Original article handwritten in January 2000.
It was a bit strange trying to categorise Las Vegas simply because as of the time of writing it remain open and in business. Perhaps the last of the great London arcades to survive the closures of the past two decades. Its discovery in the early 1990s is again partly due to a good friend but I also might have wandered into it a few years before this when in pursuit of all things arcade related.
Las Vegas is one of the oldest arcades in the West End that I can remember from when I started frequenting them in the mid-1980s. It was mentioned in a gaming magazine around then, an old issue of Computer and Video Games in 1988, pages 137-138 to be exact! See this link for an excellent article and map of key arcade locations in the West End back then. So, my guess is that Las Vegas was probably around from the early 1980s.
The Las Vegas I am about to describe is the location I recall visiting from the early 1990s so the décor and gaming inventory were very different to what exists now. Back then it was a single floor affair from what I can remember but later the basement area was opened to the public to be used as a pool hall with several coin operated 8ft American pool tables and a full size snooker table.
The Street Fighter 2 craze was in full swing from 1991 and although I am not entirely sure about this but I think a magazine article at the time mentioned a nameless arcade which housed a record 12 cabinets asking reader if this was a first. Well, on visiting, Las Vegas certainly had a fair few including various incarnations of the infamous bootleg 'black belt' and 'rainbow editions'. This place therefore appeared to be Street Fighter central and whenever I visited almost all the machines were constantly in use, it was a case of when one player finished another was ready to take their place. The cabinets were also of the sit down variety with large monitor screens and plenty of space between the players to allow for generous elbow room not present on many upright cabinets hosting the game at the time. The cabinet design was reminiscent of the Electrocoin duets or variations thereof. This was a true haven for the Street Fighter fanatics helped on in no small way by the pricing, just 30p a go when other arcades in London at the time charged anywhere from 50p to £1. In some cases, games such as Final Fight, another Capcom classic, gave 7 credits for a £1, phenomenal! I would say the only other arcade I could think of at the time that rivalled the pricing here was the excellent Casino Leisure in Tottenham Court Road.
And then there was the décor, a nostalgic trip down memory lane, with classic arcade memorabilia displayed on the walls. Have you ever seen the glass title panels for pinball machines? Well, there were several classics on display alongside posters for arcade games which gave Las Vegas an authentic and exemplary arcade feel and atmosphere, this was a true gaming den catering to gamers. It was also darkly lit with most of the light provided by the multitude of gaming screens and neon lights and signs. When was the last time you remember going into a true arcade like this? Anybody under the age of 40 will probably have no idea what I’m talking about.
Sadly, this classic image of the arcade would become a distant memory in a few years as arcades were reinvented as ‘family entertainment centres’, an idea pioneered in the Far East and making its way into western territories. However, all was not lost because even the new age arcades leading this charge such as Sega World and more notably Namco Wonderpark represented an important evolution for gaming in order for them to continue to thrive and stay relevant by embracing newer technologies such as 3D and multiplayer gaming. Sadly this too was short lived as Sega World just could not get its target market and pricing right and faded into obscurity and for some sudden reason Namco’s excellent Wonderpark closed down in July 1999 despite remaining highly popular with a wide cross section of gamers. The rumour was that a number of parties were interested in the location with one of the two that were in the lead to take it over wanting to keep it as an arcade whilst the other had plans to turn into into yet another bar, as we know now, the latter prevailed.
However, back to Las Vegas, and away from Street Fighter, several notable gaming gems could be found. These included Irem’s brilliant horizontal shooter R-Type, the very playable Chase HQ from Taito in an original upright cabinet, Capcom’s seminal Final Fight and the rarely found and cheekily devised horizontal shooter Parodius by Konami. The latter was a real find which both paid homage to and parodied Konami’s own classic Gradius series and Salamander. Another title that was very popular here was Mortal Kombat, again in a large sit down cabinet. The game was almost always in use as there was, as far as I can remember, only one cabinet on site.
As it was the early 1990s, 3D games were ushering in a new era in gaming and in time legendary titles from Sega including Virtua Racing and then Daytona USA could be found here. Namco’s classic Ridge Racer also made an appearance but multiplayer racing was where it was at and Sega ruled the throne with its aforementioned titles. In all, Las Vegas provided a fantastic variety of classic and contemporary titles and managed that rare thing in which it catered to a wide audience of gamers from the hardcore to casual.
Then something happened. Sometime in 1995 everything changed and almost overnight Las Vegas was restructured and refurbished. This darkly lit archetypal gaming arena became a brightly lit, colourful and carpeted space. Fruit machines had featured before but suddenly there were a great many of them and games were forced into a secondary position. From somewhere in the region of 40 or more games now there were just a dozen or so. Most of the classic titles running inside JAMMA standard cabinets were gone. Instead, the roster was now more contemporary and designed to appeal to a casual or family oriented audience. Pricing also rose accordingly with many of these dedicated cabinets demanding £1 a play.
