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Nickel City
Rating Details »
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
44 reviews for Nickel City
ay bluh, where yall cats fin ta go?
fin ta slide thru tha strip club n make a mess....
oh real?
naw jus playn, we sum broke ass nickels, we fin ta roll to Nickel City, rogue
i wish a Nickel would! oh hell naw
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Couple of notes...
1.They charge you admission upon entering. ($2.00,so why is it called Nickel City again?)
2.The games are NOT 5 cents as the name of the place may lead you to believe.Yes,the machines take nickels,but most games are 4 or 5 nickels each to play.
3.The place is dirty and old like an old Golfland arcade.
4.Yes,there are free games,but most of them are broke.
5.Yes,there are other games and most of them are broke as well.
Today,I spent most of the time there playing Tetris for free,since it was one of the few games that worked ok.We tried playing countless others,but the joysticks were malfunctioning.They said to let them know which games were broken so they could fix them,well how about all of them?
Bottom line,if you're looking for cheap fun,come here.If youre out on a date,take her to Dave & Busters.Their games work,the place is more well kept and there arent a bunch of toddlers running around with $3 bags of nickels.
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This place is fun...if you're seven or younger...
First we had to pay an entrance fee..which i did not know about. I think it was $2. (not that much..but still!) Then the games weren't even that good and sometimes you had to use more than one nickel to play! (DECEIVING!!) The place also looks really run down and dark. The games aren't even that cool..a lot of them are kind of old.
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I will school anyone at marvel vs capcom.
we were probably the only people over twelve that were here.
guy at the front: two adults? that'll be eight dollars.
me: my kid.....is coming.......later
and i will boldly admit that it was arguably the best twelve hours i have ever spent in my life. ever. thats right, twelve hours.
if i went here on a slower day, i might have given this place five stars, but on this particular friday i went, some kid was hogging the altered beast machine.
that little.......
I was pretty excited to come to this place and play some classic video games, but I don't think my friends and I had as much fun as we had previously anticipated. Besides the fact that you can download a lot of the games for free, there weren't too many super exciting ones.
It was a fun place to visit though, for the experience of going.
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I really liked this place...Maybe it's because I'm a total kid at heart??
For like ten bucks you get to play and you get tickets and they have a whole wall full of super old school gamesThat you get to play for free!! What beats that??
I'm 20 and I'm not a huge gamer but I do like to have fun and this place is definately a good spot to have innocent fun with younger brothers/sisters or your 27 year old boyfriend on a Saturday night(I really did have fun :] )
Awesome place to play all your favorite old-school arcade games for very little money. I expected to waste maybe 30 minutes in there, but walked away 2 hours later with a handful of prizes and a smile on my face.
The best part is that I got to play all those games that seemed not-quite-worth-so-many-quarters to my heart's content.
My only complaint is that one of the DDR machines is broken (among some other machines), and the claw-game claw is too big to grab any of the small prizes X.x
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Solid hour of fun for me & my husband. Including cover charge, we spent about $6 or 7, not bad for an hour of nostalgic amusement.
However, the place is poorly maintained. Of course when the machines don't work you get to think, "hey, it's just a nickel!" We had the most fun playing the neon/black lite air hockey, which costs about 40 cents to play.
We wish they had pin ball machines too.
We may come again and may bring the 5 year old some day, but this place is probably not worth more than an hour of fun. Unless, of course, you're a young teen whose band is playing int he little party room.
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Nickel City taught me that I should never go to a casino when I'm of age.
I was glued to the machine with the hundreds of nickels being shoveled almost off a platform. I dropped nickels like dropping off the kids at the pool, hoping for several nickels to fall off the platform, giving me many tickets. And it wasn't like the tickets would get me great prizes, 'cause they all sucked. Yet, the thrill of trying to get those nickels to fall enthused me.
I originally wanted to go to an arcade for skee ball.. Nickel City's skee ball is lacking.
My boyfriend and I earned 349 points. Got some lame panda in a clown suit and some candy.
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If you have kids under 10, who aren't arcade gamers, don't bother.
I took my two children for the first time last week. I thought I'd give them each 100 nickels WOW, and spend $10 for the outing. To start we had to pay $2 each to get in, including me, so there went half our money. Then there were games that cost from 2, 5 up to TEN nickels per play. There were also groups of day campers who kept approaching us for nickels, that was just awkward. It was dingy and there was nowhere for adults to sit.
