Barcade LA: No Kids Allowed, Sucks For Them

By Jonathan Bilski

Look it's a Mexican restaurant! Wait, no it's actually a barcade! Why didn't they change the sign? Stupid hipster logic. And though the place comes from (blech) New York beginnings, its got so many great games worth checking out.





Barcade LA
Daily 12pm to 2am
5684 York Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90042  
21+

Seriously, from the street you wouldn't know an arcade bar has opened up right next to Galco's Soda Pop Stop. You'll want to cruise by there before or after your time at the Barcade. And you'll want to eat anywhere else in the nearby area, because the food sucks. It's hard to mess up a burger, but some how they did at Barcade LA and that's pathetic. And really, the dumb sign and the awful menu are the only problems with the place. The rest of it is a gaming paradise where children are banned.

Those children should cry, as this arcade has titles you've loved playing as a kids and all the classics too. Turtles in Time, Street Fighter 2, X-Men: The Arcade Game (4-player version), The Simpsons are on tap alongside a big selection of beer. There's Mortal Kombat 2 and 4-player Pac-Man; so, a collection of classic arcade wonder.

*You are gonna be paying for the machines, you have to get tokens, 25 cents is equal to 1 token, the usual. Nothing we played cost more than 3 tokens per person and most machines were 1 to 2 tokens. Really, not that bad.

This place has strange titles ,maybe ones you've just never heard of or never played. Luck & Wild is up front next to Sega's Holographic Time Traveler, both are way different than your regular arcade games. You have some great hard to fine titles and some Japanese imports inside. You have a Speed Racer, two-player racer in the back and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker; a game where you rescue children as Micheal Jackson; let the jokes fly.

Dynamite Cop, an action adventure beat-em up only the Japanese could come up with has you starring in every action movie out of the 90's with a twist only the Japanese could think up.

There's pinball too. We were swept away in nostalgia by the utterly weird Demolition Cop machine, it has a different design for how you hit the ball, like your firing missiles.

Or you'll have some laughs with The Bishi Bashi Japanese game show machine. You"ll be fighting with your date or friends with all of its weird mini games.

You can always cool off with the much beloved, named after our city, L.A. Machineguns for some high-paced, shoot-em up action.

This probably has the best selection of arcade games in the whole LA arcade bar scene in LA, so we recommend spending one trip here. Try beating our score of JAB & COX if there still up on any machine and if you beat us, please just put SUX * COX for those two player co-op games.