Retro Gaming Arcade on New Zealand’s South Island Accepts Bitcoin

An old school arcade shop in New Zealand is now accepting bitcoin. Arcade shops are the last stronghold of a retro gaming era. It all started in the Eighties when gaming started to appear marking the birth of a new generation of digital teenage geeks. Who would have thought that an Arcade Store would be one of the first companies accepting bitcoin in New Zealand! Well, history is full of surprises!

An old-school arcade, complete with Pac-Man, pinball and teddy bear claw machines, in the retirement capital of New Zealand, Blenheim, has now started to accept cryptocurrency. The Arcadia shop is full of racing games, shoot ’em ups, and pinball machines. It even has an old-school Pac-Man.

The shop developed an app to enable gamers to use bitcoin on their gaming machines. Gamers at the Arcadia, in Blenheim, just need the Bitcoin app on their smartphones and they are ready to go! Customers are then given tokens to slot into the machines. The amount players want to get in is entered into the till a unique code is scanned with their phone, and then they hit ‘pay,’ and they’re all set and ready to start playing.

The Arcade, where we find all those retro games from the eighties and such, should be the last bastion of loose change, or so we thought, but the arcade shop was able to re-invent itself and is now an example in the world of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin users in New Zealand can now enjoy the amusement of playing in a 20th-century arcade shop by simply using a QR code to generate credits that can be used to play on any gaming machine.

The Blenheim Arcadia shop owner David Scoon said the integration was easy, but it seems that no-one has actually used it yet. However, according to Scoon, lots of people are already asking about it, and sooner or later there will be a stream of people visiting the shop.

In the shop, you can find New Zealand’s best value arcade games to play. David is always updating machines and testing new systems. The shop has thousands of arcade games to play as Pac-Man, Space Invaders, bowling, skee ball, pinball, basketball simulators, driving simulators, ticket redemption games and lots more! It is also a good spot to stop by and have some snacks and drinks.

The Shop’s History

The shop was established in 1986. David Scoon started out in the early ’80s making and operating arcade game like Galaga and space invaders and also designs arcade product for overseas manufacturers. He also runs the spare parts division for arcade parts as well as helps out with arcade machine restorations and manufacturing.

Scoon explained that it was his son that envisioned the change. Scoon’s son Adam Scoon, was the mastermind behind bringing bitcoin to the arcade. Scoon says his son Adam told him that in the future everyone would be using bitcoin. David promptly understood that bitcoin offered quite a secure way to do transactions and every day more and more companies and individuals were starting to pick it up as a form of transaction, so he thought this would be a very good advertisement move and would certainly push new visitors to the shop.

Adam Scoon stated:

“It is getting more and more attention, and more people are learning about it and getting into it which pushes its value up, even more, we think that eventually, everyone will be using it to pay for everything.”

This comes to prove that ‘old school’ arcade shops are still fun and popular and are ready to adapt to any changes and survive. Bitcoin can even be used as a tool to revitalize old businesses.

Who is to say that Bitcoin cannot cope with old technology? Well, it seems that bitcoin’s versatility is up to that point, and probably we will be seeing it being used in the last ‘Block Buster’ shop or even at your granddad’s old Barbershop before you even know it.