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Super Arcade: A Tale of Struggle and Rebirth
With arcades fading away, Mike Watson has spent years keeping hope alive in Southern California.
Unlike other competitive gaming fans, fighting game players grew up in pizza shops, pool halls and laundromats. They cut their teeth jostling for position at a single cabinet, putting up quarters to hold their place in line. Winning meant stretching the handful of change you were able to scrounge up beforehand, and losing led to a sad trip to the back of the queue.
Over the last few years, the fighting game community has watched sadly as the few remaining bastions of arcade competition were forced to shut down. Chinatown Fair, Denjin Arcade, Family Fun Arcade, Starbase Arcade, Arcade Infinity and Arcade-in-a-Box provided their regions with a taste of old-school competition, but now few such locations remain.
Super Arcade is one of those locations. Formerly situated in the Los Angeles outlier of Walnut, California, this center was one of a handful of arcades in the Southern California area. As such, it became a hub of fighting game competition, even moreso as its fellow arcades began to shut down around it.
A new era
But in 2012, the former owner was ready to throw in the towel. Rather than let the arcade close and have the fighting game community lose another spot for meetups, old-school competitor Mike Watson assumed full ownership of Super Arcade, placing the responsibility of its upkeep squarely on his shoulders. While it wasn’t always perfect or stress-free, the steady flow of traffic from weekly Level Up Series events kept the lights on. Still, Watson began to learn firsthand why so many other arcades had been forced to shut down, especially after watching a business partner raid his establishment and leave it with a miniscule number of machines.
“Here I was, left with an arcade with only a pair of Astro City Cabs, a Street Fighter Pinball machine, and a few random showcase cabinets,” Watson explained in a 2013 blog post. “I felt like my heart was ripped out and I wasn't sure what the immediate future was going to bring. My first concerns were not about the money I had lost, and not about what I was going to do if the arcade was done. My first concern was where I’m going to run the tournaments on Wednesday and Thursday.”
This sentiment is a common theme in the ongoing story of Super Arcade. As a longtime fighting game player, Watson is dedicated to improving the community while also staying true to its roots. But you can’t do everything alone, and he soon found himself reaching out to the rest of the scene despite his reluctance to ask for help. When all was said and done, the community had raised over $11,000 for Super Arcade, allowing it to remain on life support a little while longer.
Later in the year, however, Watson seemed on the verge of collapse. In a post published two days after Christmas, the former Super Street Fighter II Turbo champion shared how keeping the arcade afloat had impacted his life, publicly exorcising some demons in the process.
Weekly tournaments drew crowds to Super Arcade
© Super Arcade
“I have literally spent everything I have, sold personal items including jewelry and watches, and even pawned a family heirloom just to keep an arcade alive,” he wrote. “And for what? So I can see a dwindling turnout week in and week out? So I can see my investment crashing and burning right before my own eyes?”
For older generations, arcades are more than simply places to play video games. Arcades are where they made lifelong friends, developed rivalries, and grew from children to adults. If you came from a family that couldn’t afford a home gaming console, arcades offered hours of entertainment for just a few bucks. And although the atmosphere in some establishments could lead to heated situations, this competitive spirit is what sets the fighting game community apart.
As such, Watson was contending with the passage of time as much as he was personal hardship. Super Arcade stood as one of the few venues outside Japan still providing a legitimate arcade experience, an experience that helped players like him become the people they are today. It’s a scary proposition to see the world move on without you, and Watson felt left behind.
“The whole thing with this place is that this community has a huge place in my heart,” he added. “It's comparable to that notion of first love, and we all know you never ever forget your true, first love. I have poured my heart, my soul, and everything I own into Super Arcade, but now it feels like I’m not receiving the love back and trying too hard to force things to happen.”
But the fighting game community was going to prove him wrong.
Moving on
Watson realized something needed to change. After mulling over his options, he launched an ambitious crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in March 2014, asking the rest of the community to pitch in and help him rebrand Super Arcade. Gone would be the “worn floors, aging walls, mish-mash of furniture, flickering neon, and bathroom that looks and smells like a nightmare,” replaced with a modernized design that would be welcoming to both regular competitors and visiting families alike.
“We want you to feel comfortable showing this place to all the people you know. We want you to bring them here. We want them to enjoy every facet,” the Kickstarter stated. “With your help, there will be no more excuses. We will upgrade your gaming experience with rock-concert ambiance, tournament-spec furniture, a well-stocked display counter, new floors and a bathroom that won’t kill you.”
More important, however, were Watson’s plans to sustain the business after the remodel. By selling membership passes, Super Arcade would hopefully have a steady stream of income to help it flourish instead of barely scrape by. Fortunately, the community believed in his vision. When it came to a close in May, the Kickstarter had earned a total of $57,213, significantly surpassing the original goal. Watson was blown away.
“Thank you all for believing in me and giving me this opportunity to bring my dreams to reality,” he shared after the crowdfunding campaign ended. “I will do my best to make you all proud, and hopefully I will be seeing you guys and girls here enjoying yourself for many years to come!”