Awesome for us old-skool gamers. (I have a whole box full of 1980's Atari games and love them.)
It only costs $2.00, yes I said two bucks and that enables you to play a whole boatload of free games. Any kid with a job anywhere can afford to come here for some great, cheap fun. Arcade days, like they used to have in the old Santa Cruz Boardwalk, remember all those fun, fantastic games?
Kids run wild here on birthday party fueled excitement. It is pretty sweaty with teenage hormones. There are often broken machines but with this price and the amount of games available, who really cares? This place is just a lot of fun for the dollar. I recommend it highly.
There is a Safeway right next door for food and a Pollo Loco in the same lot for hot food so get on with ya.
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Once I got here at 10:00pm on a Saturday night, I knew the rest of the night was doomed for failure. The place was empty! If the library was opened on a Saturday night, I think there would be more people going there. I went with a group of friends and thought it'll be pretty pointless to not go inside, since there was nothing else to do around the area either.
There was a $2 entrance fee. Come on now, even D&B's does not charge that. The place was extremely empty, and by 10:30ish, the place was basically filled with my friends. At first glance, everything seems cheap... you play with nickels right? But tricky are they! Some of the machines charge a few quarters.
The arcades are old, and probably appeal more to the male population. The prizes that were given out were not all that at all. You spend like $3 to get candy that costs 25 cents. But the fun having with friends is priceless.
The machines are old... the workers had attitude... I would not come back to this place ever again (unless everything was free!). Also, there are crackhead teens who come in smelling like weed. What gives? My recommendation is to go to D&B's instead if you're part of the 21+ crowd.
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Um...very ghetto place. A lot of broken games, some games that eat up your nickels, and it's pretty dirty in there. It was fun to go with a group of friends and look around for tickets left in the machines though! :) And of course there's no good prizes ever at these places, so we ended up putting our tickets together to get a BUNCH of candy. 65 tickets for apple heads and 25 tickets for ONE lemon head? HAHA...crazy, but of course that's expected.
The only thing I thought was dumb was having to pay the $2 entrance fee to play the games. WHO charges an entrance fee?!?!?! And why just two stinkin dollars? Yes, it's not much at all, but I think that's dumb. At least give us a couple of nickels for it. It's a super cheap place but you really get what you pay for..nothing much at all! Plus, there's too many pothead teens goofing around and causing trouble.
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I used to go to Nickel City a lot as a young kid, but in the last 6 months it's been an almost-weekly destination for me and my group of friends. The cheap prices make it a safe bet every time.
The selection of games make it OK, not nearly as good as Golfland Sunnyvale, but you get what you pay for I suppose. Lots of broken machines. The Beatmania machine was broken for several months, and recently was powered up again, but almost all of the buttons don't work, and the colors on the screen are totally screwed. The DDR machine has 2 broken pads at the time of this writing. The X-men game has been offline for years. The list goes on..
Ticket games are decent. The prizes aren't bad, but some are pretty ridiculous in price. Seriously, that speaker system for 75k tickets? That's been there since I was 12 years old!
But I don't want to sound overly critical of the place, it's really fun to go hang out with your friends. Your kids will love it, to be sure. The building is actually organized pretty well, give or take a few random placements in the middle, but it's mostly divided by game genre. The games that do work are tons of fun, and a great value. 5 bucks will get you in and last you for quite a while, unless you're pumping nickels into the ticket machines rapid-fire!
One thing that you'll either enjoy or hate are the concerts on Friday/Saturday in the adjacent party room (no door). No offense to the local scene, but hearing countless indie/punk bands every week gets a little annoying. If you're into that though, you'll love the background music as you play games. Just look out for the horde of teenagers lurking outside the side-door when you approach the building, and you'll know to expect the music.
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1.5 stars is better. I've been coming to this place ever since I've had a license (6-7 years), and it's only gotten worse.I don't think the games get preventative maintence. They must do the whole, if it's broken fix the problem so that it will work for a couple of months. The games are all dirty from kids with pizza on their hands, a whole mess of games have messed up buttons/triggers or just plain do not give tickets. They increased the price for a lot of the games, but at least they still have free games in the back. This place has been run down really bad. It's sad really. It's also kind of ghetto, sometimes. There are weird people there, I'm guessing pedophiles walking around. One came up to my wife (girlfriend at the time) right in front of me, he might have been mentally handicapped but still. It kind of ruined it for us. I think arcades are pretty much done. There will always be a few arcare games in bowling alleys and restaurants, but arcades have been taken over by Playstations, and Xboxes. Maybe that's why they can't afford to fix the games, I don't know. If I wasn't moving in September, I would NEVER come back here again. Maybe 6 years from now when I'm absolutely bored, but probably never again. Again, Playstation is much better, and cheaper, sort of.
