Man id love to travel back in time to this place on a fri or sat night when this place was really popping. Before covid, before smart phones or the Internet this was simpler times.
Wake up Saturday morning have a bowl of cereal while watching cartoons. Put on some jeans and a shirt and follow the railroad tracks to edgewater mall and play video games till we run out of money. Run the roads for the rest of the day until the street lights come on, and we go home. Good times.
I remember being a kid back in 1981 or 1982 and playing Gorf at Aladdins Castle at Willowbrook Mall in Houston, Texas. I was doing great in the game and got a really high score and I had a bunch of people cheering for me, after I was done I went outside of the arcade and this lady came up to me and told me how great I was and she bought me some candy and drinks, it was one of the best moments of my life, I'll never forget it!!!!
I wish I could have lived during this era. This appears to have been filmed in September 1984, as another commenter stated, 8 years and 3 months before I was born. By that time, arcades were in their final era of relevance with stuff like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat driving a fighting game craze before it all started dying off in the mid-1990s, and even then it wasn't the golden age like we saw in the first half of the 1980s. Comment posted June 1, 2023 4:16 pm
The good old days. The local arcade chain in my hometown mall was called Dream Machine, but I visited Aladdin's Castle many times in other malls. I miss this era.
First time hitting some true Columbian gold in 1977,wake up Saturday morning,wake n bake ,hit Aladdin's Castle in Pinellas square Mall, and then seeing Star wars the first day it came out.what a day
I can almost smell the pizza and the metallic-scent old arcades reeked of...like a faint smell of metal, maybe the quarters mixed with the sweat from 100's of little sweaty hands? I dunno but I miss it.
My childhood as a grainy handy-cam video with videotape stretch distortions. God, it makes me feel ANCIENT! Like I've found a Twilight Zone mirror darkly into my past. This getting older stuff gets weirder each year . . .
That's sure is a big arcade for the 80's.I've heard of aladdins castle but i never seen one in person i all ways assume,it was only on the west coast.I grew up on the east coast.Those sight and sounds sure take me back when arcade cabinets were everywhere in the 80's.Convenience stores,gas stations,hotels,movie theaters and miniature golf courses.
When he first entered the office, I thought "Jesus Christ, there's a dude hanging upside down in there!". Loved Aladdin's Castle as a kid on the west coast. When I moved to TX, seems like Tilt was the mall arcades everywhere
I like seeing the layout of the arcade as it was, the arrangement of games in all the aisles and nooks and crannies. The back room was cool to see, the control box for all the special lighting. This location was huge! The Aladdin's Castle nearest me when I was a little kid was maybe 1/8 this size? This must have been one of their flagship locations.
I worked in Aladdin's Castle in the Oakdale Mall, Johnson City NY back in the early 80's. Across the mall was a movie theater and a pizza joint. Weekends in there were awesome!
Wow, nice! Looks like an insurance walkthrough video. Many businesses took these videos, to document what they had, in case of catastrophic loss. The calendar in the back room had the year covered, but it looks like 1984. Newest games were some laserdisc games.
I ran a couple of stores back in the day. Normal Illinois which was an arcade Bally bought out from a local couple called Electronics 101 (store #252), and Store #17 in Pekin, IL. At the time I left the one in Pekin was the oldest remaining Bally's Aladdin's Castle. It wasn't huge, but it was a pretty nice store. Unfortunately the mall was well on it's way to it's eventual slow death and it closed not too awful long after I left.
Beware. You maybe get massive motion sickness from watching this. Love old 80’s videos but man people just loved to fast pan and used the zoom too much and too fast. I have tons of old videos from this era that I’ll never transfer as I threw up after transferring 1 hour. If anyone time travels please take them a tripod.
is this Del Amo Mall? or Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, California? the wall map sure does look like it. Also, where the entrance to the arcade is where it was at the end of a small hall.
I MISS BEING A KID!!!! I went to Time-Out (before it became “SEGA’S Time-Out”), Space Port, and Aladdin’s Castle. No smartphones, no online gaming, not even Minecraft or Fortnite. Arcades were the place to be, to get away from it all. Now thanks to emulation, I can enjoy the games on my Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, courtesy of Digital Eclipse and M2.
