Looking for some old-school fun and a little healthy competition with your friends? Berlin’s arcade scene is alive but not so well, but these are the spots still ping-ing and pong-ing along.
If you’re looking for another way to spend the rainy days in Berlin, heading to one of the city’s arcades (Spielhallen) can be just the ticket. Thanks to pandemic closures and the dominance of personal computer games, Berlin isn’t such a hotspot for arcades. Here’s where to find an oasis in the desert:
Gamestate is an international company from the Netherlands which has been operating since the 1950s and dominates the gaming arcade scene in the Netherlands and Germany today. It is also one of the most popular arcades in the city.
Air hockey, motorbike machines, Whac-A-Mole and more, Planet Arcade in Berlin will keep your children, or your inner child, entertained for hours. Forget about your yet-to-be-submitted Steuererklärung and the many ills of the world and lose yourself among the neon lights. Head to the Potsdamer Platz hall, play, eat and drink beers until late, go wild and see what you can win!
A more all-consuming version of the classic arcade experience, Gamebox at Alexanderplatz lets you don a strange-looking visor (not a VR) and play everything from the innocence of Paw Patrol and Shaun the Sheep to terrifying Squid Game in a three-by-three-metre box room with your friends.
You’ll have to choose the game via an advance room booking though, and tickets can only be purchased for one game, which will cost you around 25 euros per hour per adult, with the maximum number of players being six per game. A trip to Immersive Gamebox requires some planning!
This place is really old school, simply a hall full of pinball machines and older men who might well have dedicated much of their lives to one of the most classic arcade games. A trip to Berlin’s Flipperhalle will take you all the way out to Kleinmachnow, where Berlin borders Brandenburg in the southwest of the capital.
Pay just 10 euros and play for as long as you want on as many pinball machines as you like. The location is far from the bright lights of Gamestate, but perhaps there is something to be said for the simplicity of it all.
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Berlin's Computerspielemuseum commemorates the scene before the neon lights fade and electronic beats slowly die. You can forget about that here, travel back to a 1990s living room complete with bean bags and play your favourite retro games. Visit the arcade hall of the 1980s that exists nowhere else but here and some of our memories and do a guided tour of the museum to learn about the history of computer games, all the way back to Pong.
Tickets go for as little as 6 euros and you can spend as long as you like on those bean bags!
Image credit: Mo Photography Berlin / Shutterstock.com
Now that you’ve remembered just how fun a trip out to the arcade can be, it’s time to head out and keep the pings pong-ing in Berlin.
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