Still more arcade fun on page 5! Playing Sonic games at home is great, so playing them at arcades should be fun too! All pages are a mix of new and old. However, if there's something about these consoles, they seem rather well made. Don't always rule out the older ones as being 'long gone'. For some reason, arcades/gaming areas can keep them around for quite some time. Also, when a game is retired (for whatever reason) it usually filters into the hands of collectors. Old arcade games are often sold to dealers of them, who warehouse them somewhere, and then sell to collectors to restore. The area or country where each item is found is listed in it's description.

Sonic Arcade Page 1 * Sonic Arcade Page 2 * Arcade Items Page 3 * Arcade 4 * Arcade Locator * Sonic Gear Main Sonic Arcade Page 6 *

Here's Sonic Blast Ball! It's an exciting new indoor amusement / arcade game for 2015 / early 2016. This game uses only 1 big, light-up special button to play. You use the button to open gates among the pegs & obstacles on the face of the game, so that the titular "blast ball" will fall down into one of the numbered slots (see them there with light up numbers) at the bottom. Where it falls depends on how many points you get. There's also a special ring (that moves), and if you can get the ball to fall through that, it will activate the "Bonus Wheel". You can see this special wheel there at the bottom, above the button. When the wheel spins, you use the button to try to stop it on a special space so that it will activate the jackpot of points (or tickets). This is a ticket dispensing machine, for places like Chuck E Cheese & Gameworks where the tickets can be exchanged for prizes. The console itself is nicely done, & looks fun/attractive. It has big art of Sonic Shadow & Amy at the top, with Sonic, Knuckles & Tails decorating the face-board of the game. The colored slots are also character-colore themed. All the art here is CG, including the logo at the base. Look at the button, it looks like an item/level feature or spring from the game. Want to read about the game? It has it's own page at Sonic Blast Ball, with a giant photo for you to see.

Here's Sonic Dash Extreme! If you liked Sonic Dash on a mobile phone game/app, this brings it 55 inches of added fun! It's an exciting new indoor amusement / arcade game for 2015 / early 2016. This arcade console uses a 55 inch flat screen turned on its edge to present the game. You can collect rings, avoid obstacles &, if you get to the end, even battle Eggman in this game. Getting far & fighting Eggman are the way to make it dispense tickets There are NINE play-able characters for you to choose from! However, just a screen won't do inside a colorful arcade, so this is detailed out with lots of fun features like rainbow-changing light up rings on either side of the base & screen, Sonic in ring/logo big plastic top, & Sonic, Tails & Knuckles on the base. The control is a big round pad with 4 directions and central button. Want to read about the game? It has it's own page at Sonic Dash Extreme, with a giant photo for you to see. Who are the playable characters in this game?

Here's an arcade machine made for "Sonic & Mario at Rio Olympics Summer Games". Of course, like every other como Olympics, the characters from both Sonic & Mario will be appearing on handhelds and home console systems. However, this year (2016) is the first that an Olympics theme arcade machine appears. As you can see, it has the logo at the top, Sonic vs Mario (back to back) CG graphic to the right, glitter/light up columns beside the screen & a vertical format. Look to the very right & left of the image at the height of the joystick: there are Sonic & Mario symbols on the little divider walls there. There are also corresponding red & blue lights to indicate who gets which controls. This arcade machine can be found at some "Dave & Busters" restaurants in the USA. (Adult-ish arcade with pool tables, air hockey, some consoles, & real restaurant food it's not like chuck e cheese) It's supposed to play somewhat like the above "Dash" game, but appears to have joysticks for 'other modes', so maybe you can select what you do. Photo & discovered by CrystalSonic Fan

Who is this scrubbing fellow? It's "Clean Carl" a character from Chuck E Cheese commercial skits. He likes his arcade games clean...and clearly also Sonic themed. A few times, in the background of the ad you can see the Sonic Blast Ball game. But, there's a version that's exclusive to Chuck E Cheese. Notice that it is different than the photo at the top of the page because this version has extra character art for Sonic, Knuckls & Tails all over the sides of the game. Curious about the commercial skit?

