Edinburgh!
Seat of learning, law and government. Scotland’s capital city. Home to Hume, Smith and the Enlightenment in Northern Europe. The Athens of the North! A place so bursting at the seams with history and high culture, that we’re obviously gonna give those things a swerve – and talk about its video arcades instead!
I’ve been stotin’ aboot Embra for a long time. Back in the 90s, I even lived there. But the arcades of that era are something we’ll come back to in Part 4 of my Arcade Eco-System series. (Clickee linkeez for: Kilsyth; Kilsyth Extra – The Archives; Falkirk & Stirling; Glasgow)
These days I visit the place for work, which means I tread a very sorry furrow between the station and my office. In fact, that furrow is now so well-worn that I can barely see over the sides! I’m sure those of you who’ve spent any time commuting will be able to relate 😦
I do occasionally go off-piste. And every now and again, my expeditions through the wilds of Auld Reekie offer up rare glimpses of the city’s dwindling arcade culture. Sadly, that doesn’t happen very often.
Back in 2014, there was the ‘Game Masters‘ exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. OK, so it was an ‘exhibition’, with a heavy emphasis on education (!), but it was an exhibition which foregrounded a hands-on display of video-games technology, from Pong to Fruit Ninja.
The centre-piece of that collection, for me, was the group of 10 or so Golden-Age arcade cabinets at the entrance. There was Tempest, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Centipede and a few others. I can’t remember the whole list, ‘coz my archives are bare. For some unfathomable reason, photography was strictly forbidden – as I found out when I pulled out my phone and started to take some pictures. It wasn’t entirely clear how capturing an image or two of some of the most mass-produced consumer games cabinets on the planet might have infringed the organisers’ IP. But there you go.
A few years later, in 2018, I bumped into a random 60-in-1 cabinet while taking a short-cut through the Waverley Shopping Centre. Sadly, I was racing for a train, and didn’t have time for a game. With my ‘madskillz’ it would have taken way too long 😉 Unfortunately, when I eventually did have the time to return for a more leisurely visit, the cabinet was gone. Carpe diem, folks!
In recent years, pinball machines have been more common than arcade cabinets. They sometimes pop up in pubs, cafes and shops. Just before Lockdown, there was a pin-table in the BrewDog Bar on the Cowgate – Judge Dredd if my memory serves me correctly, which it might not, as I was rather refreshed at the time. Whatever it was, whether it’s still there or not is something I’ll have to go back and find out.
At the time of writing (Oct 2023), there are two pins just inside the shopfront of the new HMV on Princes Street. As far as I can work out, this seems to be part of the chain’s business plan. I’ve also seen pins in the new shops in Livingston and Dunfermline.
Konbo Arcade Cafe – 123 Gilmore Place, Edinburgh, EH2 9PP
When it comes to proper arcades, the situation in Edinburgh is even more hit and miss. Back in late 2016 / early 2017 there was a bit of a buzz on the old JAMMA+ forum about a new venue opening at 123 Gilmore place – the Konbo Arcade Cafe. The blurb was tantalising:
‘Edinburgh’s arcade gaming café. We bring Japanese arcade culture to Edinburgh in a comfortable café setting. Enjoy vintage 80s/90s arcade games, combined with quality coffee and fresh food. We also stock Japanese snacks & sodas, plus retro games & gaming merchandise. We run regular gaming tournaments & evening events, and you can even hire our venue with a game selection of your choice! See our website for more details and a full list of our games’.
The location – for me personally – was not great. Getting there involved an extended schlepp to the venue, then on to Haymarket afterwards instead of Waverley, which took my station race from less than 20 minutes to about an hour all-in. Being a busy chap at the best of times, I wasn’t able to visit until May 2017.
But it was worth the wait. Konbo was brilliant. The venue was clean, light, and welcoming. The decor was fresh and relaxing, with plenty of blonde wood and white, and comfortable stools. The refurbished (ie. clean) school-desk tables were a particularly nice touch. Better still, the coffee was not only excellent, but reasonably priced – and there was a varied selection of alluring cakes and other treats. Had it been closer to my place of work, I’d have gone there more often for that reason alone.
The venue was also used for Japanese cultural meetings, and could be hired out for private functions. It even sold Japanese knick-nacks and the odd PC Engine card. But the real ace up Konbo’s sleeve – its USP – was it’s collection of 6 pristine ‘candy’ cabs. There were 3 in the front, and 3 more in the room at the back. The machines were all set up for pay-per-play using tokens bought from the counter. IIrc (!) the exchange rate was four to the pound.
