An inside look at the Norwood Hometown Arcade.
Reminder Publishing submitted photos
NORTHAMPTON — Fans of classic and modern gaming have reason to celebrate this fall when an eastern Massachusetts arcade opens a new spot in Northampton.
Hometown Arcade, which currently resides in Norwood, is opening its second location on the first level of Thornes Marketplace in the exact place Acme Surplus occupied for 43 years before officially closing at the end of 2023.
“Thornes Marketplace is a great spot in downtown Northampton, and there’s just a lot of foot traffic,” said Matt Snow, the owner of Hometown Arcade. “That’s a big plus for us.”
Snow, who has a background in computer software, said that the arcade in Northampton will have approximately 50 games in total featuring classic games like pinball, “Pac-Man,” skee-ball and bubble hockey; gaming consoles like PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Atari, and rhythm games like “Dance Dance Revolution.”
According to Snow, the goal is to split the games in sections inside the Northampton location, which is around 3,200 square feet in size.
“We try to sort of organize the games based on the type of game, so obviously the pinball machines will be all together and the fighting games, those will be grouped together,” Snow said, as examples.
As far as payment goes, Hometown Arcade will charge a flat fee of $20 a person for unlimited gaming that given day, a structure they also utilize in Norwood.
“We want to make this an affordable and family-friendly arcade,” Snow said.
An avid classic gamer himself, Snow said he would travel around the country to play at different retro arcades and talk to the owners of those locations. He decided to start the Norwood arcade at 61 Endicott St., which currently holds around 70 games, around a year-and-a-half ago to fill a void in Massachusetts that he felt was glaring.
“If you compare Massachusetts to a lot of other states, there are very few retro arcades,” Snow said. “You have the big family entertainment type centers, but not a lot of affordable family-friendly arcades, so I found an opportunity here in Massachusetts.”
Like the Norwood location, Snow said the Northampton spot will also feature many events like birthday parties and gaming tournaments, as well as leagues for games like pinball.
He also mentioned that they have the only 10-person game ever created called Killer Queen that they plan on moving to Northampton when they officially open.
Snow said the game is so popular that there is a countrywide travel tournament to see who has the best team in the U.S.
“It’s a super cool game, and we just think it’ll be a better fit in Northampton with it being a college town and with the demographics being more probably in the 20s and 30s range,” Snow said. “So, we’ll be offering that.”
Snow added that they are currently working on finalizing a partnership with a pizza place in the Northampton area to offer food out of the arcade, and they are working on obtaining their beer and wine license, as well.
According to Snow, the Northampton hours will basically be the same as the Norwood hours, but as of right now, the plan is to close at 10 p.m. on the weekends instead of 11 p.m.
“If there’s a need to stay open up later, we’ll try to work with Thornes to maybe stay open later,” Snow said. “But for the time being, it’ll be closing at 10 p.m. on the weekends.”
As of press time, Snow said there are mostly just housekeeping items to complete before opening including upgrading the electricity. He said that a lot of the Northampton staff that has been hired specialize in video game and arcade game repair.
“We feel pretty good about the staff that we’ve been able to find in Northampton,” Snow said. “It’s super helpful to have a staff that specializes in video game and arcade game repair because game maintenance is key to our business.”
Readers can learn more about Hometown Arcade by visiting their website: https://www.hometownarcade.com/. In Norwood, they are open noon to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday.
