Original article hand written December 1999.
The somewhat unusual location of Joker's Amusements was one of its most distinctive features. It was found off the main high street at the east most end of Ilford town centre. A small inconspicuous turning known as Centreway housed what I termed a ‘mini mall’ if that. To give you a sense of scale and perspective here, Centreway was a mere fraction the floorspace of the modestly sized nearby Ilford Exchange shopping centre which itself was smaller than Lakeside mall. Spread across two small horseshoe shaped floors were shops and outlets selling anything from records to jeans and household goods. Yet, tucked away in a corner of the first floor was Joker’s Amusements. Centreway could be accessed by the High Road, Ilford, or from a walkway on the first floor that connected it to a car park and streets to the rear of the High Road. There was a set of concrete stairways and a lift to go between its two floors that were visible from the High Road itself.
My attention was originally drawn towards it from an old friend who had chanced across it on his travels probably into the world of record collecting, the connection to which will became clearer later. I’m not sure when it opened but my first encounter with Joker’s Amusements was in late 1991 or early 1992 but according to conversations with my friend who discovered the place, he reckoned it opened in 1988. Maybe someone reading this might have a better idea? Please share below if you do.
Anyhow, what was it like? Well, it was a small location about the size of the nearby shop units but large enough to hold around twenty games or thereabouts. You have to remember this is the pre-dedicated games machine era. Most games were still displayed and playable on upright cabinets running off the JAMMA standard. Also, when I started visiting, the Street Fighter 2 craze was in full swing and here you could find several versions playable. This included the original World Warrior, Champion Edition and Hyper fighting alongside the infamous pirated or 'Black Belt' or 'Rainbow Editions' of the game. If you were around back then, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. These bootlegged copies of Street Fighter 2 were identical up to the point of the playing mechanics which were enhanced in both fun and outrageous ways thereby altering, or rather skewing, the balance of the game in favour of some of the characters. These included the ability to change your character mid fight or throw not one but several projectile attacks in quick succession and in mid air.
The success of Street Fighter 2 led to a plethora of imitators and pretenders to throne, some good, some not so. One of these was the almost as popular Mortal Kombat with its digitised graphics engine and over the top reliance on blood and gore which ensured it gained a cult following. However, the Fatal Fury series, like Street Fighter 2, applied traditional cartoon like graphics to produce a game with a respectable playability and game system that amassed a following of hard-core fighting game fanatics. Jokers featured Fatal Fury 2 on a Neo Geo six slot cabinet, a classic in itself as it could house up to six different titles. Sadly, the only other game on this cabinet I can remember is Soccer Brawl, a game that I played quite a bit at the time. Away from fighting games the arcade also showcased Sega’s legendary Outrun in a midi upright cabinet. Additionally, there was the rarely seen Willow from Capcom and that king of scrolling beat em ups that was Double Dragon. Unfortunately that’s all I can recall. I think there was a four-player game, possibly Hit the Ice, and a set of fruit machines but I’m not sure.
I visited frequently for about a year before it closed, I think at some point in 1993. There was a rumour that the owners had been trying to get official approval from the local council to continue their business at the location. This basically meant the arcade was in operation whilst legal wrangling continued in the background. I can only assume that the council must have decided against them being there and asked them to close. I don’t think it was a financial issue that lead to this. Strangely enough, Centreway is located adjacent to council buildings. Who knows, maybe a member of their staff walked in to see the place for themselves and frowned upon it disapprovingly. It's that old story of arcades being a bad place for youths to gather and so on and so forth. Yet, all the times I visited I do not recall anything shady going on and the place was never overcrowded, sure it was busy sometimes but as far as I could tell there were no groups of dodgy looking youths loitering about.
At the time this article was originally written in December 1999, Centreway was a derelict site, most of the shops were long gone with a lone store operating on the first floor. There was also a place called Music Power Records opposite Joker’s that was apparently run by an ex-Grange Hill actor, this is mentioned in a YouTube video on the Ilford Retro channel, which also shows a photo of the front of Centreway from 1997 with some of the shop signs on display. It was because of Music Power that my friend discovered the arcade in the first place, being an avid record collector, he was visiting Music Power Records and spotted Joker’s opposite.
