I’m a sucker for a lot of things, but pretty damn near the top of that list stand arcades and great boozy drinks. So I have been keeping a pretty close eye on the developments around Arcade Monsters, making their first expansion over to the west coast in San Diego. I remember being downtown during Comic-Con 2024 and seeing the at-the-time under-construction building and thinking to myself, quite literally “oh fuck yes” as the 13 year old trapped inside of me almost leaped out of my body in pure ecstasy.
The concept of a bar-cade is nothing new; hell, there are several of them already in San Diego. Where Arcade Monsters sets themselves apart, in my opinion, is in three major ways: The first is that they are much more of an arcade with a bar as opposed to just a bar with some video games. This space is set up in a way that “kids” of all ages can enjoy the arcade. Usually, this could potentially be a deal breaker for me, especially if I’m trying to get my drink on without it being awkward as hell around a bunch of kids. That said, the second big plus for this place helps deal with this in that it’s fucking massive. The huge size of this place helps spread people out enough that it’s not overwhelmingly packed and does not leave you waiting a god damn lifetime to get to play a game. I played several of my favorites with an extremely short to no wait, and I was there on a Saturday night.
The final and major reason I think this place is going to kill it, and these other bar-cades better watch out is simply the price. I was honestly shocked when I found out that you could literally play all day for only $25, and play all day with ins-and-outs from only $10 more. The last time I was at a bar-cade where you paid individually per game, I easily remember burning through $25 with ease. The stress of that being removed paired with the massive square footage mentioned earlier could easily have you sinking hours away reliving playing all of your favorite arcade classics and even finding something new to fall in love with.
Considering that this is a bar-cade, I couldn’t close this review out without mentioning the food and drinks (both of which were extremely reasonably priced, especially for Downtown San Diego). You can expect a food menu that has many of the types of food items you’d expect from the arcade of yesterday but jazzed up for the modern taste buds. Also, near and dear to me, they have so many different fucking sauces that they just happily give you at no cost; you’d be hard-pressed to find at least one you did not love. Due to being all ages, the featured drinks come in both virgin as well as 1, 2, or EVEN 3 shot varieties. When you pick your drink, they let you pick both how many shots you want as well as what kind of booze you want in it, like a damn Subway but for booze. I grabbed a triple “Strawberry Fighter 2,” which I believe only cost me $20 and def helped me at least delay some of the feels I was having post-election.
Overall, I can’t stress enough how worthy of a stop this place is because who doesn’t love neon/black lights, video games, booze, and wacky food? If you’d like to learn more about Arcade Monsters, try to beat the high score I posted up on Galaga, and experience for yourself why these other bar-cades better be taking notes, I’ll toss a link to their site at the bottom of this article.
It’s just a phase…