The Best Bars with Arcade Games in NYC

There is a specific kind of New York night that only happens in a bar with games. The drink is cheap, the music is loud, and at some point you find yourself gripping a plastic shotgun, squinting at a screen, talking trash to a stranger who is now, briefly, your enemy. Nobody planned it. That’s the point.

New York has fewer of these places than it should. Most bars want you sitting still, paying $19 for a cocktail with a name like a perfume. The barcade — a bar that takes its games as seriously as its drinks — is the antidote. Here’s where to find the good ones, and what to play when you get there.

What makes an arcade bar actually good

It isn’t the number of machines. It’s the room. A great arcade bar has a center of gravity — a knot of people around one game, a line forming for the photo booth, the satisfying clunk of a pinball plunger cutting through the noise. The games are an excuse to talk to people you’d otherwise never talk to. That’s the whole social technology of the thing, and it’s been working since the 1980s.

The drinks matter too. The best arcade bars don’t make you choose between a real bar and a real arcade. You should be able to get a proper pour, a cold beer, something to eat — and then go lose a quarter (or, fine, a dollar) with it in your hand.

What to play

Big Buck Hunter. The undisputed king of the bar arcade. Easy to start, impossible to master, and built for an audience. The best games of Big Buck Hunter are spectator sports.

Pinball. The connoisseur’s choice. A good pinball machine rewards patience and punishes ego, which describes most things worth doing in this city. Find the table with the worn-out flipper buttons — that’s the one people actually play.

The photo booth. Not a game, exactly, but the most reliable way to remember a night you’d otherwise forget. The strip of four photos is the only souvenir worth keeping.

Where we come in

We built FKA: Formerly Known As in the East Village for exactly this kind of night. Big Buck Hunter. Pinball. A photo booth in the corner. Sports on the TVs. $1 oysters and a $6 beer and a shot, so the games stay the most expensive thing about the evening — and even they’re cheap.

We’re at 221 2nd Avenue, between 13th and 14th Street, a few minutes from Union Square. Come lose to a stranger. It’s good for you.