So, Casino Leisure shut down earlier this year, and now it's just full of slot machines, which fits the name better I guess, but it's a real shame.
However, I did find out that quite a few of their arcade games, as well as most of the Trocadero (another London arcade that shut down about 2 years back) were bought by a guy who has started his own arcade in London called The Heart of Gaming.
For anyone familiar with the capital, the arcade is out by North Acton, but finding it is a real mission, as it's in an industrial estate hidden up a seedy back alley past a graveyard
. However, it's definitely worth a visit.
They charge for entry (I went on a Sunday and entry was £8) but their opening hours are fairly long (midday to 10pm on Sundays, and 6 days a week!) and all of the machines inside are on free play. They have a fairly long list of games (which you can see on their website here:
http://www.theheartofgaming.com/software/ ), although due to the small size of the building they're not all set up at once. You can request them to swap in a game at any time though, which is really nice. When I go again I'm definitely going to ask them to swap in Puzzle Fighter, Wonder Boy in Monster Land and Ikaruga!
They also have a back room which has a bunch of consoles (mostly 360s and PS3s, but they had a Gamecube and a Wii U too) and TVs set up, which I assume is mainly used for tournaments and tourney players who want to practice up on Street Fighter, Smash Bros or whatever. There were a bunch of guys playing Street Fighter 4 when I visited.
The machines set up when I visited were:
Killer Instinct
Vampire Savior (head to head cabinets)
Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting (head to head cabinets)
Street Fighter Alpha 3 (head to head cabinets)
Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike (head to head cabinets)
Marvel vs Capcom (head to head cabinets)
Magical Drop 3 (head to head cabinets)
Pac-Man
Daytona USA
Donkey Kong
Final Fight
Metal Slug 3
Time Crisis
Dance Dance Revolution
The House of the Dead
Bishi Bashi
Dolphin Blue
Puzzle Bobble
It's definitely worth a visit if you live near London. They could do with a few more shmups though!