I've only seen a TX-1 once in my entire life. And it disappeared a few months after it showed up. Supposedly, operators hated it because of how much it weighed and how much space it took up. Ironic that they had no idea what Sega would be bringing to the table a few years later with the cockpit versions of Outrun, Space Harrier, Power Drift, and After Burner. I remember After Burner taking up almost the entire front end of our Aladdin's Castle.
Our store was right inside the entrance to our mall. I remember coming in that door and hearing this sound. It made the money in my pocket suddenly get white hot!
@@cinnamonc4t I was born in December 1969, I was a kid during the 80's, going to the mall and Arcades were the best part of our lives. The sounds and atmosphere when you walked into the arcade was beautiful and sooo exciting. There's nothing like it.
The Aladdin's I went to had games that no other carried like NARC, ninja gaiden & warriors, guardians of the hood(hilarious game) & 2 advanced Sega hologram games(yes that's right) named time traveler & hologram fighters I believe.
This has those scary "found footage" vibes where nobody's around but everything's on and working... Half expecting some creepy entity to peek around from behind one of the machines...
That's a pretty big Aladdin's Castle, the one I went to at Sarasota Sq. Mall was probably half that size. Also that aerial photo at the end seemed kind of weird until I realized that had to have been taken from a helicopter or an airplane and was probably pretty special, not like today when anyone can just pull up a satellite view on their phone.
Del Amo Fashion Center. Torrance, CA I played in that arcade. It was next to McDonald's Very different today after years and years of remodeling and modernizing. My games then were Assault, Sinistar, and Tac-Scan. I know you're going to look on Google maps (lol)... note that the aerial shot at the end has West at the top. But, you'll see the similarities.
@@metrotek5 I remember being a kid back in 1981 or 1982 and playing Gorf at Aladdins Castle at Willowbrook Mall in Houston, Texas. I was doing great in the game and got a really high score and I had a bunch of people cheering for me, after I was done I went outside of the arcade and this lady came up to me and told me how great I was and she bought me some candy and drinks, it was one of the best moments of my life, I'll never forget it!!!!
This Aladdin's Castle was enormous compared to the one I frequented. How many Ms. Pac-Man's did they have there? I don't recall ours ever having more than one of anything.
The Crystal's Pizza (ft worth, tx) I went to as a kid seemed to have 8-10 pacmans, ms pacman, galaga, etc. If I remember correctly, they even had 5 or 6 tron, Star wars, and even mappy cabs. I never understood, it's not like kids were lining up to play mappy
I remember being a kid back in 1981 or 1982 and playing Gorf at Aladdins Castle at Willowbrook Mall in Houston, Texas. I was doing great in the game and got a really high score and I had a bunch of people cheering for me, after I was done I went outside of the arcade and this lady came up to me and told me how great I was and she bought me some candy and drinks, it was one of the best moments of my life, I'll never forget it!!!!
Call me old...but at 14:29 I actually remember a time when restaurant wall posters were actually chemical photographic darkroom paper...there was no halftone pattern..just film grain. And that restaurant had a 2 player tabletop arcade machine and a jukebox that plays 45 RPM single records, you could look into a hole in the side of the cabinet and see the record playing. It's Papa Ginos in Fall River Massachusets. I am 'Pass me that pencil so I can wind my tape' years old.
It has been said the everybody will eventually get an epileptic seizure from flashing lights and video games...it's just that with the healthy people it takes a VERY LONG time for it to crop up. It also matters how bright the screen is and how large it is and how close you are to it. The human body was not made for seeing things that aren't naturally common in 10,000 B.C. Africa. I'm surprised I'm not hearing more stories of people having trouble with smart IoT multicolored LED light bulbs, a purple fire is not anywhere near your cave...you could search the who jungle and not come across purple fire. And even in the Middle Ages they did not have candle flames that went from 0% to 100% brightness 29.97 times every second.
Oh man, I wish he was recording in SP mode instead of the apparent EP mode 😢. EP was so grainy even though you got the extra film time on a VHS; big difference from SP quality
Mach 3 came out the year I was born was ahead of it’s time (1983) this video looks to be from 1984 based on calendar in back room. Arcade games usually ran hardware never available to public more advanced. This guy def was doing well to have a video cam because they were pricey!
![DownTown Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TT-SZmkU2gk/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm so happy I got to grow up during these times.
Such simpler times. If only we could go back.
Man id love to travel back in time to this place on a fri or sat night when this place was really popping. Before covid, before smart phones or the Internet this was simpler times.
