Arcadia in Burley brings nostalgia to gamers

BURLEY, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — On Overland Avenue in Burley sits a black building, but on the inside, it’s full of color, flashing lights and all of the retro video games you can imagine. This place is known as Arcadia and it is a retro gaming arcade right here in the Magic Valley.

“Sometimes as a kid we felt like there was a lack of things to do; so we always kind of had that vision of wanting to bring more things to the area,” owner Alex Mortenson said. “We went to a retro arcade in Boise, and we thought it was such a cool atmosphere, such a cool idea to have all these nostalgic retro arcade games, so we said heck, let’s try it in Burley, something smaller and see if it works.”

And the arcade has worked so far, as Mortenson has acquired upwards of fifty retro games from around the country, but with their age sometimes it can be a challenge to keep these machines up and running.

“We ship them all in and actually my brother went and took a semi down and picked up a bunch from California and we moved them all in. It’s been a whole endeavor keeping them working. We actually have a part-time staff member who comes in and repairs them once a week so it’s a lot,” Mortenson said.

Not all games are weekly repairs, and it rotates depending on which games the public uses the most in that span.

As for the future, growth is the main theme for Arcadia as well as the city of Burley.

“Right now, we’re just trying to keep it fresh, we try to add a couple of new games every year if we can, we just started doing the robot laser tag so we’ve been trying to push that,” Mortenson said. “Just trying to keep new things in here and hopefully eventually down the line we grow even bigger, maybe get into a bigger building as Burley grows and hopefully, we can grow with Burley.”

If you would like to play some retro games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, Arcadia is open from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

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