BARCADIA – WTF is going on? (Sept 2023 update)
31 August 202331 August 2023|
GeorgeBARCADIA – WTF is going on? (Sept 2023 update)|
62 Comments|
15:42
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It’s a joke for a place that small to have several machines malfunctioning, I’ve known arcades with 100 machines where there’d be maybe one with a fault. Any place worth their salt will go through all the machines in service/test mode at the start or end of day, it takes literally 2 minutes per machine. Check the video, audio, buttons and coin slots. Most faults are just basic maintenance and you keep parts on hand to repair on-site. Sticks, buttons, coin mechs, spare speakers, degauss wand etc. 95% of it is could be done by someone with basic DIY skills and the rest you have somebody on call to get down and fix it, or at least hide it in a back room until then.
The machines being old is no excuse, they are not the kind of machines with big maintenance requirements. The only thing I’ve seen in videos where I’d think there was even mild concern is a stand-up Daytona USA as they have a steering wheel with a force feedback thing and the pots need adjusting or replacing now and then. It’s just complete laziness.
fully agreed mate. unless a CRT goes then the things that can go wrong with these machines are both trivial and easily remedied. you’re also right, the “faulty” to “working” ratio is a joke. then again, the whole place is a joke with the punchline being that everyone else paid for it so why would we rightly expect NN to give a shit about it. he’s just playing at being a human, once again, with nothing on the line.
The machines aren’t theirs, so they’re probably forbidden from screwdrivering them.
However, you’d think they’d have a couple of machines in storage to swap in/out as required.
Move an arcade cab, are you serious? that would cause Peter to get a little sweaty.
yes, come on, folks. the most peter can be expected to do is fill a 4×4″ piece of flooring over the space of about 2 weeks.
Probably had someone else doing the work, he just made a video to look like he had done it.
sam’s dad, from the sounds of it, while he pissed about misunderstanding everything in the background
From reading between the lines, I think it was a joint venture between him and Sam, and for whatever reason, that relationship is now dead, and he is happy for the place to literally burn to the ground first before he puts any more effort or money from his side into it. That would give a more reasonable explaination for his lack of tweets / insta/ facebook / youtube pics or vids on the place. Well, its either that, or he is even more lazy than I thought. It’d also explain the “get it right up you Sam – Im with Octy now” phase he is showing off to the max…..
Also means backers can kiss goodbye to the 25k that was spent on the place. If it ever was.
Is he back with Octy now?
yes i would imagine so mate. then again what WERE they ever going to get for that money anyway ? it was always a case of “please fund me as i want to start a business and i don’t want to pay for it”. more fool those who put money into it ! one can only presume that he’s back with octavius but god alone knows. i can’t imagine sam (his previous mrs) would be impressed seeing them cavorting about in videos together if he wasn’t and she’s not been mentioned or seen for ages so, yes, presumably so.
Is Sam the one he had the kids with who appear in the early videos?
no i think that’s his original partner, sam is the person who owns slice&dice and who is a part owner of barcadia (at least according to companies house)
Which is why we needed full disclosure about the relationship between Sam and Peter. It’s one thing for a married couple who have a strong relationship to start a business and another for someone like Peter to do it.
I see the ferret has put up a video with Octavius. It’s painful to watch and explains nothing.
He was bickering with her when she left the rat out of the cage. Explained a lot to me. She’s just too crazy and unpredictable.
she’s just an annoying, entitled, narcissistic prick who acts like a fucking child, mate. a useless arsehole of a thing.
I was watching video about the FTX scandal today. Low and behold the main guy is a vegan, just shows what unethical tossers they can be.
arseholes come in many forms mate !
True, it’s just the holier than thou attitude some of these vegans can have. There was a study into people who publicly virtue signalled, the results weren’t positive put it that way.
“Signaling virtuous victimhood as indicators of Dark Triad personalities.”
oh don’t get me wrong, i wasn’t making excuses for them i just meant that there’s fucking dickheads everywhere nowadays. it’s unreal !
“Male feminists” are some of the worst, basically they do it to get in with the girls and then treat them like crap.
yes mate it seems they are very much like this !
On the button as usual George – we all knew where this was going to be fair. But hay ho – what does this weasel NN care – he didn’t waste his own money after all and I’m sure this mutant is pulling a plan together for his next grift. My bet would be money to retrain as a MH counsellor so he can set up a new YT channel where he can use his new found skills on Octavius and live stream their sessions. You could donate to the cause throughout on a £1 by tear basis – and they could no doubt milk the simps like the metaphorical cattle they are! 👍
Yes… The shareholders. Blaming Companies House. Yet they were able to successfully file this:
“22 Jun 2023 Confirmation statement made on 12 May 2023 with no updates”
No updates?