Covid is a lie.
Wake up Saturday morning have a bowl of cereal while watching cartoons. Put on some jeans and a shirt and follow the railroad tracks to edgewater mall and play video games till we run out of money. Run the roads for the rest of the day until the street lights come on, and we go home. Good times.
This will be my form of heaven. I will join my long lost 80's buddy there once again. 😁
Man this is a blast from the past. Thank you for posting. I would go back to this time in my life in a split second.
those awesome days are gone forever buddy :o(
I remember being a kid back in 1981 or 1982 and playing Gorf at Aladdins Castle at Willowbrook Mall in Houston, Texas. I was doing great in the game and got a really high score and I had a bunch of people cheering for me, after I was done I went outside of the arcade and this lady came up to me and told me how great I was and she bought me some candy and drinks, it was one of the best moments of my life, I'll never forget it!!!!
From the calendar in the office, it looks like this video was made in September 1984.
Holy macaroni! I used to game at that exact location right until they ripped it out. Del Amo Mall in Torrance, CA.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip :D
God I miss my childhood.....So many awesome memories! Thanks!
Whoever took this video, thanks a ton.
I wish I could have lived during this era. This appears to have been filmed in September 1984, as another commenter stated, 8 years and 3 months before I was born. By that time, arcades were in their final era of relevance with stuff like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat driving a fighting game craze before it all started dying off in the mid-1990s, and even then it wasn't the golden age like we saw in the first half of the 1980s.
Comment posted June 1, 2023 4:16 pm
The sounds!! Greeted by Congo Bongo, Track and Field, Spy Hunter
The good old days. The local arcade chain in my hometown mall was called Dream Machine, but I visited Aladdin's Castle many times in other malls. I miss this era.
First time hitting some true Columbian gold in 1977,wake up Saturday morning,wake n bake ,hit Aladdin's Castle in Pinellas square Mall, and then seeing Star wars the first day it came out.what a day
OMG! This is nostalgic heaven!
I can almost smell the pizza and the metallic-scent old arcades reeked of...like a faint smell of metal, maybe the quarters mixed with the sweat from 100's of little sweaty hands? I dunno but I miss it.
I went to one like that in my mall that got shut down 5 years ago it was amazing it had the old moldy popcorn and pizza smell
My childhood as a grainy handy-cam video with videotape stretch distortions. God, it makes me feel ANCIENT! Like I've found a Twilight Zone mirror darkly into my past. This getting older stuff gets weirder each year . . .
Wow, blast from the past! thanks for sharing.
Oh man...these were the days. Can't beat it.
That's sure is a big arcade for the 80's.I've heard of aladdins castle but i never seen one in person i all ways assume,it was only on the west coast.I grew up on the east coast.Those sight and sounds sure take me back when arcade cabinets were everywhere in the 80's.Convenience stores,gas stations,hotels,movie theaters and miniature golf courses.
Makes me miss Fun snd Games back in the day. It still exists but not like it was. The sounds in this are glorious!
When he first entered the office, I thought "Jesus Christ, there's a dude hanging upside down in there!". Loved Aladdin's Castle as a kid on the west coast. When I moved to TX, seems like Tilt was the mall arcades everywhere
I like seeing the layout of the arcade as it was, the arrangement of games in all the aisles and nooks and crannies. The back room was cool to see, the control box for all the special lighting. This location was huge! The Aladdin's Castle nearest me when I was a little kid was maybe 1/8 this size? This must have been one of their flagship locations.
that arcade is huge, the one we had in Houston at Willowbrook Mall was less than half the size
Kick ass!!! This is a great time capsule.
man, i wish i had some plutonium to put in the flux capacitor so i can go back to my childhood in the 80's and relive these amazing moments. classic.
I worked in Aladdin's Castle in the Oakdale Mall, Johnson City NY back in the early 80's. Across the mall was a movie theater and a pizza joint. Weekends in there were awesome!
Wow, nice! Looks like an insurance walkthrough video. Many businesses took these videos, to document what they had, in case of catastrophic loss. The calendar in the back room had the year covered, but it looks like 1984. Newest games were some laserdisc games.
Hundreds of hours spent here. Thajk you so much for sharing this.
Love how all of the attract modes make the place seem busy before they open for the day.
Wow, the spy Hunter music took me back to the 80's.