Given the cafe’s Japanese theme, it’ll come as no surprise to learn that Konbo’s cabs were usually fitted with puzzle games and ‘bullet hell’-type shmups of the Cave variety. I have to admit, that the selection didn’t always align with my personal tastes. But they were rotated on a regular basis. And here’s the weird thing – I actually liked going there and finding a whole new suite of gamage on offer, whether I actually wanted to play them all or not! That dynamism was attractive in its own right. Besides, if it wasn’t busy, the owner was happy to swap out the pcbs – and he had a good range of classic titles tucked away in his stash: Raiden, Makaimura – or Ghosts’n’Goblins as we Westerners know it – TMNT and more besides.
I didn’t get the chance to visit very often, but always regarded it as a rare treat. In the end, I probably made it 6 or 7 times before that start of 2020, when the good ship Konbo finally went down.
It’s now nearly 4 years since the business was wound up, and with the cabs themselves sold on via the forums. So, there’s no going back. That’s a real loss, and I can’t help but feel a touch guilty that I didn’t visit more often. Perhaps if I – and a few more arcade enthusiasts – had made the effort a bt more often, it might still be open? But life, as you know, gets in the way, and location is crucial for these things. And therein lies a paradox. Perhaps Konbo was such a nice place to visit precisely because it was slightly off the beaten-track, and never usually that busy. Had it been more central, the footfall may have been higher, but would the atmosphere have been the same? We’ll never know. What I can say, however, is that while it lasted, Konbo was definitely ‘a good thing’, and it will certainly be missed.
What about now, then? What about the present day?
The fair city of Edinburgh has loads to recommend it. There are literally hunners of things to see and do and spend you hard earned pennies on. The best of them, in my opinion, is the National Museum on Chambers Street. There’s enough in there to keep anyone busy for days. They’ve even got a Roman tent. And the best thing is, it’s free! But there are almost innumerable other museums, galleries, theatres and architecture, as well as restaurants, pubs and shops.
If you’re loaded, and have trouble thinking of ways to spend your money, you could even come round for the Fringe festival in August, where they’ll gleefully bleed you dry while you float slowly from venue to venue on the treacly sea of tourists that flood the city, just as the locals have to get back to work.
NQ64 – 25, Lothian Road, Edinburgh, EH1 2DJ
Arcades, though? What about them? There are places which claim to be arcades, but they don’t have any games in them – unless you count drinking games?
Fast-forward to February 2023. I’d left work late, and was powering through the winter darkness to an evening function at the West-end of Princes Street. To shave a bit off the journey, I took a spur-of-the-moment detour down Lothian Road, where I spotted this – NQ64. Being in a hurry, I barely had time to stop for a photo.
It was a few months before I had the chance to go back and investigate properly.
Having overstayed at an important apres-work ‘business meeting’, I was left with an hour to spare until my next train home. That was enough time to re-route via NQ64 on the way down to Haymarket, and, who knows, if it turned out to be worthwhile, maybe even miss the next train too…
Perhaps I walked too quickly, perhaps I was too refreshed, but that first visit didn’t exactly impress. Although it was still early evening on a weekday, and broad daylight, there were two bouncers on the door – which, until I went in – was the same as the number of customers. That didn’t strike me as particularly welcoming.
Once inside, I could see srtaight away that the place had plenty of cabs, but it was also cavernous, cold and almost entirely modelled out of concrete. Had it not been for the paintwork, the vibe would have been most generously described as ‘underground carpark’. With the concrete daubed in black-lit graffiti, however, a better comparison might be ‘futuristic injection-room’. That kindof turned my stomach. Nevertheless, I had a quick look round. The games seemed to be pay-per-play using tokens of some sort, so I went to the bar to get some. But after waiting more than ten minutes while the other two customers perused the cocktails menu, and ordered some bizarrely complicated concoctions, I gave up and sped off to the station.
A few months later, I’d been thinking that I should probably give the place another chance. First impressions can sometimes be misleading, and with so little to choose from on the local arcade menu, we probably shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss things out of hand. So when an event I’d been attending finished earlier than expected, I trailed back down to Lothian Road, with the gritty determination to be as open-minded as possible. Here are my thoughts.
NQ64 is in the middle of what might be described as Edinburgh’s entertainment sector. It’s here that you find most of the theatres and clubs, and a fair few pubs and restaurants. Its exact location taps very deeply into that heritage, being cheek-by-jowl with the Caley Picture House, site of the once infamous Century 2000 night club on Lothian Road.