Keep your kids close by. Theres a number of creepy folks here that look like they're ready to snatch 'em once your back is turned. Old lady in brown trenchcoat playing bust-a-move for hours, I'm talking to you.
Good thing they put the Para-Para-Paradise in the far corner. That way I'm only embarassing myself in front of my niece and nephew instead of people by the door.
I wouldn't go back here. I'll take 'em to Chuck E Cheese next time.
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The place is pretty dirty and oily. Every time I've been here the toilet is always clogged with a turd the size of Andre The Giant's arm and of course nobody does anything about it because its mostly kids working there and I know THEY don't want to deal with the mess. So be prepared to try and cut the turd with a well aim pee stream or piss at El Pollo Loco across the lot.
I have no problem with the games because its all games i love playing and most of the games i play are free because they're old. Sure I can pay a few nickels to play some young kid to destroy me in Capcom VS SNK2 or I could just play X-Men and The Punisher/Nick Fury game for free for hours on end. Although I am awesome at Marvel VS Capcom2 and I will destroy you, I dont care if you're 10 years old, I WILL END YOU.
I haven't been here in a number of years but I'm pretty sure nothing has changed. Its probably the only arcade in the Bay Area that's actually worth going to because its cheap as hell. Anyway Arcades are supposed to be filthy dank pits.
Bring lots of hand sanitizer!
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This place is fun to go when certain friends are under 21. I'm 26 now and I had a blast here, there was a battle of the bands playing some RATM, for 10 bucks I kicked ass at Killer Instinct for 2 hours.
I would give it a 3 star but the guy at the counter was just too cool to our group.
Good cheap fun! This is a great place for an inexpensive night of games. The admission fee is $2, which pays for itself on the free games in the corner. How can you beat 20 games of free Frogger! :) As previously posted, alot of the games are either turned off or broken. But there is still plenty to do.
You can easily win tickets from the machines, but the downside is that the "prizes" aren't very low on the tickets you need. I had 60 tix and all I could get was a 1 ounce bubble blower shaped like a cell phone (net worth 12 cents).
The place is your typical arcade...dirty, smelly, lights everywhere, kids running, etc...but we didn't care in high school!!!! So go check it out and have a fun evening and act like a 15 year old again
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One of my favorite movie scenes ever. National Lampoon's Vegas vacation. Clark goes to downtown Vegas to try to redeem his luck at the casinos, but utterly loses to games like rock-paper-scissors and guess a number from one to ten. If you gamble and have been to downtown Vegas, you get it.
My last trip to Nickel City relates playing games like catch the ping pong balls in a net and drop a ball in the hole. Random? Yes. Yet did I do well? No. Nickel City is your poor man's Dave and Buster's. That's not to say it wasn't a lot of fun.
$2 admission. Buy $2 or $5 bags of nickels. There's also a change machine for nickels. A little over $20 kept the six of us busy for a couple of hours. The prices of games range from free to 10 nickels. An annoyance is the number of broken games throughout the place.
Most of my nickels went to Hoop Fever and getting beat up on in Puzzle Fighter. Sure, I can play Puzzle Fighter on the Playstation at home, but of course, I watch movies on tv when I have them on dvd. What's your point?
Ms. Pacman is always a classic. But the last time I checked, Ms. Pacman wasn't a little yellow square chasing around other colored squares. Yeah, this place needs a little fixing.
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Great price per hour entertainment! It took over an hour for me and my companion to blow through $3 worth of nickles.
Many of the classics are represented, some of the new stuff, but not much of it. Among their best games is an awesome air-hockey meets foos-ball game that is way too addictive... and probably 20 years old. You call it geriatric, I call it retro.
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This place was okay. It's not really little kid friendly. The little kid friendly games were "out of order" and they had only 2 ticket machine working that day. The people working at the counter/cashier's weren't so friendly but I'd take the kids again for the free games.
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After many tantrum and whining session every time we venture down to San Jose, I finally cave and comply to take Matt to Nickel City.
Upon arrival of the dimly lit, burber carpeted arcade, my first thought was "Great. I'm the only chick in here. That's white. and over twelve."