I ran a couple of stores back in the day. Normal Illinois which was an arcade Bally bought out from a local couple called Electronics 101 (store #252), and Store #17 in Pekin, IL. At the time I left the one in Pekin was the oldest remaining Bally's Aladdin's Castle. It wasn't huge, but it was a pretty nice store. Unfortunately the mall was well on it's way to it's eventual slow death and it closed not too awful long after I left.
I remember a Gold Mine at that mall - was that the one that switched or was it added to.
@@mgabrysSF I honestly don't remember myself either. :)
This is beyond awesome! Thank you!
I love retro games and classic arcade games. Thank you for sharing such a wonderful Aracade from the 1980's. Cool video. ^_^
😎 good memories of good times
Just how i remembered it.
I miss Time Out & Tilt. Also Putt Putt Golf & Games
Holy moly, I remember going to the arcade and playing games like these!
Come back, please come back, I really miss you, come back.
I still have a pocket worth of tokens from this arcade. Many hours spent there.
I see the pinball game Black Pyramid. One of my favorite games as well as Firepower II
Beware. You maybe get massive motion sickness from watching this. Love old 80’s videos but man people just loved to fast pan and used the zoom too much and too fast. I have tons of old videos from this era that I’ll never transfer as I threw up after transferring 1 hour. If anyone time travels please take them a tripod.
Thanks for posting! Thats what the arcades loked liked back then.
is this Del Amo Mall? or Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, California? the wall map sure does look like it. Also, where the entrance to the arcade is where it was at the end of a small hall.
It is Del Amo. West is to the top of that aerial shot.
it's very different, today... much remodeling
I MISS BEING A KID!!!! I went to Time-Out (before it became “SEGA’S Time-Out”), Space Port, and Aladdin’s Castle. No smartphones, no online gaming, not even Minecraft or Fortnite. Arcades were the place to be, to get away from it all. Now thanks to emulation, I can enjoy the games on my Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, courtesy of Digital Eclipse and M2.
@@gnarlax2005 no need to be an asshole
@@gnarlax2005 also he is likely a millennial, boomers are at minimum 58 years old at this point. So maybe be quiet?
I've only seen a TX-1 once in my entire life. And it disappeared a few months after it showed up. Supposedly, operators hated it because of how much it weighed and how much space it took up. Ironic that they had no idea what Sega would be bringing to the table a few years later with the cockpit versions of Outrun, Space Harrier, Power Drift, and After Burner. I remember After Burner taking up almost the entire front end of our Aladdin's Castle.
Our store was right inside the entrance to our mall. I remember coming in that door and hearing this sound. It made the money in my pocket suddenly get white hot!
Where was this? We had an Aladdin’s castle at my local mall, don’t think this was the one but the lay out looks similar,, damn I miss that place
4:09 I hear Spy Hunter.
I wish I was born during that era :(
It was awesome, how old are you?
@@gummybear41283 15, but I feel sort of nostalgic, even though I wasn't born during those times. My dad is from 1979 and my mom is from 1980
@@cinnamonc4t I was born in December 1969, I was a kid during the 80's, going to the mall and Arcades were the best part of our lives. The sounds and atmosphere when you walked into the arcade was beautiful and sooo exciting. There's nothing like it.
@@gummybear41283 That sounds like so much fun! Man.. that makes me wish I was around in those times
The Aladdin's I went to had games that no other carried like NARC, ninja gaiden & warriors, guardians of the hood(hilarious game) & 2 advanced Sega hologram games(yes that's right) named time traveler & hologram fighters I believe.
Time Traveler was a quarter eating machine
Walk down memory lane
This has those scary "found footage" vibes where nobody's around but everything's on and working...
Half expecting some creepy entity to peek around from behind one of the machines...
I got a pocket full of quarters !
That's a pretty big Aladdin's Castle, the one I went to at Sarasota Sq. Mall was probably half that size. Also that aerial photo at the end seemed kind of weird until I realized that had to have been taken from a helicopter or an airplane and was probably pretty special, not like today when anyone can just pull up a satellite view on their phone.
I would like to learn where this mall was
Del Amo Fashion Center. Torrance, CA
I played in that arcade. It was next to McDonald's
Very different today after years and years of remodeling and modernizing.
My games then were Assault, Sinistar, and Tac-Scan.
I know you're going to look on Google maps (lol)... note that the aerial shot at the end has West at the top. But, you'll see the similarities.
