Harvard Square

Today I walked up to Harvard Square to see if the used video game store in the Garage still existed. They had all kinds of Nintendo and Atari cartridges for sale a few years ago. I remember it being an awkward storefront that was just some glass cases on the landing of one of the stairwells. Sadly, this place is long gone.



What I did find was Tokyo Kid. As the name indicates, this store sells almost exclusively Japanese products. Manga, anime, and all of the brightly colored toys and t-shirts that go along with the genre cover the walls and shelves. They have plenty of Nintendo and Mario themed accesories like wallets, dolls, and action figures, but there was little in the way of actual games. A glass case in one of the aisles held about ten Sega Genesis cartridges, two imported Super Famicom games, a half-dozen Atari 2600 games, and one Magnavox Odyssey2 game. The Super Famicom games were priced between fifteen and twenty dollars, and the Genesis and Odyssey2 games were around five bucks. I couldn't see any prices on the Atari carts, but hopefully they are reasonable.



Across the hall from Tokyo Kid is Newbury Comics. They have a Zoltar machine on the left as you walk in the store. You may remember Zoltar as the fortune-telling machine which grants the kid's wish in Big, turning him into Tom Hanks. The coin mechanism appears to be jammed. It could be legitimately broken, or the employees may be sick of hearing the thing talk.

Across the street from the Garage is an Urban Outfitters store. Amongst all the hip, faux-thrift store clothing and ridiculous tchotchkes you'll find two arcade machines. One is an original Centipede cabinet with what looks like a new, clean track ball. The other is one of the 20th anniversary Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga machines. Ms. Pac-Man plays fast with the speed-up chip, and the monitor is huge but out of focus. Something in the settings made the whole thing fuzzy. They're located in between floors on your way to the bargain basement. The going price is fifty cents a game.

Tokyo Kid and Newbury Comics:
The Garage Mall
36 JFK St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tokyo Kid phone: (617) 661-9277
Newbury phone: (617) 491-0337

Urban Outfitters
11 J.F.K Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 864-0070

Superior Market

Inman Square in Cambridge is home to the Superior Market, a small Portuguese convenience store on the corner of Cambridge and Tremont streets. I never paid much attention to this store because there's five or six others like it in the area, but one day I noticed that their window display was filling up with Nintendo games. The owner's son cleans and refurbishes NES, SNES, N64, Atari, and Playstation games and systems, selling them for fairly reasonable prices. Complete systems with two controllers and a game go for sixty dollars. He also sells the NES with just one controller and no game for forty-five dollars. All of the original Nintendo systems have had the 72 pin connector replaced and come with a thirty day guarantee. The prices of the games seem to reflect current eBay prices. Common NES and SNES games start at five dollars, and more rare or desirable items range from ten to twenty bucks. I don't know if his pricing system is perfect, but the Superior Market is certainly one of the only places in the area to buy this stuff. I'm not sure what the hours are at this place. One time I went down on a Monday afternoon and the doors were locked, so if you're coming from far away I would suggest calling first.

Superior Market
1190 Cambridge St
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 661-1918

Lanes and Games

Lanes and Games is a bowling alley on the eastbound side of route 2 at the Cambridge/Arlington line. They have a fun arcade on the first floor with about a half dozen pinball machines including Elvira's "Scared Stiff" and the Family Guy. The room glows pink from some lovely neon signs. At the back of the room is an air hockey table which plays well, but it's sometimes hard to get the puck out of the drop slot. For classic games they have Ms. Pac-Man, Arkanoid, Asteroids, and two machines which have multiple games in them. The multi-game machine on the left side of the room includes some 30 or 40 games. Among them is Tapper, which is one of my favorites. The machine on the right side of the room has Centipede, Millipede, Missile Command, and Let's Go Bowling. The Ms. Pac-Man machine has a speed-up chip in it, which makes the gameplay very fast. It's like you're starting on the third or fourth screen. The audio cut out for a few moments while my girlfriend was playing it, but the problem fixed itself shortly. The main knob on the Arkanoid machine seems a bit messed up but still functions fairly well. There's also a Terminator 2 machine, which is always fun for the rattling machine guns.



Along with plenty of bowling lanes, the first floor features a row of vending machines. They have the type of soda machine which was my favorite when I was a kid. The machine drops a cup down and fills it with chipped ice and soda like an automated bar-tender.



Lanes and Games
195 Concord Turnpike, Rte 2E
Cambridge, MA 02140
(617) 876-5533