The Salt Shop

Ok This idea has been bouncing around my head for a while now and I kinda want to see what other people think about it.

I've wanted to open an arcade for years. And I mean years. Like back when I was a kid begging my mom for more quarters in the mall so I can beat my little brother in air hockey, racing games and even the Ahh! Real Monsters plunger test of strength machine thing. And with my facination with fighting games at an all time high (Mostly Virtua Fighter but Im intersted in learning Street Fighter, Marvel and Skullgirls), and offline community is needed to get the most out of the game.

With my hunger to find regular offline gaming, I found this weird void in arcades in DC There's eStarland towards Dulles and Xanadu Games towards Baltimore. For someone like myself without a car, its pretty hard to pull off either of those trips and get back home the same night without spending 200 a night on a taxi. When it becomes more cost effecive for myself to catch a bus to New York and spend maybe 70 dollars for transportation to a weekly, something is kinda messed up.

And that brings me to my reason for writing all this (Thank you if you stayed around this long). I want to open a arcade in or within a stone throw's distance from DC. I know the tradional arcade hasnt exactly survived around here but with maybe a fresh take on it can. Shuttle service, DJs on Saturday nights, and honestly I'm open to any suggestions.

I'm thinking intersting weeklys like a King of the Hill tournament where the last player with a win after time expires faces the player with the longest winning streak in that period of time, and title matches where contenders from the weeklys that month fight it out in a FT5 tournament to face the champ. I'm thinking great presentation with moving projector screens for WWE-esqe entrances, music selected by the people in the arcade at the time, occasional screeings of cool shit whether it be a UFC pay per view or just the latest anime in some weekly format. Even a RV to take select players to majors called the Hyperbolic Major Chamber where they can play each other the entire ride to and from the tournament. But not only fighing games but offline shooters, MOBAs, RTSs and music games will all be avalible to make the Salt Shop just a cool ass place to hang out.

Well at least thats the idea. Im gonna need a ton of capital to get something like this off the ground. I still need to look into figures before throwing out numbers though. I'll hopefully be starting a kickstarter within a year or so if I can get everything together while working in a organized fashion, and most importantly get a computer to start working on graphics, designs and concepts and organizing what is actually needed for this to work. Thanks for reading and hopefully you guys can help a dream of mine come true.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, advice, crap even misguided hate mail, feel free to contact me at ronaldstrong1993@gmail.com or on twitter @darockreaper or on PSN ID: darockreaper and facebook.com/darockreaper (i think).