Chuck E. Cheese’s newest concept — which actually involves stripping down to one thing that has always been part of its draw — has come to California, with the entertainment company’s first Chuck’s Arcade opening Friday at the Brea Mall.
Since its beginnings, Chuck E. Cheese has featured arcade games among its entertainment attractions and with this new concept it has been rolling out across the country it is leaning into current trends around the popularity of both retro games and those machines where players swing a crane over a pit of prizes, dropping a claw with the hopes of snagging one and holding onto it as the crane maneuvers back over to the dispenser.
“We have this fan base of the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, even the early 2000s and there is a great demand right now for folks in this generation that are going back to their nostalgia loving playing games,” said David McKillips, CEO of Chuck E. Cheese, who was in town Friday for the opening. “Think of it as a love letter to all of our fans.”
Some of the games are “vintage” he said, Pac-Man, Galaga, Mortal Kombat, Donkey Kong, “but then what is great, is we are able to complement some of these classic games with some of the new games that you’ll see at the greatest arcades.”
The Brea location will be the first Chuck’s Arcade — 11 have opened since June — to offer the hugely popular crane, sometimes referred to as claw, machines. Some 40% of the games are that style of machine.
It will also sell brand merchandise and feature the always-present prize hub — though now in an automated format, so no more tickets snaking from a machine, instead they will be recorded digitally on a card that can be redeemed on any visit.
While the classic games will likely appeal to an older demographic — give him a quarter and he’s headed to Pac-Man — the new arcades are for all ages, McKillips said. “It’s an all-age entertainment experience.”
A mix of arcade and crane games is all the new concept offers — fans of the chain’s pizza are out of luck — but the Brea location offers more than 60 of them in its 3,600-square-foot space in the mall wing shared with Macy’s Home.
“When we looked at a location to open the Chuck’s Arcade, we looked at the traffic flow, we looked at the great anchor stores that are at the Brea Mall and we thought this would be the perfect location for us,” McKillips said.
There are more than 70 of the “legacy” Chuck E. Cheese locations in California, with a heavy concentration in Orange and Los Angeles counties, he added.
The company just finished a $300 million, three-year investment in upgrading and remodeling its traditional Chuck E. Cheese locations throughout the country — new locations were just recently opened in Whittier and Puente Hills — and that teed up the company to try something new, McKillips said.
“Now we are looking for other growth opportunities and this was just a natural one for us because in our core competency is video games,” he said. “We are the largest arcade operator in the world.”
You could say video games are in the company’s DNA; it was founded in 1977 by Nolan Bushnell in San Jose. Bushnell also established Atari.