You can watch it & look for instances of the game at Clean Carl Chuck E Cheese. (It's supposed to be in a purposely cheezy 1950s old-fashion style--and it IS a skit in that's also like an ad...it's made for their in-house TV entertainment so it's not like a TV ad) All CEC locations should have this game, so if you want to play or do a photo of it head to CEC near you to try. Screen cap by & video discovered by CrystalSonicFan

Can you spot the Sonic content here? The Sonic Spinner game is in the background of this Chuck E Cheese ad. But, more than that, a Sonic arcade game of SOME kind is almost always in the background of all their ads! And it's placement isn't likely to be accidental. Creating an ad, they want the "most fun games" to always be in the camera's frame...so by including Sonic games, it shows how much popularity they believe the games could bring to Chuck E Cheese...even if they're not the star of the 'show' (ad). It's interesting to note, and interesting to look for as you watch their ads. Screen cap by CrystalSonic Fan

Here are 2 claw prize machines. They're not full of Sonic prizes, but they are Sonic & Sega branded. Look at the top for the logo, and modern Sonic. These are in the USA, and likely somewhat older. Sega does make all kinds of arcade /amusement equipment both Sonic and unrelated, so these make sense. (It is too bad though, that there ar not Sonic stuffed animals to win in them) The on in the background is empty, so it is turned off. These have branding on all 3 outward facing sides. This is located in a Walmart in Oklahoma in 2017. Photo by Rae Logan

This is what happens when a machine like the one above is taken apart. You get UFO / claw machine pieces to re-use. In this case, it's from a Japanese machine that got retired. They went a step further than the outward branded normal UFO catchers, and added Sonic & some little stars in a pink triangle to the control part of the 'arm'. You can see the circuit boards & things in there that would control the 3-claw dangly gripper thing. Isn't this an interesting sight to see, all by itself & with Sonic on it too? Photo discovered by @JapanAnimePosters Instagram

Here is another Sega & Sonic branded thing that doesn't contain Sonic items. It is a sticker dispenser & likely coin-machine holder. The top has a yellow half-circle with Sega & modern Sonic in it. It's too bad none of the stickers are Sonic themed, they're all just random unbranded stuff. It is likely that the whole bank of coin operated capsule machines here are a part of it. These are often also in arcades, dispensing little toys, candy and stickers. It's possible that the stickers (in a Sega situation) would have been Sonic related, but this is older now & has gone on to other uses. But, it still advertises Sonic a little. This is located in a Walmart in Oklahoma in 2017. Photo by Rae Logan

What are these colorful cards? They're "Fight Cards" for the Sonic the Fighters arcade game. Each character card has a moves-list on the back that tells you the buttons & sequence you need to get each special move/etc to activate. Each card has 1 character

so you'd have to collect them all. At the time of release, this type of thing would be very important for beating the arcade game because you had to pay for each play & there wasn't really the internet to just go and look up everything. All the instructions are in Japanese though, so you can't read them. They do make a cool collectible today though. But, how would these have been distributed? Photo discovered by: @JapanAnimePosters on Instagram

Now this is something unusual and interesting... It's not an arcade machine itself, but what looks like an ad possibly in a trade magazine, or as a leaflet for one. (A Trade Mag is where it only publishes to a specific industry--in this case it would be indoor gaming) The front shows the game itself, a little plastic car for the players to sit in. It has a sherriff badge art with banner replacing the star ring & Sonic has been given a police hat in his stock art. There's a headline, and a blurb about the game. The other page/side has various screen shots

illustrations of the little animals you find in the game (spot Eggman too), & more cop-hat Sonic. It also shows the interior 'console' of the game with steering wheel & buttons to control. The captions & paragraphs must tell about how it works. The ad itself was discovered as it was being sold.

Here is a classic 1990s Sega UFO Catcher machine from Japan. But...it's not IN Japan! Someone, somehow, got this giant heavy machine into America where it now sits in a game shop.

Where...it still clearly works, as it is full of prize toys to try and win. The paper instructions there on the glass explain how it works. Stringy Sonic the plush is sitting on the machine to show the size. Plushes like this one (or, likely, this exact one) came from this exact machine when it was new. It's hard to see at the top above the word UFO Catcher (written in such an 80s type font) is the Sega logo. The prize doors also both have Sonic on them. Why is it pink? No one's ever been able to explain it, but it seems a majority of them were, at Segaworld, at the time. This is an interesting vintage piece of history type machine, and a good call-out to Sega quality because it still works. Photo by TheShinzNite