I mentioned in one of your Barcadia videos that Peter Leigh was allegedly selling retro hardware he had received from his YouTube audience.
There’s a UK Play TV show called ‘Retro Electro Workshop,’ akin to Bargain Hunt but centered on retro hardware like radios and computers. In Episode 4, titled ‘Commodore 64,’ Mr. Leigh appears in his packed-to-the-brim retro shop. Two bargain hunters walk away with a Commodore 64 and a Speccy for £180.
The question that lingers is how he amassed such a collection of hardware?
Episode can be watched here:
https://uktvplay.co.uk/shows/retro-electro-workshop/series-1/episode-4/6331924803112
NN is about 3 1/2 minutes in
An addendum to my previous post: It seems that the Nostalgia Nerd Shop featured in the Retro Electro Workshop episode was staged for the show (Although, I’m uncertain what to believe anymore). This assertion is made by Peter Leigh in his latest YouTube video, titled: I’m Sorry
Check out his latest video which dropped today, where he explains his absence and lack of recent content. He shares his plans and even provides an office cleanup and tour, complete with appearances by Octivius and rats, all aimed at maximizing his audience engagement. Is the absence of new content solely attributable to Barcardia’s inevitable failure?
No doubt that he lurks around here given the timing of that video. Hi Peter!
You want some more?
kickstarter funds ? i’d imagine he does, yes !
Incredible, his “I’m Sorry” video still manages to be filled with shilling for desks and office furniture.
Looks like he’s wearing a Retro Replay wrist band. Good on him for supporting local businesses.
Read a google review that said it works out to 50p a credit for the games. Shouldn’t they be free as they are there to lure people in? Or am I being thick here?
yes, they should be free, or £1 for 5 credits or something like that. the whole enterprise just screams cowardice, right down to the “we’re a cashless business” signs all over the shop, placed there presumably in a “please don’t rob us” kind of way (robberies are very common in that area). charging people 50p a pop to play ancient games that you can basically run on any phone these days is a proper piss take and it wasn’t going to be long before the novelty wore off and word got around. as i said during the campaign, retro replay is just up the road. it’s a PROPER arcade with an entry fee and then free play on everything after that. Barcadia should at least have offered free plays of machines with the purchase of food which, incidentally, is also massively overpriced. the thing is, i don’t imagine for one second that peter would pay these prices himself if he went to a venue, so why expect others to do so? the menu prices are a joke, the drinks prices are and joke and the arcade machine prices are a joke. sadly, no-one is laughing. aside from their friends who skew the google reviews for them, everyone i’ve spoken to who’s been there said it felt devoid of atmosphere, effort and love and spending time in there is just a money pit with nothing to show at the end of it. sounds about right !
it’s £12 for a day ticket/wristband for Retro Replay. that’s 11 hours of gaming, with almost 100 machines that are all free once you make the initial purchase. that’d get you 24 credits in barcadia to play on, what is it, 7 or 8 machines if they’re working ? for those of us familiar with arcade machines, especially ones with the dip switches set to high difficulty, that’s really not going to get most people very far, especially casual players. everything about the Barcadia business model is shit.
The only way one of these arcade bars work is with a flat free to play and free play machines.
Except I’d say no, the way these bars work is with decent food as the margins are high on food. But they have some questionable food. The arcades are a bit of a nostalgia trip which is soon satisfied.
shit food there though
True. It’s “junk” food as they can’t really compete with the Board game place. But if the door were open and the machines free to play who is going to bother buying a drink and food?
Most places with machines charge an entrance fee. But Barcadia doesn’t so they charge for the machines. I think it is fair enough but keeping vintage machines going isn’t cheap.
it’s not that expensive unless a monitor pops, really. most of the components are not hard to get hold of these days, more or less. sure if you’re talking a galaxy force II sit down machine then it’s different, but most people have never even seen one of them.
Yep, it was specifically the CRT I was on about. When I’ve been to shows it’s often been the CRT that’s thrown a wobbly and taken the machine out of action.
to be honest mate i know it’s not what most “aficionados” would want BUT if i had such a place i would probably just get some nice NEW cabinets and put pc systems inside them. far easier to maintain in general especially the displays. you could also have nice wide machines with widescreen monitors that featured changing bezels showing the controls for each game etc. i think the benefits outweigh the negatives, at least for me, and i’d be happy to play on such machines and i’m an anally retentive freak. with mame you can get games looking great and it IS possible to capture that CRT style effect through using the inbuilt filters and distortion settings etc to get curvature and colour bleed etc. i think that’s what they should have done. i think, unless you’re actually starting a FULL retro arcade, that’s what anyone should do. even build a CANNONBALL machine, perhaps, and get widescreen outrun ! also a pc to run that stuff would run much less “hot” than an old arcade machine, which do suck up a fair bit of power for all the parts. CRT monitors for arcade systems are expensive, dangerous and they do go on the blink from time to time. it’s not common at all in NEW monitors, but i don’t imagine for a second that the machines barcadia have were reconditioned to that level before being put out on the floor.