@@metrotek5 I remember being a kid back in 1981 or 1982 and playing Gorf at Aladdins Castle at Willowbrook Mall in Houston, Texas. I was doing great in the game and got a really high score and I had a bunch of people cheering for me, after I was done I went outside of the arcade and this lady came up to me and told me how great I was and she bought me some candy and drinks, it was one of the best moments of my life, I'll never forget it!!!!
@@gummybear41283 This shared memory needs more than just a thumbs up.... Very nice. And, thank you for sharing that moment :)
@@metrotek5 I had to share that experience, it was very special. There will never be anything like the 80's arcades, it was a beautiful time🙂
@@metrotek5 I should tell you how the lady looked, she was an older blonde woman with a white fur coat and she looked rich
I pray this is what’s available when I go to Heaven…endless 80’s arcade games!
Ahhh I remember the payphone lol
This Aladdin's Castle was enormous compared to the one I frequented. How many Ms. Pac-Man's did they have there? I don't recall ours ever having more than one of anything.
Was coming to say the same thing. My local was about 1/6 the size.
The Crystal's Pizza (ft worth, tx) I went to as a kid seemed to have 8-10 pacmans, ms pacman, galaga, etc. If I remember correctly, they even had 5 or 6 tron, Star wars, and even mappy cabs. I never understood, it's not like kids were lining up to play mappy
I remember being a kid back in 1981 or 1982 and playing Gorf at Aladdins Castle at Willowbrook Mall in Houston, Texas. I was doing great in the game and got a really high score and I had a bunch of people cheering for me, after I was done I went outside of the arcade and this lady came up to me and told me how great I was and she bought me some candy and drinks, it was one of the best moments of my life, I'll never forget it!!!!
Call me old...but at 14:29 I actually remember a time when restaurant wall posters were actually chemical photographic darkroom paper...there was no halftone pattern..just film grain. And that restaurant had a 2 player tabletop arcade machine and a jukebox that plays 45 RPM single records, you could look into a hole in the side of the cabinet and see the record playing. It's Papa Ginos in Fall River Massachusets. I am 'Pass me that pencil so I can wind my tape' years old.
It's too bad we didn't have cell phones back in those days with 4k video.
The Arcade (aka The Strip Club for Gamers).
This was either in 1983 or later because of the M.A.C.H. 3 laserdisc game.
Wow.. they even had Polybius! I haven't played that one in forever. I stopped because it was giving me headaches.
It has been said the everybody will eventually get an epileptic seizure from flashing lights and video games...it's just that with the healthy people it takes a VERY LONG time for it to crop up. It also matters how bright the screen is and how large it is and how close you are to it. The human body was not made for seeing things that aren't naturally common in 10,000 B.C. Africa. I'm surprised I'm not hearing more stories of people having trouble with smart IoT multicolored LED light bulbs, a purple fire is not anywhere near your cave...you could search the who jungle and not come across purple fire. And even in the Middle Ages they did not have candle flames that went from 0% to 100% brightness 29.97 times every second.
Arcade haven
Oh man, I wish he was recording in SP mode instead of the apparent EP mode 😢. EP was so grainy even though you got the extra film time on a VHS; big difference from SP quality
Why is video scratchy and going in an out?
Was this you filming ?
Where is this?
I can smell this video.
Rad!
I see what you did there :D
1:24 Looks like Polybius 0_0
I'm guessing 1987 or late 1986
Let's get some vaporwave in the background please 👍
And remove all the classic music and sounds?
POLYBUS!
What city this In?
Torrance, California
And naturally, Star Rider is broken...
Garfield before he became garfeel
Not much of a fan of Garfield then?
Would definitely love gazorpa-zorp-field from rik n morty
No way its from the 80s that airplane game looked too good for the 80s graphics
That was a laser disk game called 'Mach 3'. It came out it 1983.
Mach 3 was the shit.
Mach 3 came out the year I was born was ahead of it’s time (1983) this video looks to be from 1984 based on calendar in back room. Arcade games usually ran hardware never available to public more advanced. This guy def was doing well to have a video cam because they were pricey!
that is the 80's
thanks but your camera is horrible
This is what it looks like when you have a belief in life before death. Choose fun. This message brought to you by Science: The One True Church.
Can I get my money back for the time I wasted watching this?