What is "barcade"

Barcade is a chain of bars with locations in the northeastern United States. The bars feature a combination of classic arcade games and draft beer from local and regional American microbreweries.

The original Barcade opened in 2004 in a former metal shop at 388 Union Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn and won immediate acclaim for its unique combination of vintage arcade games and rare American craft beers. The company is owned and operated by four long-time friends, brothers Kevin Beard and Scott Beard, Pete Langway and Paul Kermizian, who is also the director of the 2004 documentary film American Beer about the American craft beer industry. Twenty-five beers are available on draft and cask at each location and are chosen exclusively from American craft breweries. The selection leans towards locals from the northeast including Brooklyn Brewery, Sixpoint Brewery, Cape Ann Brewing, Dogfish Head, Victory Brewing, Climax Brewing, River Horse Brewing Company, and Captain Lawrence Brewing. Some examples of the arcade games originally featured at Barcade in Brooklyn are Tapper, Q*bert, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Robotron: 2084, Centipede, Super Mario Bros., 1943, Berzerk, Frogger, Rampage, Tetris and Star Wars.

In 2010, it was announced that two other Barcade locations would be opened by the owners, the first in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey, and the second in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Jersey City location opened on April 22, 2011. The Philadelphia location opened on October 10, 2011. In December 2012, it was reported that Barcade was expanding again, with a location in Manhattan planned for 2013, although that location was delayed and did not open until June 2014. A second Manhattan location was announced in spring 2014 and opened in October of that year. This one was different than the other Barcade locations, with a focus on classic fighters and games from the 1990s. In June 2015, a location was announced in New Haven, Connecticut and it opened the following spring.

Many world record holders and world-class gamers can be found at the Brooklyn location. There is a high score board on display and many of the names on it are well known world record holders. Plastic surgeon and Barcade regular Hank Chien set the world record in Donkey Kong with a score of 1,061,700 in March 2010. Chien can often be found at Barcade, practicing his skills on the Donkey Kong machine, wearing his operating scrubs. Thirty-eight-year-old George Leutz set the world record on Q*bert in February 2013 with a score of 37,163,080 after spending years practicing on the machine in Brooklyn's Barcade. Joshua Lombay set the world record for the 1984 Midway game Timber in June 2013 with a score of 9,767,550 after having discovered the game and playing for the first time at Barcade in Brooklyn.

Barcade first filed for a federal trademark of its name for use in bars and restaurants on July 20, 2007. and the mark quickly became well known, even in markets outside of where Barcade operated.

By 2012, the success of the Barcade chain had inspired other similarly themed bar and arcade combination businesses to open in other cities in the U.S., with many of these places citing the original Barcade location as their inspiration. New arcade bars directly inspired by Barcade opened in Las Vegas, Denver, Kentucky, California, Maine, Iowa, Vermont and Oregon. Two opened in Chicago in one year, one of them dubbing itself a "Beercade" and the other, called Emporium, being opened by a former Barcade employee. Very similar to Barcade, Emporium "follows that well-oiled model almost identically, serving up about three dozen classic arcade coin-ops plus numerous beers on tap." Soon, even regular corner bars started to add vintage arcade games in an attempt to cash in on the trend, and Details Magazine named arcade bars as one of the hot cocktail trends to watch in 2015.

A few of this new wave of bar and arcade businesses attempted to use the Barcade name, causing confusion as to who was operating these locations, but Barcade successfully defended its trademark in these instances. Other new arcade bars launched with similar names, figuring out ways to not infringe on the trademark. In addition to the "Beercade" in Chicago, a San Francisco company launched as "Brewcade" in 2014. The press and industry looked for other names to call these arcade bar hybrids, with the DNA Association branding them "social-tainment" and also referring to them as "game bars". Most began referring to them as "arcade bars", and Barcade is typically credited with having been the first "arcade bar".

A different type of trademark dispute occurred in July, 2016 when the Scottish Brewery Wellpark, makers of Tennent's Lager, launched a summer "Barcade" promotion involving custom arcade cabinets. The brewery renamed the promotion Tennent's Arcade upon learning of the Barcade mark.

Barcade launched its own app for the iPhone in May 2014.