If you lived in Rhyl in the 80s you and your mates spent most of your free time in the arcades. Whether playing the best fruit machine ever ‘super lineup’, or doing the ratty gambles on ‘rat race’ or ‘chase the ace’. Although always making a loss, I remember all the arcades and also good friends that used to hang around together in the arcades.
I’m going to try and remember the arcades we used to frequent early to mid 80s with a bit of a description of what i remember. Arcades will of course start with ‘The Bright Spot’ which was at the top of Rhyl High Street:
The Bright Spot – Everyone used to hang out here, you could enter it form the sea front or there was a back entrance from the old market. They had some really good fruit machines in here and it was probably the best arcade. I remember you could actually go down steps as well and i think there was a pool table and old video game machines.
Queens Arcade – Never really liked this one, it was always dark in here and there was a greasy caff in there also.
Can’t Remember Name – It was the size of 3 of the normal arcades and the Great Bistro pub/nightclub was next door. You could walk through the back and there was lots of pool tables where the dating teens would hang out. There was also a shooting rife range where you always tried to shoot the ‘hillbilly’ aiming the gun, he would turn round and fire water! There was a really grumpy old guy that worked there, not sure if he was one of the owners. He looked like Clint Eastwoods sidekick in ‘Any which way but loose’ and i dont mean the orangutan! 🙂
Les Harkers – Small arcade, hardly any frutimachines and just catered for the female bingo players.
Don’t know name – I think it was run by an old Italian guy, he was so bad tempered and chased the local kids out all the time. If you managed to sneek in you could see his beady eye watching you. They had one of those ‘Kentucky Derby’ machines where you rolled the ball to make the horse move, i think it allowed 20 people to play.
Les Harkers (again) – They had an amazing football video game in there, you actually used a pedal on the ground to kick the ball, i cant for the life of me remember what it was called. Used to spend quite a bit of time in there playing ‘wonderboy’ and ‘super mario’. There was two sisters who worked on the hamburger/hotdog stall, i remembered they were from Prestatyn and i had the biggest crush on the Elder Sister!
Seldons Arcade – This mostly catered for Bingo Players and again they didn’t like locals going in there. If Roanld wasnt calling out on the Bingo he would walk over to you and ask you to leave. They had ‘Super Viper’ fruit machine in here which was great to play. The arcade shut down and became the nightclub ‘Rose O’Gradys’ i think.
Now, my memory is struggling what came next, i think it was an arcade named ‘Stardust’ but i never went in there and used to go in the arcade next door named:
The Mint – This arcade always had the latest games and this is where all the kids used to go to bunk off school. The young girl that worked there would always come and shout to the kids bunking off when the ‘Rat Catcher’ was walking up to the arcade and everyone used to run out the back.
Again, this is a bit of a haze, not sure if the next acrade was called ‘Pleasureland’, sounds more like a sex shop haha
I then only remember on the corner was:
Webbers – Not much to say about this place, at the entrance you could go down stairs and there were junk shops, caff and a tattooist!
I remember there were 2 arcades after this but can’t for the life of me remember what they were called, hardly ever went in there.
Then, in the 80s if you could be bothered to walk through the crowds of holidaymakers you would end up at the fair arcade:
Arcade at Fair – This arcade had all its machines rigged, never ever made a profit in there.
There was also another arcade inside the Rhyl Fairground built into like a large mobile unit.
There was also another arcade underneath ‘The Downtown’ Nightclub but hardly ever went there.
If anyone could comment about the arcade names i missed out or what you remember about the arcades 🙂