Arcade Visit Photos: Eight on the Break, Dunellen, NJ

A moth or so ago, I visited Eight on the Break (8otB for short) in Dunellen, NJ. Since my first visit in October of 2004, this has been one of my favorite arcades to visit, though it's about two hours from me, so I don't have the chance to make the trip often.

The front of the building. Pinball has been misspelled for as long as I can remember. It's more endearing than anything else to me at this point. The other portions of the sign (the name) are recently new.

One of the side rooms has a line of pinball machines. In order: Fun House, Star Trek, Dirty Harry, Attack from Mars, and the front corner of Monster Bash.

The other portion of the line of pinball machines, in order: Monster Bash, The Addams Family, Mustang, Spider-Man, and Sharkey's Shootout.

Close-up of Spider-Man and Sharkey's Shootout, which one of my roommates is playing. I think I remember him saying he'd never seen that table before and that it was fun. I know I've never seen it before, but I don't play a lot of pinball. (I'm bad at video games, but I'm even worse at pinball!)

My other roommate playing Beatmania IIDX, a fairly intense rhythm game.

Another picture of Beatmania. The screen is slightly less washed out here, but it's still not easy to see what's going on - this video is much easier to see what's happening (the video is one of the hardest songs in the game played by one of the best players, so it's not always quite that intense)

From foreground to background: Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3, Snocross, Friction, Pump It Up Fiesta, Initial D 7, and Initial D 3.

From left to right: Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike, Ms Pac Man, Bubble Bobble, and Pop'n Music Sunny Park. The machine on the far left that's turned sideways is part of the same Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike machine - each player gets their own cabinet and monitor.

Another angle of the Pop'n Music cabinet. Pop'n Music is another rhythm game, similar to Beatmania, though it plays a little differently and has a much more light-hearted feel to it. However, it is still an intensely challenging and difficult game.

This was a then-not working DrumMania machine. The lights were on, but there was no screen image or sound. DrumMania is a drum simulator rhythm game made by Konami (who also made Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, Pop'n Music, and almost every other rhythm game pictured in this post)

A Namco driving game called Dead Heat on the left, and Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition on the right. Dead Heat is the only game in the arcade (pictured or not) that I haven't played, but I didn't realize this until now when I was typing up this post. I'll have to correct this!

8otB has a snack bar with a few notable highlights - this cheesesteak comes with fries and a drink for 5 bucks, and it's pretty good. It includes American (the only cheese they have), peppers, onions, and BBQ sauce, but I ask to leave out the peppers and onions.

The Wiffle - two toaster waffles deep fried and used as the outside of an ice cream sandwich, covered in chocolate sauce and powdered sugar.

Back to games - House of the Dead and a newer game called Friction are two shooters, with the snowmobile racing game Snocross to the right.

Time Crisis 4 - the currently newest game in the series, though 5 will be out any day now!

Pump It Up Fiesta (with a Pump It Up Pro 2 marquee - 8otB has a lot of mismatched marquees) and a better view of House of the Dead. Pump It Up is a dance game made by Andamiro, the only non-Konami music game I took photos of. (ReRave and DJ MAX Technika are other non-Konami music games at 8otB, but I neglected to take any photos of them.)

From left to right: a little of Time Crisis 4, another Street Fighter 4 Arcade cabinet (linked to the other cabinet the same way Street Fighter 3 is - each player gets their own monitor and controller), Marvel Vs Capcom 2, Tatsunoko Vs Capcom, and Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection.

A closer look at the Initial D 7 cabinets - they're pretty nice and each features its own card reader, though I wasn't able to get either to dispense a new card.

Dance Dance Revolution 2014, the newest version of the game.

Guitar Freaks 11th Mix and Keyboardmania 2nd Mix (the marquee says 3rd, but the software was 2nd). These two games along with Drummania can link together to have one session between the three machines, which is a REALLY fun experience! Unfortunately, Keyboardmania hasn't been produced in quite a long time, and each game only connects to comparable versions of the others, so finding them linked together to allow this feature is uncommon for GF/DM and incredibly rare for KBM. (The machines pictured are not linked.)

Air hockey and pool tables - when you think about it, "Eight on the Break" is a really cruel name for a pool hall.

Two really nice Street Fighter 4 cabinets that were currently out of service.

Two Neo Geo AES cabinets. The machine on the left is running one of the Metal Slug games, while the one on the right has four games installed. Having multiple games installed in one cabinet (therefore taking up less space) was one of the Neo Geo's biggest selling points to arcade operators, and the hardware carried some of the most popular software titles in the arcade world. To this day, the hardware and software maintains a huge fan following.

A wider shot of the front row, with a crane game to the far right.

All in all, this is still one of my favorite arcades to visit, and I'll be making the drive up a few times during the summer for sure.

Have a neat arcade near you? Let me know in the comments!

RESULTS: What you do with your quarters!

The results are in, and here's what was mentioned!

Candy Crane: This is like one of the crane games, but with candy instead of stuffed animals or toy watches or koosh balls. (Remember Koosh balls?) They also have the added bonuses of being a lot easier to win, and USUALLY will let you keep playing until you win something. Both of these features are nice for those of us (i.e. me) who aren't good at cranes.

Cyclone: A ticket redemption game. The concept is pretty easy: a light spins around in a circle, and you try to stop it on high numbers (or, ideally, the jackpot) for maximum tickets. Every credit inserted increases the jackpot. Though (as many on youtube have pointed out) the Jackpot is deceptively elusive, it's still a fun game.

Colorama: A redemption game with an interesting Roulette-inspired twist. A ball spins around in a bowl with different colored dividers. If you can guess which color the ball stops in, you win tickets - the smaller the color zone, the more tickets won.

Skee-ball: The classic! Roll the ball up the ramp and aim for the targets with the biggest points. There's tons of different versions of this one out there, but practically every real arcade has at least one of them, and they're fun even if you're bad at them! (At least, I think so. I'm pretty bad.)

Dig Dug: Namco's action video arcade game from 1982. The hero character (named Dig Dug, though his actual name is Taizo) digs through dirt battling dragons and weird ball-shaped enemies by either dropping rocks on them or inflating them with a pump until they explode. It's a tough game, but it's also one of the most popular arcade games of all time. According to the series storyline, Taizo has a son named Susumu, who has his own series of arcade games - but I'll have more on that in a couple days...

What do you do with your quarters?

Because I'm curious: When you walk into an arcade, whether it be mostly video game machines or pinball machines or crane or ticket redemption style, what kind of game are you most likely to play first? (Well, other than a change or token machine - those aren't really games!)

Be as specific (a certain game or activity) or as generic (a genre or maybe something with a certain appearance, or any other criteria you can think of) as you want, and let me know in the comments!