What followed was months of hard work getting the venue up to snuff. In that time, Super Arcade grew from a lovably grungy establishment to an almost-spotless gaming location. Weekly tournaments for Street Fighter, Marvel, Smash, and more resumed after the grand opening in September, and things were looking up for Watson’s plucky business despite portions of the remodel still waiting to be finished. Sadly, all good things must come to an end.
Politics and bureaucracy
After an amicable parting of ways with Level Up Series, Super Arcade saw an increase in revenue as they began to host their own tournaments. But as time wore on, the relationship with their landlord became less than tenable. According to Watson, their month-to-month lease was canceled in favor of signing a longer contract, and rent had increased to about $6,000 a month. Where the laid-back agreement had once been beneficial for the arcade, there was now a more restricting environment in which to do business. After spending a good chunk of the Kickstarter money on renovations, Watson was now in search of a new location, and some donors were worried about how their money was being used.
“I promised to remodel an arcade and provide a place for people who love arcades somewhere to go,” Watson explained. “This has not changed, and although there has been a change in location, that does not affect the fact that there will be a physical location that people can attend as soon as possible. The plans to have a fully remodeled arcade are still being worked on and that will not change.”
Super Arcade closed their doors in Walnut, California on Dec. 22, and began looking for another building in earnest soon after. By March, a possible location was found just eight miles away in the neighboring city of Azusa. Paperwork was drawn up, permits were acquired, negotiations were made and things looked good for Super Arcade’s reopening until Watson ran into another roadblock: The city of Azusa itself.
Mike Watson (right) and longtime friend Alex Valle
© Alex Valle
A routine planning commission meeting turned into a nightmare. One after another, citizens of Azusa stepped up to the podium to make their case for why they thought an arcade was a poor choice for the shopping center Super Arcade was interested in. Although Watson had done his due diligence in connecting the Azusa Police Department with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department located in Walnut to assuage their fears of increased crime, many of the residents were afraid of how the arcade would affect the surrounding area. For the most part, the commission was hit with a litany of outdated and uninformed opinions that ultimately hurt Super Arcade’s chances of opening in Azusa.
Despite positive statements from members of the community, including Street Fighter and Marvel competitor Eliver “KillerKai” Ling, and arguments from Watson himself, the panel voted against the Super Arcade permit in favor of bringing in more retail businesses. One member of the commission, Jack Lee, seemed flabbergasted by the proceedings, and made a strong case for the work Watson had done to secure the location. During a rebroadcast of the hearing (because the fighting game community streams everything these days), viewers dubbed him “Tan Shirt Hero” for his efforts.
Watson was obviously deflated. His perception of the arcade atmosphere was painted in an ultimately positive light, making the negativity expressed by the people of Azusa something of a personal slight. Arcades were like a second home to many early fighting game players, and the idea of losing Super Arcade was devastating for the local community. At the next meeting, the fighting game community showed up in full force, speaking on the positive experiences they had at the original Super Arcade location and urging the commission to approve the necessary permits. But again, they were denied. The silver lining, however, is that one of the panel members who had voted against them reached out and, surprisingly, pointed them toward a location that the city was likely to approve.
“The building is very old, there are a lot of improvements that need to be made, and a ton of time and money need to be spent to bring things up to par,” Watson said of the venue. “There are a ton of requirements that need to be reached, which include keeping everything handicap accessible, following rules of maximum occupancy, providing enough restrooms for our customers and so on and so forth. There is no speedy way to complete this process and we have no choice but to follow the rules here.”
Work began in earnest in late 2015 to gather all the necessary paperwork to make Super Arcade a reality in the new Azusa building. Months would go by without movement, but Watson made sure to check in with the community on a regular basis to keep them apprised of the situation.
Nearing the finish line
And at long last, construction started in December 2016.
“The shop is moving along with hopefully no more issues and we can finally open in approximately a month,” Watson wrote at the beginning of 2017. “I don't know what to expect from the new location exactly, but what I can ensure is that the quality of tournaments and customer service will be what people remember and continue to be the reason our customers come back for more. The new location will have a larger lineup of arcade games, since the shop has twice the amount of floor space, and the tournament section will be larger to allow for more casual setups for those not competing.”
Work begins on Super Arcade's new location
© Super Arcade
The saga of Super Arcade is as overwhelming as it is inspiring. Mike Watson, an old-school legend clinging to what he sees as the golden era of fighting game competition, was keen on forging his own path, no matter the cost. With the rising popularity of eSports and other business-oriented pursuits, Watson is dedicated to maintaining what little space he can for the dynamic, arcade-centric experiences that made up his formative years. In this pursuit, he stands alongside other surviving institutions (like Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois, Next Level Arcade in New York, and Arcade UFO in Texas) in preserving what some may call the golden years of gaming.
But after all this time, the question of whether or not Super Arcade will be a success still lingers. Is it possible for an arcade, even with modern renovations and the addition of home gaming consoles, carve out room for itself in the present day? Although the fighting game community was already expanding when Super Arcade first closed, today’s scene is much different than it was just a few years ago. Big money has led to big changes, and it remains to be seen whether or not players are still interested in the arcade experience. But even at their most dire, the last few years have only bolstered Watson’s perseverance. There’s no doubt he’ll fight to preserve his perception of the fighting game community and, if need be, go down swinging in the process.
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