Prize Zone Arcade

   In our dirt town where typically us teenagers have nothing to do except for boring school stuff, we finally have a new place to hangout and have some fun for once, The Prize Zone Arcade.

   Prize Zone is a fitting name because they have many awesome prizes; things like Funko Pop figures, plushies, candy, drones and lots of other fun things which come from Rhode Island Novelties.

   Every Saturday the Prize  hosts a pool tournament. The winner of the pool tournament gets 100 free tokens, second place gets 50 and third gets 25. Typically there’s seven to thirteen participants but it varies.

   The arcade out here opened on June 26th, but arcades and gaming are nothing new. In 1972, Allan Alcorn released the first arcade game, Pong, and with it, started the worldwide gaming phenomenon. Now there are many kinds of games: e-games, video games,  board games, and still the beloved arcade games.

   The biggest arcade in the world is located in New Hampshire. It’s called Fun Spot and has been deemed  “Disneyland of New Hampshire” by Christine Cook. Along with their over 600, arcade games they also have  an 18-hole indoor mini-golf, a huge free party room, 20 lane bowling center, and bingo.

   E-games are huge nowadays with millions of players and thousands of tournaments. The biggest E-game tournament in the world was in Seattle, Washington in August and the prize pool was $24,687,919 with over 12,000 viewers.

  Along with the pool tournament, the Prize Zone have many other events. For Halloween, they handed out double tokens and gift bags for the first 50 children who came in costume, and half-priced Funko Pops. The Prize Zone also hosts birthday parties, everyone gets 50 tokens and a meal from Pollo Ranchero.

    The arcade does stay true to vintage gaming, having a few older games.  A Namco machine called “The Class of 1981” has Mrs. PAC-Man and Galaga. They also have a Frogger machine which is another game game from 1981, and air hockey tables which debuted in the early 1970’s.

  As the Prize Zone gets more popular, they get more games. Doug Bale, the owner of the Prize Zone said that about 80% of his ideas for what games to get come from YouTube, watching the children playing the games, seeing the payout, and seeing how much fun they are. The other 20%, he said, comes from the magazine Play Meter which has polls to see which games have the highest earnings.

   The arcade is a really fun place for people of all ages to hangout, kids, teens, adults, everybody! If you’re looking for some good family fun or you’re a bored teenager who hates Pahrump because there’s nothing to do, go check out the Prize Zone Arcade!