Two years ago, a new museum opened in Kraków – and not just another museum, but one unique on a European scale.
By Łukasz Dziatkiewicz
You could be forgiven for thinking arcade games have had their day, but you couldn’t be more wrong! Come to the Krakow Arcade Museum and play to your heart’s content!
Joysticks, buttons, consoles…
It just so happens that fifty years ago one of the first video arcades opened in Kraków, at 24 Main Market Square. It was in a cellar in a courtyard of a building previously housing a medicinal tincture factory. A cult music shop and recording studio opened above the store soon after. More arcades opened in the years that followed, with another important one at Grodzka Street. They reached twilight in Kraków and around the globe in the late 1990s.
Marcin Moszczyński (b. 1980) looks back over those days with his Krakow Arcade Museum. So what exactly are arcade games? They are entertainment machines fed by coins, but they are not gambling games. They are mainly games played on monitors or pinball machines in which a ball rolls and is propelled inside the machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps and other targets. Marcin’s focus is on video games and their predecessors, and a few pinball machines.
Once you pay your entry fee, you can play all games to your heart’s content! For old-timers, the model has one drawback: once upon a time, when you had to pay for each game, you kept playing even if you had a bad start. When all you have to pay is the entry fee, there’s the temptation to simply abandon a game or start a new one. Other than that, just live your best life – lives, of course, being a key term in video games. Each game generally gives you a few lives (or balls in pinball machines), and you can often win more.
The Krakow Arcade Museum has over 150 machines, some of which hold several games. Let’s start with my favourite hits from the 1980s: Commando, 1942 and Ikari Warriors for tactical shooters, and Gaplus and Defender for space shooters. When it comes to fantasy, it’s got to be Ghosts ’n Goblins. You wouldn’t believe how many coins I fed them and how much I’ve sweated over them! You can find many more memorable titles here: Bomb Jack, Popeye, Dig Dug and Frogger. Kung-Fu Master was a great beat ’em up. Other classics from the period include Donkey Kong, Centipede, Galaga, Ms. Pac-Man, the epic Space Invaders, Moon Patrol, Tempest and Gyruss. I played the latter at a mate’s house on his Atari; the first time I saw it in the original version in all its glory was at Marcin’s museum (because back then games were first launched for arcade machines and the home versions were never as good).
Large machines and contemporary gaming foundations
Games from the 1990s were far more technologically advanced and followed much more complex rules. The gaming machines grew larger and were frequently fitted with seats, cockpits and moving elements. It was all about making them more attractive since they were in direct competition with the rapidly growing numbers of PCs and consoles. Such games couldn’t be fully adapted for home kit. Another shift was that it was impossible to transfer games between devices. To put it simply, before then, you could install Time Pilot on the housing of Gyruss, for example. However, you couldn’t install zombie shooters from the House of Dead series or the Desert Tank simulator on later skateboarding machines (you can find all of them at the museum!).
During the 1990s, I spent less time at arcades, so games such as those I mentioned above, as well as Jurassic Park-themed shooters, the cult fighting series Mortal Kombat and Sega’s motorbike and car racers, don’t excite me as much. This also applies to dancing games. But you can rest assured that I tested all the Star Wars games thoroughly, especially the Star Wars Trilogy.
I asked Marcin about any white whales: “We’ve got a few, for example the X-MEN game for six players (only around 200 were ever made!) and Ice Cold Beer from 1983 – extremely rare, especially in Europe!”
Anything I’m missing? Joust – I love this game where players ride flying buzzards. Gun.Smoke is a terrific one-off Western-themed shooter. Zaxxon follows the same format except in space. Arkanoid and other block breaker video games, maybe an electromechanical pinball machine – but you can’t have everything, especially with games of such dimensions.
So who is this museum for? Just for old-timers who want to reminisce over the good old days? Not at all! I recently brought here a mum of two little boys, and they were all delighted! My cousin’s wife visits regularly with her slightly older daughters. It’s a simply video game temple for everyone. I recently overheard someone saying, “We must leave, but it’s just impossible to leave!” I suspect the poor fellows bought open tickets with no time limit…
Visiting the museum at 41A Centralna Street is a trip to the past, to the heyday of arcade games. Pinball games are having a bit of a revival with new titles being launched, but they are still niche, mainly because all our home kit such as PCs, laptops, consoles and smartphones has long caught up with gaming machines and they just keep getting better.
Oh, I should mention that many Polish video game companies are based in Kraków, and the city has been hosting the Digital Dragons industry fair, conference and festival since 2012. The Krakow Arcade Museum is a perfect addition to this landscape. Marcin Moszczyński has an impressive ambition: “My goal is to create the largest collection of retro arcade games in Europe!”.
Łukasz Dziatkiewicz
Born in 1972, making him the same age as video games: the first successful game – Pong – was launched the same year. Independent journalist, chairman of the Polish Pinball Association and lover and collector of retro games and billiard. He writes about vintage video games in the “PSX Extreme” magazine.
Photo: Krakow Arcade Museum by Emilian Aleksander
A version of this article appears in Spring ’22 edition of “Kraków Culture” magazine.
