Registry of Historic Gaming Locations coughs up a surprise

My pet project over the past year has been the Registry of Historic Gaming Locations, an online database of sites important to the world of video gaming. Some sites are famous for their impact on video gaming in pop culture, others are former game company headquarters, testing sites for early arcade games and others.

The sites of video gaming scenes from various films have proved the most popular. Retrogaming fans in Japan went nuts when I inducted the location that appeared in WarGames as the 20 Grand Palace and I recently visited another movie location, the Hull Building in Culver City, CA, which was Flynn’s Arcade in the original Tron film.

One location needed a little extra work to locate, however. Everyone remembers that scene at the start of Rocky III where Paulie wanders into a 1981 arcade and throws a bottle of liquor at a Rocky pinball machine. Ever since the start of this project I’d wanted to induct that, but had no idea where to look.

Rocky filming locations are covered across a variety of websites, but none that I could find listed that location. Given that the Rocky films were filmed on both the east and west coasts I figured it could be anywhere, and given the grand industry crash of the mid 1980s I figured it could be anything today.

Recently, with the help of my lovely wife, we decided we were going to find this damn place. We got a full HD blow-up of the scene, hoping to spot a clue on a license plate or road sign. In the far background we saw the name of a cafeteria. It appeared to say Clifton’s Cafeteria, which is a Los Angeles landmark, giving us a long awaited answer as to where to look. Off to Google Maps we went.

Guess what? It’s STILL a video arcade. Same signing, same location as it was at the time Rocky III was filmed. The fact that this wasn’t more common knowledge amazes me almost as much as the fact that a video arcade open at the peak of the arcade industry is still alive today.

The Sassony Arcade in Los Angeles has now joined the Registry of Historic Gaming Locations as a result. The arcade is smaller than it once was, and located in a part of town with no free parking, but nonetheless it’s still there. Go on by and check it out, but don’t throw booze at any pinball machines, ok?

The Registry can be checked out at http://www.PatrickScottPatterson.com/Locations