The Last Arcade on the Planet is a private collection of arcade games owned by Juan Sanchez that he opens for public parties once a month or so with his girlfriend, Satu. I’ve written about it previously, and it’s really awesome. Saturday night was the last party; Juan’s going to turn his warehouse into a workspace to fix up the machines and sell many of them.
I wore my Space Invaders t-shirt from Threadless because it seemed appropriate. And don’t worry, I played a lot of Space Invaders.
Edward came with me, and you can see him in this photo playing High Speed. Sadly, the next two pinball machines over were both out of service – Pin·Bot and The Machine Bride of Pin·Bot. The Machine Bride of Pin·Bot is my favorite machine, so it was bummer that it was out of service. gem and I played it extensively on previous trips.
Luckily, Jack·Bot was working. It’s such a gorgeous machine, although I still prefer the rotating box of The Machine Bride of Pin·Bot representing your quest to improve her.
Juan collects machines from 1986 or earlier and charges a $10 cover charge for the parties with everything on free-play. He knows what he’s doing with them too. Throughout the night, he could be found working on them and keeping the machines running smoothly.
Here’s gem playing Asteroids in her Asteroids t-shirt back in September!
This was the first night I had a chance to talk to Juan and thank him for the good times. I’m glad I got to talk with him, because he’s a really interesting person. He works as an animator at Turtle Rock Studios. His latest work can be seen in February’s Evolve. I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, but I posted about it back in February 2014 when I first saw the trailer because it looked so awesome. Juan plans on keeping some of the machines and wants to continue doing some kind of events. He talked about the ideas of Arduino workshops or game jams as well as some personal projects. I’d love to attend some of these events, so I’m looking forward to learning what happens.
I’m sad to see The Last Arcade on the Planet go, but I’m glad Juan’s moving on to his next projects. Good luck, Juan!
