San Francisco is pretty dismal from an Arcade / Import Game shop standpoint nowadays.
There are only about 2 locations for arcades left worth visiting.
1. There are a couple of Namco run arcades in Pier 39. This used to be worth visiting in the mid 90's as they would get a lot of the deluxe versions straight from japan (i.e. the full size ridge racer where you sat in a real miata, tokyo wars, 6 player galaxian 3 theatre, etc). I never see anything like that there anymore though, and for me its not worth wading through all the tourists to bother visiting.
2. There are two arcades in the Metreon. One full size arcade, and another small batch of games outside the theatre. This is a pretty typical run of the mill arcade, with the typical favorites (initial d, tekken, ddr, etc). Dont expect to find any oddities like Beatmania / Guitar Freaks / Shooter games etc. Last time I went they did have a classic game section though.
All the import game shops in SF are gone now. The only 2 left to my knowledge in the vicinity are Network Video in Burlingame (about 20 minutes south of SF) and Users Side in San Jose (45 minutes south)
Also Chinatown and Japantown are worthless from a gaming standpoint, dont bother. If you want to go for toys and anime they do a good job, just dont go looking for games, as you wont find anything.
Stinkles said:
There's a decent arcade near Broadway. And there are nudie bars there too. So. There's that.
I thought the broadway arcade went out of business? It was definitely gone last time I checked. Unless you are talking about Bonkers which is that strange hole in the wall on the 2nd floor full of broken shit.
Great place, with very interesting atmosphere. I was there on Sunday the 18th.