Personally if I did such a place I’d be using arcade machines which you can’t emulate so easily due to controls. Games with steering wheels, flight sticks, light guns etc..
Well, if you have like 50-100 cabs to play then even with a few broken there’s plenty of choice. Plus that is the sole focus of most arcades. But Barcadia can’t make its mind up what the focus is, is it games, the food or the booze?
i think the main thing in a drinking hole is the atmosphere. i don’t have much experience of them but that’s what i’d imagine. peter has zero idea how to create a welcoming environment, and that’s evidenced by the fact that he chooses to put himself in it. an absolutely repellent person !
Well, he’s no Russ Abbott that’s for sure.
The reports from people who visited firsthand, reporting back of faulty Arcade Machines was far from the publicity the venue needed.
The Hospitality business ideas can be very profitable for entrepreneurs, IF they know what they are doing, have carefully researched the market and venue location.
Sadly, The Nerd isn’t an entrepreneur, is he?
He’s no more a hospitality entrepreneur, than he is a video game book writer.
Anyone thinking the very people who are looking for light, ‘entertainment’ content, will be the very same people, you can generate sales of poorly conceived books from or entice into a themed bar, absolutely miles and miles from where they are…
Really does deserve the failures unfolding before them.
We all knew Ashens wouldn’t be seen at the venue.
i know a few people who’ve seen these machines malfunctioning or not performing as expected, and that’s just not good at all. when you consider how few of them there are, they should ALL be in tip top condition. there’s no excuse for it and if they don’t know how to repair or maintain them then they need to hire someone who can. nostalgia nerd’s idea of “fixing stuff” seems to be to go on a livestream, tell people the issue and beg for help. sadly, that doesn’t really work in the real world and i expect he’s starting to understand that by now or, at least, he should be. no, he’s not an entrepreneur, he’s a witless, pin-eyed grifter who’s been lucky up until now mining away at a cynical and easy seam but that’s now run dry and he’s got nothing much to show for it. the whole Barcadia thing has been a complete joke which, let’s be honest, we all knew it would be. seems he’s already bored of it and they’re basically now going to start winding it down.
If I had a feee bet, Id say they got the arcade cabs for free on the understanding The Arcade Club got between half and all of the revenue from them – a win win for both sides. Barcadia get a supply of cabs for free, and the Arcade Club get a revenue stream from excess unused stock. That would explain the zero interest in maintaining the machines – as long as they look good to passers by, everything is okay…..
Vegan food is a niche and a bit of a virtue signal bandwagon that seems have started to fade out. A friend of mine was trying to be vegan, but he had a cholesterol test and he found while he was low in the bad cholesterol he’s also low in the good stuff. So he’s having more eggs and stuff now. I mentioned I stopped having margarine ages ago and have butter now and he didn’t seem to see the problem with that.
I think there’s also a bit of a rebellion going on against people trying to get us to eat bugs.
i think there’s also a rebellion against grifting, pin-eyed arseholes. i heard that somewhere lately.
I’m glad you addressed those Google reviews, I did think there was something not quite right about them. You’ve got to ask yourself – like him or not – with the profile NN has, why isn’t Barcadia being blasted from every single social media account he’s got? Why aren’t we seeing endless photos, videos and feel-good posts about the runaway success it’s been? Let’s face it, ever since he opened his “cave”, old Neil hasn’t stopped banging on about it and fair play, I’ve not been, but it does look like he’s made a good go of it and he’s got a steady stream of people coming to visit. Barcadia? Haven’t heard a peep since it opened. One crappy Instagram video of what looked like a few people looking bored in the venue on what I presume was its launch night and… that’s it. How has someone with such a massive YT subscriber base not posted a single video about Barcadia since it opened? Or any of his fellow travellers? Almost like he’s… ashamed of it? Nah, that can’t be it, surely…
the nostalgia nerd basically fell into youtube because he thought it’d be easy. he focused on low hanging fruit and presented his content in a cynical and contrived manner to enthrall as many bauble brained viewers as possible. however, as with the rest of them, the well started to run dry. the notion of being seriously famous/monied as a result of simply uploading crap, wikipedia cribbing videos to youtube just wasn’t looking like it was going to come true. however, as we can see from all his failed business endeavours prior to his stint as a vampire on youtube, he’s not really very good at ANYTHING. he doesn’t know how to run a bath, let alone a pub, and they are now facing an issue caused by putting hubris before reality. i genuinely think he thought it’d be swamped with his wacky and zany youtube compadres (who actually love one another and don’t fully hate each other because they’re all part of the dwindling blob at the centre of the gaming venn diagram and are all trying to monetise the scraps that are left). the only person they’ve managed to get to tweet with any gusto about it is kim justice, whose star has well and truly waned, too. i don’t think he’s ashamed of it, he’s just got no clue how to run it, no clue what he’s doing wrong, no clue how pissed off the majority of right minded people are with him and no clue about how to make a go of it going forward. not making enough profits ? simple, just take another day off the opening schedule. sigh. it was always going to be thus, though. he’s a little twat that exists solely thanks to the kindness of people not clued up enough to find anything better to watch.
