This isn’t your grandfather’s arcade.
Leveled Up VR is a new spin on an old business model: a central place for gamers to gather and have fun. However, instead of people lining up to place their quarters on the arcade to hold their place in line, people are crowding around to watch their friends fight zombies or race Indy Cars, in an experience that’s about as close to the real deal as you can get.
Jake Franklin, part owner of the new venture at 18 N. Park Street, says the response in the short time they’ve been open has already been great. “We’ve got two racing sims, two zombie survival stations, two arcades, and five PCs,” he says. “We’ve been open for about three hours and the place is full.”
The PCs come with Steam Cafe, which allows players to log into their own account and play games they’ve purchased, or they can play the pre-installed games, such as the popular first-person-shooter, CS:Go.
“If there’s a game that we don’t have that they want to play, we tell them to let us know, and if we get enough requests for it, we’ll purchase it,” Franklin tells Sapulpa Times on a bustling opening day.
Though it’s been around for a while, the Virtual Reality experience will be a whole new world for some people. The player may be sitting stationary in a chair, when they put on the goggles and grip the wheel in the racing game, they feel like they’re in the driver’s seat of a real Daytona 500 race. They can look to the left or right out their car windows. They can feel like they’re going 100 mph around hairpin turns. When they crash into the wall of tires because they didn’t turn sharply enough, they will feel like it really happened. The experience is real enough that the managers recommend a playtime of no more than fifteen to thirty minutes for novice VR gamers, because of the vertigo effect it can have. “We’ve been watching, and fifteen minutes or so is about right for someone who is brand new to VR,” says co-owner Mike Alverson, who helped Franklin get the idea off the ground.
Aside from VR and PCs, there are a couple of multi-game arcade units that contain classics like Mario Kart 64 and Mortal Kombat. Eventually, they’re going to have a custom-made world for Dungeons & Dragons at a table they’ve set aside for the game.
Veronica Rogers brought in her 14-year-old son Max and three of his friends to play games on the first day. Max enjoyed himself, saying that he was pleased with the choice of games and that the VR experience was as good as he was hoping for. “The graphics are great,” he said.
Veronica Rogers said she was more thrilled that the kids have a place to go, and that it would be available later in the day, with Leveled Up listing their hours as open until midnight. “It’s amazing,” she said. “Sapulpa kind of dies down after 6 pm,” she said.
Alverson says the plan was always to not only offer a great entertainment option for Sapulpa, but to offer it later in the day. “We imagine someone who gets off work, they want to have dinner and run a few errands, but they still have time to come by and play for a while,” he said.
Initially, Alverson said they were expecting an older crowd, but has been pleased with the amount of kids coming through. “They’re having a great time, and they’re saying they want to come back,” he said.
Leveled Up VR offers daily passes for $10.00 all-you-can-play, or you can pay a $50.00 monthly membership fee and come play as much as you want. “We’ve had people buying the monthly memberships already,” Alverson said. And the store is attracting the attention of other modern-day arcades and eSports venues. “There’s a store in Pryor that we’re talking to. We’re going to do online tournaments with them (without leaving the area),” Alverson said. “They’ll have five guys playing at their store, and we’ll have five guys playing here, all in real time.”
Dungeons & Dragons is a popular tabletop game that Franklin says is currently recruiting for players, and that they hope to have up and running soon. “Come and talk to us, tell us you want to play. We’re currently looking for Dungeon Masters,” he said.
The new store is open now, Tuesday through Saturday, from 12:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.