With its neon-lit frontage framing an actual arcade cabinet, the venue itself is hard to miss.
While the entrance is small, it opens up, TARDIS-like, into a cavernous interior. Now, I’m not gonna lie. My first impressions of the decor haven’t changed. The place is cold, hard and uncompromising in its dystopian, brutalist vibe. There’s concrete, neon and black-lit graffiti everywhere. I just don’t get that. It’s neither inviting nor comfortable. It’s not really conducive to playing arcade games. But that doesn’t mean you’ll be having a drink and chat with friends. There’s plenty to drink, with a heavy emphasis on cocktails, but you won’t be doing any chatting. The music – grinding modern rap or some such – was cranked up to deafening levels. I literally couldn’t hear the sounds from any of the games, and could only confirm the sound was actually switched on in the couple of seconds between the tracks. That’s probably why the Guitar Hero cab was in a separate room with a close-able door. But we’ll come back to the cabs in a moment.
Having come to enjoy the cabs, I went to the bar to grab a diet coke and some tokens. As previously, I seemed to arrive at the worst possible moment – ending up behind another protracted cocktail queue. Don’t get me wrong, the bar staff (singular) was perfectly amiable. But there was only one of him, making drinks that took ten minutes to order and make. That can’t be a great for takings.
Tokens were 15 for £8, or 30 for £12. I went for 15. Which is just as well.
There were around 30 cabs all told, mostly woodies (albeit no Electrocoins), but a also a row of candies, a couple of recent pintables, a dance game, and a separate room housing Guitar Hero. Oh yes, and there was also a row of modern games consoles and monitors for those who prefer to game sitting down. Most of the games on offer were racers, shooters and fighters.
There was a Daytona USA upright, a Time Crisis 2 – IMHO the best of the crises series, and a dedicated Pac Man cabinet – all with CRT screens.
They also had a Q-Bert and a Puzzle Bobble. I was a bit disappointed that there were no shmups or classic platform games, which I tend to gravitate towards. But I think it’s fair to suggest that most classic gamers would find something they like in the selection. Whether they would actually enjoy playing it, however, is a different story.
Apart from the atmosphere, and the lack of audible game sounds – which really kills the arcade experience, most of the older games are fitted with LCD displays. And come on. Double Dragon on an LCD? No thanks. Some of the classic games did have CRT screens, but most were either very dim, or had bad screen burn. And I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t do it for me.
I did my best to ‘invest’ in a few goes of Daytona and Pac Man, but on the other video games I played, the controls were all damaged in one way or another, the joystick on Tetris was bridging connections, and didn’t always go the way you pushed it. The cross hairs on Terminator 2 didn’t track the movement of the gun across the screen, and the start buttons, and coin slots on the others didn’t always register. Sigh.
I enjoy the occasional game of Guitar Hero, but so – it seems – does everyone else. Although with hindsight, I suspect it may have been partly because of the door to that wee room, and the ability to shut out the dreadful racket.
Conclusions?
I liked Konbo Arcade Cafe, and was sad to see it go.
NQ64 on the other hand is something of an enigma. And that surprises me. Because it seems to be part of a UK-wide chain, which must have a fair amount of funding and business accumen behind it.
You see, to be honest, it’s not really that clear what it is trying to be? Most of the floor space is given over to arcade cabinets. But as I’ve already mentioned, it’s impossible to enjoy them properly even if you are a fan of the titles on offer. And while decor is – obviously – a matter of taste, if your motivations for visiting an 80s or 90s-themed arcade are even slightly driven by nostaligia, you’re not going to be bowled over by the torture-bunker stylings. What’s needed here are carpets, not concrete.
Of course, it could be that the cabs are only really there as ornaments – to provide an ironic backdrop to the usual bar-room shenanigans. And why not? But with so few seats, and such offensively loud, and, well, just offensive ‘music’, you’re not going to be enjoying a laugh or a chat with your pals. Is the agenda here to encourage the punters to focus on their drinking, rather than their talking? That would be the preserve of the night club. But with so few seats and no dance area, what’s the point of that? Something has to give, surely – something has to change – if this place is going to have any kind of future. Unless and until it does, I can’t see myself going back.
But what do you think? Am I missing something here? Please do share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you do know about any other decent arcade venues in or around Edinburgh, for goodness’ sake, give them a shout out!
Thanks for reading everyone. See you next time when I revisit my whistlestop tour of Valletta.
In the mean time, why not explore some other capital ideas:
Arcade Odysseus 