Original article hand written on the 10th of February 2000.
It’s unusual to mention this place because I only ever visited it once in pursuit of a difficult to find piece of software back in December 1998. The search took me east, just outside greater London to the then fairly new Lakeside shopping centre, which had opened in 1990.
Sadly, the search proved fruitless but finding this gaming arcade made up for it. It reminded me of the mall arcades in the US that I had kept reading about on the Internet because Lakeside is basically a fairly large a mall.
The arcade was called the 'Game Station' and upon entering the location I noted it was split into two areas or large rooms with step access between them. One section was given to fruit machines and gambling terminals whilst the other section housed all the games. And what a selection there was. And, the first game to stand out was Sega’s excellent multiplayer fighting title, Spike Out: Digital Battle Online. This has just been released and four new cabinets were on display, networked together to allow linked play.
At the time this was one of my favourite games, a sort of 3D version of classic 2D fighters from the 1980s including Renegade, Double Dragon and of course Capcom’s legendary Final Fight. The four linked cabinets at Game Station were also a rare occurrence and this was only the third place I had come across this full setup, the other two being Sega Metropolis is the basement of Hamleys toy shop in Regent Street and the Sega Park in Wood Green.
Other games on show included Namco’s highly underrated Ace Driver, a formula one inspired racer with excellent graphics and gameplay mechanics. Here, two deluxe cabinets were available for play. I don’t feel this game got the recognition it deserved having appeared in 1995 in the shadow of Sega’s highly successful Daytona USA. Ace Driver paid homage to Namco’s own classic library of racing titles that included the likes of Pole Position, Final Lap and Winning Run whilst having a hint of a nod towards Sega’s other more recent and brilliant formula one game, Virtua Racing.
The only other games on show were Tekken Tag Tournament and possibly some versions of the Street Fighter series such as Street Fighter vs X-Men. Tekken Tag was housed inside a large deluxe cabinet such as a Sega Mega Lo or equivalent and was proving to be quite a popular update to the franchise. Almost all the arcades I was visiting in the West End at the time had the game. In fact, I recall Funland had a number of machines, with the game on several upright arcade cabinets featuring prominently in areas such as the basement section which was easily reached from Piccadilly Circus tube station via a corridor leading directly to the Trocadero. However, most of the hardcore players were mostly found playing Tekken Tag on the deluxe sit down cabinet in the basement of Casino arcade next to Goodge Street underground station.
Overall then, Game Station is a modern arcade with a decent range of up to date titles and would probably be worth a few more visits just to sample SpikeOut in four player networked mode. SpikeOut has only ever been available at a select few venues and never in large quantities similar to Daytona USA 2 or Sega Rally 2 in London arcades. Both these titles were released around the same time as SpikeOut through 1998.
