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Cidercade is one of two locations in Austin equipped with Dance Dance Revolution. (Claire Partain/Austonia)
The cider company-turned-arcade is just one of many successful arcade businesses to have found their audience in Austin, where tech gurus and niche game hobbyists take a breather with their favorite old video games.
According to David Kaelin, owner of retro gaming store Game Over Videogames, Austin is a prime location for those in his industry.
David Kaelin is a longtime owner of Austin-based retro gaming store Game Over Videogames, (David Kaelin/Facebook)
"It's definitely a very good market for gaming in general," Kaelin told Austonia. "There's a lot of young, high-tech-minded people here... and every year thousands of people are coming in and out of UT with high tech degrees, so it just adds more and more geek fuel to the fire."
But it wasn't long ago that just one or two arcades were in town, Kaelin said.
"I can think of five arcades that I could drive to just around the Austin area, and you couldn't say that five years ago," Kaelin said.
Kaelin has been a part of the industry since 2005 when he opened his video game resale shop in the Texas capital. His mission was to keep on the dying tradition of the "classic video game store"—think GameStop, but cooler. The store sells a little bit of everything, from the now-ancient Atari to XBOX gear in stock, and they're in higher demand than ever.
The company has expanded to 12 locations and won the "Best Video Game Store" category in Austin so many times the city expanded its criteria. According to Kaelin, its success is all about nostalgia.
Kaelin has found that there's a sweet spot for old games: once they reach 20 to 30 years old, they're ready to be dusted off the shelves and give new adults more feel-good memories.
For Leander native Danny Ugarte, that game is Dance Dance Revolution, an on-your-feet arcade game first made in 1999. Ugarte remembers playing the game as a kid—now, years later, he's using it as a way to keep occupied during the pandemic.
Leander resident Danny Ugarte comes to Cidercade for BLANK but makes sure to check out other old-school games before he goes. (Claire Partain/Austonia)
"It definitely helped, especially since gyms were closed and things like that," Ugarte said. "That helped me keep up with exercise."
Ugarte's been going to Cidercade for around six months now, usually with a friend or two in tow, as they hang with other "DDR" enthusiasts every few weeks. Occasionally he'll dabble with an old Mario Bros. game as well, and he's more into retro games than the cutting edge ones.
"I just think it's important to kind of keep these old games because they were what inspired the new games," Ugarte said. "With the new games it kind of loses its charm... this is what I grew up on, and coming back to this makes me really happy."
While some are motivated by childhood memories, Kaelin said his customers are a mixed bag. The user-friendly nature of older games gives it more widespread appeal than many modern games, and Kaelin has seen anyone from kids to older customers enjoy a good game of Galaga or Street Fighter.
"It's fun for me to see all the different ages and different reasons for getting into retro gaming in stores," Kaelin said. "It brings all those people together."
Unlike most businesses that struggled during the pandemic, Kaelin said that staying a home got people gaming more than ever. Now that some semblance of normalcy has returned, they're also more eager to go somewhere outside of the home, making for a perfect storm for gaming businesses nationwide.
"Unlike anything else, it's gotten a lot more popular in the past several years before COVID, and then especially during the past two years with the shutdown," Kaelin said. "We're definitely in a kind of Renaissance period where I think people are, you know, in much larger numbers going out to local stores to shop because they've been unable to do that in the past. It's a great time to be into retro gaming."
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The list was dominated by California cities—with six in the top 10 alone—and Austin was the only Texas city up until Plano, which was ranked 14th.
Falling shy of No. 1 Irvine, California, which took a total score of 73.6, Austin scored 65.9 across 22 indicators of gamer-friendliness, including the number of gaming stores per capita, average internet speed and number of video-game-centric events.
Austin attracts those in the tech sphere, so it is no surprise that the city holds more opportunities for those who are trying to break into a video game-related career. The city is home to a multitude of companies that focus on video games; Rooster Teeth, Unity and Zynga all have jobs available.
(WalletHub)
While you might find more arcades in Orlando, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or Las Vegas, Nevada, which all tied for the first slot, Austin was next on the list. With plenty of classic arcades like Pinballz, Main Event and GattiTown, Austin has also made several recent additions to the retro gaming scene with Cidercade and Texas Gamers Lounge.
According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of American men aged 18-29 play video games and 49% of American women in the same age range do as well. Austin has the fourth-highest percentage of residents between the ages of 18-49 that game, falling between Seattle, Washington, in third place and Minneapolis, Minnesota, in fifth place.
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