Summer is never better than when you’re a kid. Those three months of sleeping late, swimming, playing, family vacations, and intermittent boredom due to lack of structure — those were the jam.
Now we’re bill-paying adults with time constraints. Yet we still want some of those good-time summer feels.
And how better to escape summer swamp-ass than to spend some delightful air-conditioned hours in the bliss of blinking lights and pew-pew, cling-clang-bang nostalgia?
You can do just that at the Replay Amusement Museum in downtown Tarpon Springs.
Vintage pinball machines from the 1960s and ‘70s line the walls, intermingled with modern versions of the game.
Walking deeper back, your smile grows; your eyes widen.
Long-lost friends like Paperboy, Karate Champ, and Joust are there. Of course there are various versions of Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Mortal Kombat, plus Frogger and Q-Bert, but also classic video games even more rarely seen, like Burger Time, Tapper and Dragon’s Lair.
Replay owner Brian Cheaney started the museum because, as collectors do, he says he “got the sickness.”
As his collection grew, space became an issue. So, as an already successful business owner, he decided to start a side gig using his collection of working games, and Replay opened in Oct. 2014.
“Since opening, it’s become a passion to share the nostalgia with the public,” Cheaney told CL via email. “It’s much more fulfilling to me than collecting the games. I want people to have the same smile on their face when they remember that game that they haven’t seen in 30 years and wonder if they still remember how to play it.”
He nailed it. And yeah, Paperboy is harder than I remembered.
Replay isn’t just for those of us who grew up in the classic arcade era though. Kids love it, too.
“The point is for families to share in the nostalgia and transfer that experience across the multiple generations,” Cheaney wrote. “I have a few pictures of four generations playing pinball side-by-side at Replay and it’s a beautiful thing to watch.”
Replay is serious about their pinball, even boasting Hercules — the largest fully functional pinball game in the world. It strives to be a hub for serious pinballers, collectors and competitors.
“Pinball is not something you can reproduce or emulate effectively on a computer and we love that,” Cheaney said.
And no one even needs to bother with quarters or tokens — all of the games are set on free play. Pay for the day, get a wristband and start slaying. You can come and go, and make a day out of checking out Tarpon Springs’ cool little downtown; take a lunch break, grab a drink, and then head back to the nostalgia of pixels and pinball sounds.
Continue game? Hell yeah!
Replay Amusement Museum, 119 E. Tarpon Ave., Tarpon Springs. 727-233-8490.
This article appears in May 17-24, 2018.