Muzeum Gier Wideo (Krakow Arcade Museum)

For Eastern Europeans, arcades elicit a healthy dose of nostalgia—perhaps even more so than people from other places with a history of arcades.

In Eastern Europe, arcades survived well into the 2000s as a viable business model. Often in the form of mobile arcades that drove around to smaller towns in the summer. The Krakow Arcade Museum brings all of that back to life with a massive collection of over 100 vintage machines.

In communist Poland, a single arcade machine could cost as much as a new car and would cost about .50 Euros to play a machine. Despite that, they were massively popular. Most machines paid themselves off within a month and went on the make a profit after that. 

A lot of arcade machines lasted well into the 2000s in dedicated arcades or on game trucks that drove to smaller towns and villages.

Today, the Krakow Arcade Museum has collected over 100 games ranging from classics, such as Pac man, to newer games, such as Dance Dance Revolution. At the arcade, you pay per hour of play. This way you do not have to worry about coins or credits, but can just play whatever you want.