Creative ArcadesReviews of creative-arcades.com

Purchased the 3 sided cocktail table with 4500 games directly from Creative Arcades. Pre sale support directly from the owner was impressive and convinced me to take the plunge. Shipping and delivery was top notch. Delivered when promised and packaged very well. The cabinet itself seems very sturdy and well put together. Gaming hardware (Joystick, buttons, trackball etc.) seems to be of good quality. Computer hardware is a weak link here and appears to be many years old and under powered. The software is where things really fail miserably as it appears extremely outdated, hacked together and is very difficult to navigate. Working games seem to be very hit or miss. Major titles like Golden Axe or Donkey Kong do not work out of the box. Post sale support is a real issue and trust me, you are going to eventually need it based on the current state of the software. At first, calls were returned and solutions promised. Sadly they were never actually acted on. Follow up calls initiated by myself were very frustrating as support never had any record or knowledge o]as to why I was calling requiring me to go back to square one. After a few additional calls, they just stopped returning calls all together. On my final call to the company, speaking directly to the owner, he could not have been less interested in hearing my concerns, becoming somewhat irate and rushed me off the call. As mentioned in other reviews here, a save game/high score upgrade was also promised as a free update that, 2 years later, has never materialized. As I write this review, all of my initial software issues from almost 2 years ago still haven’t been addressed.

Overall, I had a pretty disappointing experience with Creative Arcades. I will say that the gentlemen who delivered the machine with the white glove delivery were very communicative on when they were delivering the machine. They were also very helpful when answering questions about the machine while they were here. I did find a couple of the customer service reps very helpful over email. My first complaint has to do with the games. I got the highest number available (6200) which sounds like a lot but there are several duplicates, like Japenese versions. Why would I want Japanese versions? I also thought some of the games would be newer, like the Golden Tee games. But there were all 80s and 90s. When I asked about newer versions, I got the answer that I should have gone with the 4500 game card which had more versions of Golden Tee. Why would the 4500 have games that the 6200 wouldn't? Even then, the 4500 were all still older versions. When I enquired about returning the machine, my questions were ignored. And when I followed up, they would not answer ALL the questions. Almost like they were delaying answering my questions so that we would go over the 30 day return period. And when I asked about returning the machine BEFORE I bought it, I was told that I would be responsible for the return shipping costs. But AFTER I bought it, I was informed that I was responsible for the shipping AND a 20% restocking fee. It made it so that was going to be out $2000 by returning it. At the end, we decided to simply keep it which is how creative arcade wants it. So yeah, I feel deceived and disappointed.

Full disclosure, this review is purely based on our customer experience as we never received our machine. We placed our order for the arcade roughly a week after Thanksgiving. We knew when ordering the machine we would be lucky to receive it by Christmas but we had no idea the ordeal that was starting. Communication from the seller was good at first. It started to go a bit sideways when we got a text about 2 weeks before Christmas that stated that all orders made on Black Friday would arrive before Christmas. Roughly a week later we reached out for an update on our order and got the exact same text as if it were just copied and pasted. We already knew we had placed our order after Black Friday so that wasn’t much help. All communication after that was initiated by us. We reached out weekly for 4 straight weeks and kept getting excuses. This started to make us nervous. Finally we reached out asking for a firm delivery date. Their response was crickets. Not a single response from the 3 employees included on the email for 24 hours. Finally, I emailed to cancel our order and demanded a refund. Surprisingly we received a call almost immediately. They were very kind about the situation and agreed to refund our money. I won’t speculate on any issues on the sellers end. What I will say is that if they had been open and honest about what was going on they likely still would still have had a sale and I certainly wouldn’t have written this review. The only reason I have them 2 stars is because of the kind woman who reached out after my final email. My advice, if you decide to purchase from this company, is to immediately initiate communication and get them to commit to a delivery date.

I bought the 4 player thin standup with 4500 games. I asked Brian in August if the game system saved high scores. He said yes, so I made my purchase. It turns out this was not correct as soon as you exit the game to go to another your scores are gone. I have emailed this company every month for the past 4 months and they keep telling me next month we will send you the correct chip that will allow you to save high scores. However this has not happened. Super disappointed I spent this much money and still have no resolution to this issue. The physical product is nice and well built