Michael Clark, the store’s owner and namesake, is an arcade cabinet collector. His first purchase was Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters, bought for personal use. The next was The Simpsons, picked up in Louisiana, which — more importantly — made him cool among his kids’ friends.
When Clarkade first opened, there were about a dozen machines. Now, with nearly 115 currently in rotation, Clark has expanded his modest collection into a full arcade.
Classic staples like Space Invaders and Tempest sit beside modern multiplayer fixtures like Killer Queen and Minecraft, the latter receiving updates every six months. There are rarities, too — Sega’s Time Traveler, a holographic LaserDisc game, and Dragon’s Lair, famously the first cabinet to charge 50 cents.
Newer additions include Luigi’s Mansion and Dark Escape 4D, a horror cabinet with 3D glasses and a weapon that tracks players’ heart rates as they panic.
For $7, visitors can purchase a card granting an hour of free play on select cabinets, pinball included. For $20, the arcade is theirs all day. This writer did that on his birthday.
“We want to be the spot that people can go to every week,” Clark said. “There are games here that you can’t experience at home. You’re gonna enjoy it the way it originally was.”
Credit: Reginald Steele Jr
Credit: Reginald Steele Jr
He arrives around 8 a.m. each morning to prepare for opening. He powers on the cabinets — an immediate, overstimulating collision of sound — then starts repairs on consoles, games and controllers. Clarkade often buys broken items specifically to fix them. The store also has a resurfacer to remove scratches and blemishes from discs.
The retail side is its own maze, with aisles organized by console generation. A DVD section remains for now, though Clark says it will soon give way to rarer items, including an autographed copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out and boxes of graded games.
The employee corral is lined with glass displays of NES and N64 cartridges, matched by cases along the back wall holding the store’s vintage stock.
“Video games have a duality,” Clark said. “They’re something you can interact with and enjoy, but they’re also art. Some people will collect sealed, graded copies. Others are like, I don’t even care. Give me the disc only. I just want to play.”
As modern systems move away from discs and cartridges toward digital storefronts, ownership becomes abstract. Games dependent on servers offer no guarantee of play — or resale — tomorrow.
Credit: Reginald Steele Jr
Credit: Reginald Steele Jr
But as long as the cabinets are plugged in and working, an experience in the physical world — filtered through a screen — still exists at Clarkade.
Arcades, after all, gave rise to the home console. Early systems were sold as TV peripherals, something you plugged in, gathered around, and played Pong on together.
Clarkade previously hosted video game and card tournaments and has recently been approached about bringing them back.
“Arcades still matter because they foster community,” said Reginald Steele Jr., Clarkade’s social media director. “Parents come in with their kids and say, ‘This is what I grew up on.’ It builds connections across generations.”
“You may be looking for a game,” Clark added, “then see something on the wall and remember getting it for Christmas, or playing it at an arcade back in the day. You never know what you’re going to find.”
In an alcove near the back of the store stood a Blockbuster Pokémon Snap Station. A yellow, tri-pronged Nintendo 64 controller jutted from the cabinet. Clark turned on the CRT and explained that when the station lived at Blockbuster, customers could pay for a card, scan it, and print a snapshot from the game.
Out of respect for the moment — and for the awe those snapshots must have given kids — I didn’t take a picture with the phone in my pocket. We’ve come far, but not as far as we think.
More info
Clarkade is located at 6140 Chambersburg Road, Dayton. For more information, visit clarkade.com or call (937) 949-7354.
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