RePete: The American Classic Arcade Museum Experience

I just returned from spending a few days at an AirBnB in Tilton, NH. It was nice to get away, especially since I hadn’t taken a week off from work since moving into my new house in April of 2025– so retreating to a quiet spot was fantastic. I had some nice meals, perused some shops up there (no retro video game places, sadly), and just kind of lazed about.

This trip had a secondary purpose: I wanted to head back to FunSpot— home of the American Classic Arcade Museum, or ACAM, if you want to do the acronym thing. It’s a place that I have history with. I attended three Twin Galaxies competition events up there from 2000-2002. I set two Twin Galaxies records there (which have since been bested). I met some record holders and fanboyed out a bit. In 2016, I returned for a competitive event that ACAM put on… and now, in 2026, it was finally time for a return visit.

If you’ve not been to FunSpot and ACAM, I don’t know that mere words can paint a picture. Instead, I can offer this:

If you spent time in any arcade during the 1980s into part of the 1990s, this is about a close a replication as you can get. Multiple aisles of arcade games await players to choose them and insert coins to play. Some get more attention than others, and many have attract sequences to watch that give an idea of what they game is like. The lighting here is a bit brighter than most arcades that ACAM tries to emulate, but it is a museum after all. Over the speaker system, an unobtrusive mix of rock music from years gone by elicits memories and nostalgia.

Along one wall is a line of classic pinball machines, from early electromagnetic tables to digitally-scored, more modern releases. The rest of the room is dedicated to video games. Some are familiar to any player, like Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man. Others are a bit less familiar unless you grew up during the era; Mad Planets, Alpine Ski, and Phoenix all await.

I surprisingly didn’t play as many games as I thought I would. I played a decent amount, of course, as $20 got me 110 tokens to use. I set daily high scores on Bosconian and Frogger. I set new personal bests on Moon Patrol (almost 50K!) and Crystal Castles (207K). I got a few rounds of Track & Field and Hyper Sports in and set daily high scores on both, though I struggled a bit on the former since the buttons were a bit squishy and difficult to rapid-tap effectively. I played a bit of pinball, too, and some other random games just because.

As I looked up and down the aisles, though, something hit me and unexpectedly got me a bit emotional. The number of games that weren’t working was hard to ignore, and I realized that many of these games are well over four decades old– not the easiest to repair and get back into rotation. The staff there does the absolute best they can with the parts and labor they can secure and source. It’s nobody’s fault– it’s just time doing what time does to technology.

I felt… old. Very old.

I’m in my middle 50s now. So many things that I have nostalgia for and were part of my younger self have grown old with me. I took a lot of them for granted. And, yeah. Sure. Even if the video game cabinets themselves don’t work, emulation keeps many of them alive. I can play Dragon’s Lair on my Wii or XBox Series X whenever I want. I’ve got access to Atari’s Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back games on my Rebel Strike disc for Gamecube. I know a ton of stuff exists on MAME (though the nuts and bolts of emulation and ROM sourcing escape me).

But it’s not the same thing. I mean, it is… but it isn’t. Playing these arcade games in their original forms is different than pulling a ROM off of your hard drive or popping a disc into a console. The buttons and movement controllers are specific to that game, either in placement or design. And… it’s not just the games. It’s where the games are. It’s going to the arcade, walking in, being surrounded by what’s there, and seeing what’s new or new to you.

So getting the chance to get at least one more go-round in an arcade like this, to play the games, to see the games in their natural habitat… it was meaningful. Powerful. Perhaps somewhat bittersweet, as it’s also a reminder that time comes for everything– and everyone.

I’m not sure when, or even if, I’ll be able to make this trip again… but I’m glad I did.