Matt, on the other hand, once we paid the staggering two dollar entrance fee and crammed our pockets so full of quarters the seams were bursting and popping, began racing around the aisles jumping up and down and clapping and giggling like a fat kid ravaging the free samples in Costco. Did I mention that Matt is my boyfriend, not my son?
Despite my cynicism, the fact that pacman fucking pwned me, and that the wall of free games is no longer a wall, but has been reduced to four lonely machines in the corner, Tetris proved quite entertaining (I gravitate to the classics), as did the hunting game in which one ravages unsuspecting ducks.
I attribute the lack of a fifth star to the very sparse"prizes" (all I got was a shitty -and faulty- yo-yo) and the absence of pinball machines and ski-ball.
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The bathrooms are disgusting they smell like porty potties, and the place feels like the heater is on even when it's summer!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was working in San Jose for a few months at one of the offices that a larger company acquired and everyone else bailed in typical Silicon Valley Style for other people to clean up the mess (that would be me and others).
It took a little while to figure out, but San Jose is basically a dead town at night. There was Agenda
http://www.yelp.com/bi...
and a couple of restaurants where the SJ yupyups hung out.
That got old really really fast.
What did not get old was getting the guys together here with a flask and drinking and playing video games until we couldn't hit buttons or laugh any more.
$2 to get in the door and $5 for a ziplock of nickels and you were good to go for just about as long as you like.
The oldschool games such as Shinobi and the like were free which left more nickels for the token-devouring beasts like gauntlet legends: the dark legacy. I used to play Shinobi for more than an hour on one credit. They just don't make games like that anymore.
Oh. Other reviewer: You are talking about Altered Beast.
I think my character was something like a level 90 Valkyrie by the time my consulting engagement was up there. Collecting each of the runes in multiplayer was a couple hour task. After you had like 8 or something, you could go and kill some huge dragon after going through a portal. Who bothers with stuff like this anymore besides people playing world of warcraft? This stuff was a lot more fun and social and you could slap your friends upside their head if they were screwing up.
It is a real tragedy that venues like this don't seem to have a business model anymore. No one even seems to make decent standup games anymore, no one goes to arcades to play them outside of university student unions, and japan apparently.
SNK and NEO-GEO are toast.
It's a sad world.
People should enjoy venues like this while they last as things like this are what made the nerds that built the internet and drove the last couple technology revolutions.
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SO MUCH FUN! I must preface this by saying I'm a total little girl at heart. When I go to Vegas, I find Circus Circus and Excalibur games much more exciting and fun than losing money at the Blackjack table. I love winning tickets and exchanging them for wonderful junk. I don't know, there's some odd satisfaction in "winning" a heart shaped eraser. I know, I'm weird.
Anyhow, this place is so fun! For real! And it's all for a great deal. I mean Dave and Buster's is fun, but you can't play all that much when all the games all cost a couple dollars to play. It adds up fast!
Here at Nickel City, you pay $2 for admission and you can get a bag of nickels for $3. A $3 bag of nickels lasted me an hour here. Yes, it's not a big place at all, but where else can you play basketball for .20cents? They even have DDR for .50. hehe..And that's an expensive one. They have an entire row of free arcade games, like tetris, etc.
My favorite games to play:
basketball
skeeball
the flying bumblebee bucket game
air hockey for .40cents!
We won:
1 box of appleheads
1 hot dog candy
2 pencils
:) The only reason why I didn't give them 5 stars is because:
Not super clean place
Several games don't work
Some games ate my nickels (gasp!)
Some games are broken and don't give tickets
For $10, I can't think of anything more fun to do that lasts an hour. Hehe.. :P Oh, and they close at midnight on weekends. Woohoo!
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Love this place. with a roll of nickels I can play for hours.........very nostalgic. Granted I am able to download these games but I prefer playing it on a large size game machine versus my computer. Great fun for a great price. I mean come on a "nickel"? I can't complain
$2 to play all the Altered Beast I want?! What's not to like. There are numerous free play machines in the back and the other machines are fairly cheap. The most expensive one I found was $0.50. They don't have the newest arcades so if you're looking to play those, don't bother coming here. Part of the fun is playing old games from your childhood.
fun concept.
however, plenty of hormone-raging adolescents believe it's a fun concept, too. and when you're 20-years-old trying to enjoy a clean game of tetris, this is against your favor.
