Eastbourne Pier

Hello everyone. On Sunday, I went to Eastbourne, on a particularly nice and sunny Bank Holiday weekend.

Arcade-wise, Eastbourne is pretty lacklustre compared to nearby Hastings. Not counting the David Lloyd Centre, which more of a bowling alley and laser tag venue than it is an arcade.

First, some history on the place. Eastbourne Pier once had an extremely good and well-maintained arcade, with games like Dancing Stage Fusion, but on July 30th, 2014 a fire broke out in the arcade, and sadly everything was destroyed. This left Eastbourne with no arcades whatsoever, which was obviously a problem as it's a seaside town.

Only the arcade ended up being damaged, so soon afterwards 4 existing rooms on the pier were repurposed for arcade games. This usually would mean more new games and better-maintained equipment, but sadly only the last part would apply to the new arcades on the pier.

The Arcades

During my visit to Eastbourne Pier, I learned what the true definition of a bad modern arcade was. The pier amusements were separated into 4 rooms to themselves. The first 3 only include coin pushers, claw machines and a little bit of redemption.

Here are some pictures of the first few rooms (they are all pretty much the same).

The 4th building actually did have some redemption and one game, but again it was disappointing. Need for Speed Carbon was the sole video game of the entire pier, which is pretty weak. Like the Fast & Furious series, this is one arcade racer that is incredibly bland and boring compared to others, like the Outrun series or Mario Kart Arcade. 

Most disappointing however was the absence of any dance or rhythm games. I do realise that some of these games don't appeal to tourists or casual gamers, but even then pretty much every UK arcade still has at least a Guitar Hero or Dancing Stage Euromix, and it felt really underwhelming not seeing one here.

Why this is a perfect example of a bad modern arcade

This arcade literally only consists of claw machines and coin pushers. There's the smallest amount of redemption and only 1 real game! I can't stress this enough but if you want your arcade to be good and make a decent amount of profit you have got to have games that people want to play. Literally, almost no one was in the arcades on the pier on that day even though it was a sunny day and everyone was out! 

It's been like this on previous visits there as well. The only game in the arcade had a small queue of people waiting for a go and it's not even a good game. This to me says that people aren't that interested in the coin pushers or claw machines; if they got more games more money would be made and customers would be happier. It's pretty sad how this is Eastbourne's only proper arcade.

The future of the pier

In March the owner of the pier got permission to construct new buildings where the old arcade originally was before the fire. It's not for certain, but could mean that a new arcade is coming and they will have more games! Hopefully, if plans go through they will get a real arcade and improvements will be made. If this does happen, I will make another write-up for Eastbourne to update you all on the situation.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed. Special thanks to Ted, who helped out with editing pictures and proofreading the post.

Sam

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This post was actually planned to be published before the Hastings one, but then Hastings got DDR A so I decided to prioritise that.