About Questions for Rick Medina: Owner of Arcade Odyssey

We talked to Arcade Odyssey's owner Rick Medina, pictured here with just a portion of his vast video game collection. This image garnered lots of social media attention, including a run on the front page of Reddit.

When did Arcade Odyssey open?

December 27, 2011.

What inspired you to start this business?

I guess you can say I've been collecting games for over 25 years… I was always captivated by them, and I was also captivated by the technology behind them. It was a natural step to go from the collection to an arcade.

Do you have any fond memories of the arcade so far?

We've had quite a few tournaments. We've done cosplay. I really like when people come up and say, "thank you for building this."

What kind of games are in the arcade?

When you walk in the door, right off the bat we have pinball. We're the only pinball place left. There isn't pinball anywhere... We have dancing games. We have shooters. We also bring in imported games from japan, china and korea, giving players an opportunity to try a game they might never had a chance to play. We have pretty much everything you can imagine. We also have consoles like Xbox Ones, PS4's, Nintendo Switches & now even PC's.

Any favorites?

I love to bring in a lot of weird and obscure titles from Asian countries like Japan and China. I want to give customers a chance to experience games that they've never played before in their entire lives, Sometimes when I'm walking around, I'll even put in a few tokens and play some of the imports with everyone, just to open their eyes and show the players how much enjoyment playing something completely different can be. Who knows, you may find a new favorite game.

What else makes your arcade different?

We are the only arcade in the world that changes out at least four to eight games every single month. Many of them we do by customer request.

What's the future look like for Arcade Odyssey?

Eventually, we want to build the world's first video game museum, showcasing not only the history, but also showing systems and games from all around the world, combine that with an even larger arcade, a bar, and quite a few other surprises coming down the road - trust me you'll love them. We want to build something that's sort of like a nerd entertainment mecca. We even want to incorporate a comic book store in here. We're only on stage two of about seven, so keep watching and be amazed.

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Quick Facts About Arcade Odyssey

• Most games only cost one or two tokens
• Some arcade cabinets have live-streaming capabilities
• Domestic/imported console and PC gaming available
• The arcade sells imported Japanese snacks and drinks
• The arcade website keeps track of all the current games
• The arcade also participates in nationwide high score tracking

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Learn More

• Miami NewTimes named Arcade Odyssey "Best Arcade Miami 2012"
• Twitch streams many of the arcade's live events
• Check out photos of past events on Instagram
• More than 10,000 Facebook followers