New arcade bar brings fun and games to downtown SLO. Take a look inside
There’s a new type of bar in downtown San Luis Obispo — one where gaming takes center stage.
BA Start Arcade and Tap Room opened on Higuera Street in late 2022, offering customers a place where they can not only grab a bite to eat or a drink, but also enjoy a slew of retro-style arcade games and activities.
“I just love the community around games and gamers and bringing that together with, you know, drinking some beers and eating some good food,” owner Rob Peterson told The Tribune. “It’s each of those things combined. A lot of fun. It’s a really good time.”
The concept isn’t entirely new. Peterson said there are a number of similar establishments around Los Angeles and the Bay Area, as well as out of state, but none on the Central Coast.
The name of the business was inspired by the The Konami Code, the video game cheat code that provides extra lives by pressing a sequence of buttons on the controller. In the game “Contra,” for example “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start” gives the player 30 extra lives.
“I‘ve heard it a hundred times, and I fully agree with it: SLO needed a place like this,” Peterson said. “There was nothing like this in SLO, so it really is needed.”
Besides classic bar fare like beer and pretzel bites, BA Start Arcade offers a slew of paninis, salads and wraps, as well as ciders, hard teas, seltzers and kombucha. Non-alcoholic drinks are also available.
The game menu is the real gem of the establishment: from retro-style pinball machines, pool tables and ping-pong to arcade classics like Street Fighter and Ms. Pac-Man, BA Start has something for all ages (kids are allowed in the arcade until 8 p.m., when it switches to a 21-and-older establishment).
The games use tokens, typically costing from 50 cents to a dollar depending on the game.
Peterson is particularly proud of an “incredibly rare” six-player X-men arcade cabinet he acquired for BA Start.
“They’re in museums,” he said. “We had to scour the Earth to find ours and we found one — and we’re so happy we did. It’s just a great game. A lot of history with it.”
One thing that sets BA Start apart from other similar barcades will be its game tournaments. Peterson said he thought it would be important to add a competitive element to the gameplay so that people can compete at specific games to become the ultimate champion.
To aid in that, he commissioned a special arcade scoreboard — “the same as you would find in the movie ‘The Karate Kid,’” — that will feature a bracket of players’ names as they participate in tournaments.
After crowning a champion, Peterson said the barcade would reach out to other arcade bars in the state to challenge their top players to a “Tournament of Champions” to be held in the SLO spot.
Peterson also has big plans to partner with online personalities to host other specific game programs and challenges in the coming months as he continues to build the business.
In all, the first two months “have been amazing,” he said, noting that the local response to the barcade has been very supportive.
“Now we have a plan set for the future,” he said. “I’m just so excited to get into it because that’s when the magic really starts to happen.”
BA Start Arcade and Taproom is located at 647 Higuera St. in San Luis Obispo. It is open from 3 p.m. to midnight, Tuesday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday.
For more information, contact the business at 650-336-4083 or visit its website at bastartarcadebar.com.
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