EARLIER THIS FALL, Bremerton got a new arcade.
While the Bremerton Gateway business park off Wheaton Way was filling up with corporate fast food chains and drive-thru lines, welcoming a home remodel store and a budget grocery chain, the folks across the street at the Tracyton Movie House spent the summer renovating one of their four in-house theaters into a state-of-the-art, family entertainment-style arcade, adding to their offerings of mainstream, retro and special release movies and live music.
A few days after the arcade opened to the public in September, I was there for a live show, drinking a beer, waiting for the band to play and watching my buddy try to hit the high score on their classic Supersonics-branded hoops game. And I thought to myself: ‘How rad is this concept, where mom and dad can buy some chicken fingers and turn the kids loose in the arcade while they catch a movie or a concert, or grab a drink together?
I remember thinking: What’s next? A roller rink? Laser tag? Go-karts?!
“It’s a smile factory,” one of the owners told me when I asked why they decided to build an arcade in their movie house.
Later that month across town, a group of local investors took over a 21-and-up barcade—the term for a bar that functions as an arcade for adults—in downtown Bremerton. That arcade had been a part of the Seattle area regional chain Another Castle since its inception. The group ‘Re-Re-Re Opened’—(big shout out to the real life Bob’s Burgers reference)—as The Town Portal.
Which reminded of the time when I turned the kids loose at the kid-friendly downtown arcade while mom and dad had a drink and played pinball and Pacman and Tetris together at the barcade down the block.
All of which got me thinking, huh, this town sure has a lot of arcades.
‘Gamerton’
Ten years ago, the Seattle Waterfront Arcade which had been a family-owned fixture at Pier 57 in downtown Seattle for more than two decades was shuttered when its lease in that building was not renewed. Looking for another space to re-open, the owner/manager of that arcade, a Bremerton resident and fourth generation arcade purveyor, decided to move his operations closer to home. He took a chance on Bremerton’s 4th Street, opening as Quarters Arcade in 2015.
A year later, a 21-and-up barcade—now the Town Portal—opened a few blocks away on Pacific Ave.
The next year, Ashley’s Pub—a board-game-centric 21+ beer-and-cider bar which now also sports a full bank of pinballs—opened on the corner of 4th and Pacific. The following year, the mayor cut the ribbon at an all ages virtual reality arcade, and a local news story documenting the growing nerd culture hub, attributed the phrase ‘Gamerton’ to the area—a portmanteau of ‘gamer’ and ‘bremerton’—coined by a local business owner at the time.
The name didn’t really stick, but the culture did.
The next year, Tik Tok’s Workshop—another pinball-centric 21-and-up barcade helmed by a fixture in the local pinball scene, game collector, purveyor and traveling pinball repairman—opened in 2019.
After a few year gap, and on the heels of the pandemic, Tukwila-based virtual reality company Dimension XR opened their second location in the old Town Square Mall in Port Orchard in early 2023, leading up to the opening of the Tracyton Movie House Arcade earlier this fall.
And it sounds like there may be another arcade coming soon in Silverdale.
When you add all that up with two separate old-school arcades at the Kitsap Mall, plus the two bowling alleys in Silverdale and Port Orchard, and the host of local breweries and restaurants from Port Orchard to Poulsbo to Bainbridge that have dedicated space for pinball games and arcade cabinets, you can technically count more than a dozen arcades in this town.
’The Business Of Fun’
That, to me, seems like an inordinate amount of arcades for a small town, so I called up Pete Gustafson for a second opinion. Pete’s been in the industry for 40 years. He’s currently the vice president for the American Amusement Machine Association, a nationwide trade group.
He picked up the phone outside of the world’s largest pinball expo in Chicago last month.
Chicago has long been an arcade town.
That’s where Pete lives. It’s where the AAMA is headquartered. It’s known as the pinball capital of the world, being home to many of the world’s leading pinball and arcade cabinet manufactures over the years. Pete worked for Bally, a storied pinball manufacturer, building games in the early 1980s. He’d go on to work at Sega and a few other companies while spending his entire career building, selling and promoting games to outfit ‘family entertainment centers’ across the country.
He was in for the massive rise of the arcade in the 1980s, all the way through the decline of the 1990s and the near disappearance at the turn of the century as at-home video game consoles and computer gaming devastated the on-site arcade industry.
Three of the world’s leading manufacturers threw in the towel at the same time in the late-90s, Pete says. At the annual conference that year, he remembers a collective ‘thousand-yard-stare.’ Everyone wondering if this was the end of an industry. He had watched his company, which once had some 1,600 employees manufacturing up to 600 arcade games a day dwindle to a staff of about 40. For 13 years, into the early 2000s, there was only one remaining pinball manufacturer in the country.
Pete stayed in the industry through the downturn and into the next decade where he would go on to witness first-hand the resurgence both arcades and pinball have been through since the early Twenty-Teens. The growth has been massive, he says. He hasn’t seen the industry this invigorated since the ‘golden age’ of the late-70s, early 80s. He cites the energy at the expo he’s currently attending as evidence.
And while that resurgence is no doubt driven by millennial and gen-x adults rediscovering their childhood and, in some cases, passing that onto their children as has often been reported, Pete also points out that, unlike the generations before them which quested after and collected stuff for entertainment in the home, the younger generations seem to prefer experiences over stuff.
Pete’s quick to pitch that those factors position the industry to be poised for even more growth.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t know too much about the Kitsap or Seattle arcade scene. He’s aware of the rise of the barcades over the past decade and its prevalence in the Pacific Northwest. And he says what I’m describing about this seemingly inordinate amount of arcades in this town sounds to him like a niche thing driven by that rise. Also, fitting with national trends, Pete says the growth in new arcades opening across the country aren’t so much corporate franchises or chains, but more mom-and-pop local businesses.
His hypothesis isn’t far off.
But, after my initial question had fallen flat, I had to ask him what’s kept him in the business for so long, through all the ups and downs…
“What else am I gonna do, man?” He laughs. “I’m in the business of fun.” // BILL MAN
CHECK OUT THESE ALL AGES ARCADES…
• QUARTERS ARCADE Downtown Bremerton:
Classic Arcade + Pinball + Ticket Counter.
• TRACYTON MOVIE HOUSE ARCADE East Bremerton: Classic Arcade + Pinball + Ticket Counter
Movies + Live Music + Food + Bar w/ ID
• BEYOND REALITY Downtown Bremerton:
Virtual Reality + Classic Consoles
• DIMENSION XR Port Orchard:
Virtual Reality + Laser Tag + Axe Throwing + Escape Room
• KITSAP MALL Silverdale:
2 Classic Arcades + Food
• ALL STAR LANES Silverdale:
Classic Arcade + Bowling + Food + Bar w/ ID
• HI-JOY BOWL Port Orchard:
Classic Arcade + Bowling + Food + Bar w/ ID
• SLIPPERY PIG BREWERY Poulsbo:
Pinball + Food + Live Music + Bar w/ ID
• DAMN FINE PIZZA Port Orchard:
Pinball + Food + Bar w/ ID
• CRANE’S CASTLE East Bremerton:
Pinball + Food + Beer w/ ID
CHECK OUT THESE 21-AND-UP BARCADES…
• TOWN PORTAL Downtown Bremerton:
Pinball + Classic Cabinets + Food + Bar
• ASHLEY’S PUB Downtown Bremerton:
Pinball + Board Game Library + Food + Beer/Cider/NA
• TIK TOK’S WORKSHOP East Bremerton
Pinball + Classic Arcade Cabinets + Food + Bar