Yes, that’s exactly right. You’ve now reminded me of that video of him fannying about with a bit of flooring for bloody ages doing a task that should have taken a half-competent person about 3 seconds. He’s gone into the hospitality business – one of the toughest ones going, with incredibly tight margins, at a time when it’s experiencing an all-time market low – and expected to be raking it in with minimal effort (like his YT channel). Rude awakening, I suspect… though, as you say, he probably hasn’t got the self-awareness to realise that HE’S the problem.
it’s the same with all these people. they’re narcissistic twats who clearly think they’re earmarked for better things than a “normal 9 to 5”. they’re cunts, mate, the fucking lot of them. i’ve absolutely had it with them all, i’m sick fed up of their duplicitous displays online and off. they’re only about self preservation and self interest, that’s it, and they’ll stop at nothing to make some kind of show of themselves so that people will continue to put coins in the meter. most of them haven’t produced any content in ages, and i’d argue that most of them have never even produced anything worth watching in the first place. it’s the sort of thing a listless teenager might watch whilst waiting for a plane with his parents then completely forget about as soon as it’s finished. these people are not celebrities or personalities, they’re empty, vapid, boring cunts. that’s the long and short of it. i am, to be quite frank, stunned that it’s taken people this long to realise but a quick glance at any of their social blade statistics will show that things are really not going well for the majority of them. good !
I hadn’t really heard of the Nostalgia Nerd before any of this stuff and watching some of his videos, it’s so apparent the knowledge is baseline and just reading from other places, convinced he’s the authority on whatever it is before shilling for a cryptocurrency or some mobile game. Although he’s not as desperate as Top Hat Gaming Man who has resorted to ‘remaking’ all his previous videos which amounts to little more than slightly updated scripts and editing, raking in a pittance of views compared to the older versions of the same videos.
same with most of them, mate, they just think it’s “easy” to do what they do but that’s just because the baseline has been set so low. that’s mainly why i don’t really watch retro gaming content unless it’s by a few friends who have a genuine air about them and i just watch those videos because those people are personable and i feel the joy they feel about the things they’re talking about. most “retro” gamers on the internet just sit in front of a wall of games, rig up some led’s and rehash the same content over and over. just like you’re saying about that fat jowled, wario faced cunt, top twat. he’s one of the very worst and he’s already had his repellent lump of a wife regurgitate his content once already. clearly wasn’t enough now he’s going back for seconds himself. i bet their house fucking STINKS !
that’s genuinely how fucking useless these folks are, though. “it worked once, i’ll just keep doing it over and over”. pathetic.
The last mention of Barcadia I saw on any socials was a couple of weeks back, when Kim Justice was in Norwich on a pub crawl and tweeting all about it. There was tweeting about Retro Replay as well. I won’t spoil it for you, but I think you’ll enjoy it (if you haven’t seen it already).
Who would have thought opening a vegan retro gaming themed bar during the worst financial crisis during living memory was a good idea. Every picture we have seen is the place empty, even the “packed” quiz night only had a few punters. They must have gotten a free or next to free rent.
indeed mate. as i said in the video i’ve been speaking with some, let’s say, “insiders”, and this is the general jist of things, indeed. I can’t go public about that stuff, not yet at least, as the people involved don’t want to be named and to reveal what they’ve told me in full is as good as doing so. i will continue to investigate and present facts when i find them, though, as and when i can. it’s looking like it’ll not be open much longer at this rate, though.
Maybe Peter got a payday loan from some of his old acquaintances?
Except that wouldn’t be possible. Peter doesn’t have a job so he can never have a payday.