the anniversary this last week.
Speaker 6:Oh yeah, Ms Pac-Man is my favorite, the really fast Ms Pac-Man, the slow Ms Pac-Man I don't like so much.
Speaker 3:But the Ms Pac, pac-man, the fast one I love that's awesome and my last, my last portland, was the uh next level.
Speaker 6:Uh, this is a really a unique uh place. This is the second largest playable arcade in the country and it is massive. But not only is it an arcade, it's free play. So you pay, let's say, $25, to get in and then you get to play all the games for free. And there's close to 700 games here. So that's how big this place is.
Speaker 6:Not only is it an arcade, but it's also a pop culture museum. So anything that you've ever collected in your life there's a section here. So this is you can see pinballs. We've got TV trays on the back there, I believe.
Speaker 6:These are cassettes on each side so you see, like above the games. Those are cassettes, like audio cassettes that you'd have in a Walkman. They had teeny beanie babies. They have the largest lunchbox collection ever Like. It's just massive. They have Pokemon cards everywhere with all of the stats and cases, I think sorts of game cartridges on the wall. This is their Nintendo themed area, so you can see that they have some video games in there that are Nintendo. But they also have the big statues and stuff as you walk around. It's just you're never going to see everything. There's so much stuff going on now they do have some merchandise games, like you can see in this picture. These merchandise games are not free play. You have to use actual money to play those and since they don't have a card system on their games, you actually have to get quarters and put them into the game oh, interesting.
Speaker 2:So they're not using like niax or something like that? Um, for these you can't use a credit card on them or like a tap to pay worry about getting a card or doing any of that.
Speaker 6:Um, but yeah, so the, the but the merch games. They had a claw, a couple claw games, a couple merch games and, uh, you have to pay for them. I just don't know the style in which you pay for them.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, this is definitely one of the coolest arcades I've ever seen. I mean, obviously, besides the scale of it, but just the work that they've done as well to protect everything. So, like clear glass if you're listening to this, they have whenever you see, like this wall of, like Super Nintendo games, for example, like there's like a plexiglass that's covering it, like all of these things. These shelves are just incredible Shelves sized perfectly for the elements that are in there the lunchboxes and the cassette tapes and then covered up with clear plexiglass so that they protect them and you keep dust off them and everything else. Obviously prevent theft as well, I'm sure, but it's just amazing. I mean, every square inch of their walls and ceilings is completely covered and the memorabilia oh my gosh, the star wars stuff that we got here. It's incredible.
Speaker 6:This is awesome well, and each section is kind of a homage to something. So this is their Star Wars section. They've got the battle pods there, they've got the lightsaber battle, they've got the melted Darth Vader helmet, boba Fett, stormtroopers, r2-d2. You know, this is the Star Wars area. If you go into another area that might be their music area, so they'll have, you know, lps on the wall and music posters and all that. And then the next room you go in is their lunchbox room and they'll have lunchboxes everywhere, and so they try to keep all the theming in, like certain areas. But again, anything you've ever collected, they have it on display. If you collected Pez dispensers, they have Pez dispensers on display. If you collected coins, they have them somewhere. You know it's crazy the amount of stuff that they have.
Speaker 2:You know one of the things too. Just looking at some of these pictures, it also looks like the condition of everything is really well maintained, I mean for having 700 machines plus. Like all of the cases they don't look dusty, the carpet looks nice and clean and fresh, like everything looks very clean and well done. And now maybe it's just showing in the pictures. Maybe if you're there the reality is different. But it does look like there's. It's very well done and even the layout it's back-to-back machines. You don't have a lot of corn showing anywhere. I mean the amount of like power distribution that they've done here is very well done.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it definitely was clean. It definitely was clean, it definitely was tidy. They, when I was there, out of the close to 700 games that they have, only like three of them were down, and they pride themselves in keeping the games up. If the game is going to be down more than a day or two, they pull it off the floor and replace it with one in their storage facility. So you know, this is this is what they do. They, they fix games, they, they they put put the you know, put the games together, they refurbish them, doing all that stuff. And so they have to take pride in that when they have their actual arcade and make sure that they're keeping it up as well. So Interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay, so they're a distributor for, like at home games, in addition to, obviously, what they're doing in their own venue.
Speaker 6:I don't know. I think they're keeping all of them. I just think they just like to refurbish them all. It was a pinball shop as well, so maybe they do help people refurbish pinball machines. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe if there's one there they're open to selling it. I mean, if they've got some in warehouse, they probably have multiple of each kind too. They're probably just buying on a regular basis.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, wow. Definitely a great place. If you're in Oregon, you have to check that place out, because that's just very, very unique and they are continuously adding on to it. They're adding another section on to it as well. Now, once that section is done, I believe they said they're going to be putting some claw machines in there. So they're just continuing to expand and hopefully one day they will be the largest playable arcade in the country. We'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty remarkable to me actually that this place is not the largest. It's still only the second largest. That is pretty cool. This place is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah. And while I was in Oregon, I got to see the cool waterfalls that they have to offer there, and I had lunch with John Keyes, who used to be at Embed, now is at CenterEdge just made that switch While I was there. The switch was happening. He was just starting his first week at CenterEdge and the last thing is they had an alpaca and llama at the airport, which I thought was crazy. Um, so this is me with either an alpaca or a llama I forget which one and it's at the airport itself. So this is me boarding a plane with a picture of I believe it's an alpaca.
Speaker 2:That is, uh, that is hilarious, um, but that's awesome.
Speaker 6:Evidently it's a thing Like people know oh, they have alpacas and llamas at the airport. Make sure you get your picture. I just happened to be walking to security and somebody, like one of the people at the airport, was like if you want a picture with their llamas and alpacas, they're out right now and I'm like what? So I look over and I'm like sure enough, there's alpaca and a llama over there inside the airport with their little. They have little boots on their on their feet. It was cute.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that's hilarious, that's awesome. Well, I'm going to be flying into Portland in just under a month, so I'm going to have to take a picture with an alpaca or a llama when I'm there and definitely check out some of these venues.
Speaker 6:Awesome, you got to go check out that pinball. Next level, it's literally the next level.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, you mentioned Big Owls is going to be on the on Clint's Corner as you were doing some Clint's Corner filming. Obviously, it'd probably take a little bit to get that ready to roll, but for those of you who want to check out other Clint's Corners, you can go to youtubecom slash at AA bulk vending. And you know, or you just Google, you know Clint's Corner YouTube or something like that, or Clint's Corner AA, and you'll find it as well, but it's youtubecom slash at AA bulk vending. You know this is. It's been awesome, clint, it's been a great road trip.
Speaker 6:I appreciate it and I look forward to the next one.
Speaker 2:All right, see you then. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, guest satisfaction and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry, and if you aren't already part of their global family of customers, they hope you will become one soon. All right, well, that about wraps us up. A couple of quick announcements before we head out the door. Sound off number 75. It's our 75th sound off.
Speaker 2:Kevin Williams will be this Tuesday, may 27th, also on this Tuesday. If you subscribe to either the LBS Collective Newsletter or the Stinger Report already, then you'll receive a brand new publication that Kevin Williams has put together. It's called the Entertainment Social Arena, really just covering all the trends that are happening in the competitive, socializing or social entertainment space. So highly recommend, if you aren't already a subscriber, then go to lbxcollectivecom and just subscribe to our newsletter and then you'll get it, and that will come out on Tuesday. There's actually a second edition that will come out the following week as well, and then I'm sure we'll get back into some of the regular Stinger reports flowing out from there. All right, that is a wrap for this week's LBX show. This is Brandon Wiley signing off. Stay tuned and keep kicking ass.