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Lots of old-school arcade games (Pac-Man, Robotron, Dig-Dug, Kung-Fu Master, etc.) and semi-old school games (I don't know the names, but a lot of those motorcycle racing ones). Good place for the kiddies on a rainy or superhot day--costs 2$ for entry, then you buy a bag of nickels to play! The arcade and novelty games cost between 5-15 cents to play. There are several arcade games that are free. Like that really weird one where you are human at first, and then you mutate into a werewolf thing. Pretty cool.
We entertained our kids (and ourselves) for an hour for less than 15$. Pretty cool. They also have a lot of those pseudo-gambling type of games that you find at the Jungle or Dave & Buster's--they dispense tickets, you get prizes with the tickets, etc.
I'm not sure I like the idea of our next generation getting primed up for gambling with pretty lights on shiny machines, but....what can you do?
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4 stars because the bf took me here on one of our first few dates. we played lots of games and then went to get more tickets too. i kick ass at puzzle fighter! this guy played against me and i kicked his ass. yeaaa, what son? haha. sadly, it was near closing and i couldn't use all my nickels. i still have my bag. i'm waiting until the time where we go back so i can get more tickets and see if they have a large gummy bear like dave n busters does. haha. here's to hoping!
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Cheap fun - that sums it up. Last time I went, some of the arcade machines were broken. But for $2 entrance fee, and nickel games, I won't complain.
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Nickel City rocks my face off~ with ParaParaDancing included!
...
too bad they closed several of their locations.
this here is one of the last ones, if not the last remaining Nickel City.
Pay them a visit and kick it old skool with some good ol' arcades. (and newer stuff too)
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I don't know what happened to this place. it used to be full of fun, but they changed a lot of the games and now its just for boys who like to play old fashioned arcade games. in my opinion its not a kid friendly place anymore.
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This is an all around great place. I love going here when there is nothing to do, but you want to do something and not spend a lot of money. You can have fun here by yourself or with a group. The only people I would see not having fun here are those who don't like videogames.
They do a good job of somewhat keeping updated with the latest arcade machines. They have a great selection of older games for the older crowd to relive their days when those very same arcades were brand new.
There are also games to win tickets to redeem later for prizes.
Fun for all ages.
So why did I give it only 4 stars?
This place changed ownership just a few years ago. Before the new owner, there were a lot of old games on the back corner that were free to play. After the change of owner they are no longer free. Despite change of ownership, Nickel City has also been slow to get new games, but that is understandable for the cheap rate they ask to play their games. They probably don't make a profit too fast to get new games. They also don't seem to maintain the machines that well.
Regardless of the few negatives, this place will always be on my list of things to do for whatever reason. It should be on your list too!
Seriously, if you come here buzzed you will have the greatest time of your life. Get some friends together, go pre-drink somewhere, then head over to Nickel City and relive your childhood.
We did this about twice over the summer and its a nice change from hitting up bars and clubs and spending alot more money. plus you can spend some quality time with your buddies.
Don't get too rowdy though, one of my friends got thrown out for being a loud ass. haha
Yup, I am fan. If you are a game fanatic like I am, you will be spending more than just nickels. hahaha the machines eats my nickels as fast as the slot machines eats my quarters. Cool old skool games. Reminds me of the arcade when Eastridge had one. Takes me back to the Edgy days of high school... :-)
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I'd almost totally forgotten about this place. My old roommate and I spent a shitload of time playing Nick Fury and the Punisher and various other Capcom and Neo Geo games when we got our of college. When you don't make a lot of money you try and make it go a long way. 5 cent video games for those who are nostalgic for the old standup arcade consoles.
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It was cool. More for "BIG" kids. Not really the little ones. I loved the free play wall featuring games like, Pac Man, Street Fighter, Pit Fall, Dig Dug, and many more "old skool" games
This place is okay . Used to come here with two of my friends . There is a $2 admission fee . Kind of darker than your typical arcade . You use nickels here instead of quarters or tokens for games . I guess it makes you feel like you're spending less and make you feel less guilty about spending your money on arcade games . The games are slightly cheaper btw . Most of their games are old but they do have a few games that you would see in your typical arcade like Initial D , Crazy Taxi , etc. They have games where you can win tickets as well as a few free games . This is a nice cheap alternative to bringing your kid to Chuck E Cheese . Keeps your kid entertained for quite a while for a low cost .They close around 9 btw .
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