Pizza Quest
By Zack Anderson, Fri., May 7, 1999
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This is one for the kids. Being a kid, I know that kids (including myself) like pizza and video games. And so, for the sake of fun and writing an article, me and my friend Michael set out for three restaurants where the main thing that they made was pizza and they all had arcades.
The three places were Chuck E. Cheese's, Peter Piper Pizza, and GattiTown. Chuck E. Cheese's had a pretty big arcade and kiddie playscape and so did Peter Piper. But both of their arcades were nowhere near as big as GattiTown's. GattiTown's arcade was absolutely huge! I bet they had 70 games or more, but that's just an estimate. The arcade even had two rooms. The second room was a lot smaller than the first, but the games were all very interactive and fun, though some were hard to control and some were just hard in general. They all cost 65¢ or more.
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Tickets at Chuck E. Cheese's
Chocolate Pizza at Gatti Town |
At GattiTown, you don't pay with quarters, nor do you pay with tokens. Instead, you pay for the games with cards. And I don't mean credit cards or debit cards. I mean GattiTown cards. Here's how it works: Outside the hallway to the arcade, there's a machine. On the right side there's a place where you can insert quarters or bills. On the left side there was a little monitor thingy that shows how much you've inserted and how many points you have. I'll get to the points soon. When you press the button, a yellow GattiTown card comes out. Once you have your card, you can go straight to the huge arcade. There's a little slot in each game and above it, another one of those monitor thingies. The monitor displays how much the game costs until you put your card in. Above that monitor thingy, you'll find two buttons: One says replay, the other says card return or something like that. The one that says card return or something obviously makes your card come out of the slot. The other button, the one that says replay, I'm not sure what it does, but here's my guess: If your card is already in and you press the button, it deducts the amount of money that game costs and the game restarts allowing you to play again. If you leave your card in a game when it's over, you get points on your card. Points are like tickets. Even though they are recorded on your card, you still get prizes for them.
Although the main thing was pizza, they had many other foods, like soup, bread rolls, salad, and other things. They even had a dessert pizza which I'm sure you won't find anywhere else. There were three flavors: chocolate, apple pie, and lemon. The lemon one was like sweet, lemon-flavored pie filling on an airy, puffy, light pizza crust. The chocolate one was like a chocolate croissant, except with the chocolate filling on the outside with lots of powered sugar on a light, airy, puffy, pizza crust. The apple pie one was like, well apple pie, except with the filling on the outside on a light, airy, fluffy, pizza crust. Heck, they all had light, airy, fluffy, pizza crusts!
There are three rooms to sit in. One's a regular room, one's a room with a super-huge big-screen TV where they show things like cartoons and The Three Stooges. The third room has three big screen TVs showing regular (boring) TV with too many commercials. At every table at there's a little black box with a speaker and two little knobs.
So now onto Peter Piper Pizza. I'd like to say right off the bat that Peter Piper was too crowded. The birthdays were a little crowded too, but it looked like the kids were having fun. The pizza had a good selection of toppings including everything you'd think would go on pizza, like black olives and mushrooms, but also they had more interesting things like pineapple and bacon! Their games were all pretty interactive and a lot of them didn't have screens. But the ones that did were most often violent, but not all of them. The "House of the Dead" game was way overrated. It was rated NC-17 (ages 17+)! I really think it should be rated T (13+). At least the blood was really red. At GattiTown, it was sort of pinkish purple.
On to Chuck E. Cheese's. Chuck E. Cheese's arcade was just like Peter Piper's except that it was a bit bigger. Michael liked the older games that they had, like The Simpsons. The only place to sit and eat was in this room with these crappy, messed up, stupid, cheesy robots "performing" this "show" where the robots just moved and the sounds of whatever they were "doing" came out of speakers. The drummer's drumstick didn't even hit the cymbal but you still heard it over the speakers. And they made fun of the Beatles!!!! It's outrageous! It makes my blood boil! But that's all in my opinion. Definitely for younger age groups -- like Michael says, "For ages 6 to 2." The pizza was nice -- puffy, not too gooey, not too hard -- and it had better and bigger toppings than most.
And that's pretty much it. So if you're looking for fun without the sun, these are the places to start.
