I recently took a road trip to the Denver, CO area and spent a good weekend hunting there. We had some choices for arcades to visit, but with one being in Downtown Denver and one right outside it, we made sure to find something closer, and with less traffic. Hyperspace is advertised as the Denver area's largest arcade, and its a good one to go visit if you're wanting to spend some real time surrounded by cabinets and pinball. Its a flat entrance fee for all you can game arcade action.The cost of a day pass is $12 and for $45 you can acquire a monthly pass. Every machine is set to free play and with the push of the start or credit button, you can play until your heart's content.



The space and selection of games at Hyperspace is fairly nice, but it is heavily skewed to the retro side. The library is mostly games from the 80s, but there are plenty of classics here to keep you happy. In a few minutes you can float around from Ninja Warriors to Strider, then to Tempest, and from there to After Burner, and keep looping around the aisles to find plenty of games. I found a lot of games I've never been able to play in person, and plenty of favorites. Most of the games from after the 80s are just 90s fighting games. You can enjoy a round of Darkstalkers with a friend, or play whatever Neo Geo fighter's plugged in. During my visit, there were quite a few games that were down and turned off. Their website seems to show an up-to-date list of not only what they have, but what is down at the moment.


Hyperspace also has a console room with over 3,000 games advertised. I honestly was not too interested in this room, so I never went into it other than to scout a glance. The room next to it had a nice selection of cocktail machines to play on. The most interesting cocktail they had was a two player Tempest cocktail, but sadly, it was down for my visit. Since my visit, Hyperspace has started to advertise an expansion, and their game selection list has quite a few that were not available to play at the time.

http://www.hyperspace80s.com/games

The pinball selection is quite varied and interesting. There were plenty of tables that I had never seen before hanging out around the edge. There are quite a few familiar machines as well, from Baby Pac Man to Elvira and the Party Monsters. My favorite tables that I found and played on this visit were Banzai Run and Centaur II. Centaur II has a more simplistic layout, but is still a really fun table with breathtaking art. Banzai Run was extremely fun for its extra mini pinball table housed in the back panel. I managed to get the ball up there a few times and worked a three ball multiball out of the machine.

Hyperspace is an excellent arcade to visit to spend an evening. The weakest part of the experience in my opinion was the extremely loud music blasting out of stereos right next to a bunch of machines. Part of the experience of arcade gaming is being able to hear your inputs and the game's reactions to your inputs, and this loud club music makes it much harder, especially the closer you are. A lot of people are missing out on amazing arcade music and sounds because they can't hear it here. Either way, its quite easy to spend hours in the place and still not touch every game. Check it out if you're in the area.

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