Recently, I travelled to Amsterdam for a friend’s fortieth (panic not, for I am still fresh out of the oven at thirty-four) and I did some research before-hand and discovered that there was indeed a few game shops out there and also a couple of arcades, good!
It would provide a break from the coffee shops/head shops/seed shops / astonishingly expensive bars.
As we made our way around the town, the first place I came to was an arcade called The Ton-Ton bar.
There are two branches of these, one just outside of the town and one in the centre. The one I visited was the slightly more out-of-town location and whilst we had a good time there, it was slightly too modern for my tastes with a few too many Japanese button-bashy / dancing machine, from memory there was:
Pinball:
Ghostbusters – amazing table with some great features.
Invaders from Mars - ludicrous points system, the high score was seventy billion! (My favourite machine though)
The Getaway – This was a bland table that seemed badly designed as the ball never seemed to do anything interesting and kept getting caught on things.
Game of Thrones – I didn’t play this as there literally a queue for it!
Arcade Cabinets:
There were some Mario Kart machines, Time Crisis 3, Terminator 3 and a Sega Rally machine with one dodgy screen, ruining the two-player mode (although I still absolutely adore Sega Rally in any shape or form).
Rounding off the games was a fantastic four-player Pac-Man game and a Street Fighter 4 machine which a friend of mine clattered his way through but tripped at the last hurdle as Seth sadly shoved his fists right up Ken’s tutti-frutti.
The arcade ran on a token system (I kept one for the memories) and it was a fair price but not really enough variety to spend more than an hour or two there.
Whilst I didn’t visit the central Ton Ton bar, some people went and it was much the same with the exception of a version of House of the Dead that wasn’t calibrated correctly (if there is anything in this world that will cause things I love to burst into flame it’s having to play a light-gun game that isn’t lined-up properly) so I don’t feel like I missed anything.
Moving onto the actual gaming stores, they have a CEX-esque brand out there called Game Mania, I visited two branches and it has games from PS3 / XBOX 260 / Wii / DS onwards (so no retro) and they are essentially the standard fare but marked up slightly from UK prices so I sort of danced in and moonwalked out within minutes.
Then….and only then….did I discover Game Over...
Game Over is an independent store pretty much right opposite the Central train station and it was quite a gold mine.
They had EVERYTHING in there and what wasn’t on display was in storage behind the counter in blue tubs of solid silver (well, plastic).
I picked up:
A pristine Tiger LCD game for Faye (Action Man Street Ninja…now she’ll have to collect the entire series)
Clayfighter for the Mega Drive (as we currently only own a loose cart copy)
A couple of PSP games for pittance (a mint Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker)
and a LOAD of Commodore 64 games for a euro each!
The C64 games I grabbed were:
- King Size
- Star Seeker
- Cauldron
- Cage Match
- Hopper Copper
- Brian Jack’s Superstar Challenge
- Master of Magic
- International Karate
- All Risks
- Everyone’s a Wally
- It’s Only Rock N Roll
- Freak Factory
- Highlander (RIP Bob Wakelin)
- Con-Quest
- Spooks
- Hover Bovver
- Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing
- Arcade Hall of Fame
- Cavemania
- Mr Angry
- 1943
- And a couple of Dutch homebrew collections.
The staff were great, I visited the store three times and had a chat, eventually picking up two thick PS1 cheat books in Dutch.
Game Over is clearly the best retro gaming store in Amsterdam and well worth a visit, especially due to its incredibly central location.
The prices are reflective of Europe in general but it is possible to find a bargain, in my case, it was for Commodore games but some of the accessories were tastily priced as well, I just ran out of luggage room!
I’m looking forward to the weekend so that I can smash into all of these, I can definitely feel a C64 night coming one.
Right, I’m off to sober up.
Britt
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