Chatterbox Pub

[Room 34]

OK, since I bumped a 2-year-old thread with a completely unrelated subject as my way of talking about this, and no one bit, I guess I should start a new thread.

 

Anybody else been to the Chatterbox Pub in Minneapolis? I know it's been open for years but my wife and I just went there last night for the first time.

 

For those of you who don't know, it's a bar/lounge in south Minneapolis that's decorated like a '70s/'80s basement rec room. The last page of their menu is a list of about 200 Atari 2600 games, which you can rent (2 for $1).

 

My wife and I got our beers and pizza, and after eating we moved over to a large TV that had a 2600 Jr. hooked up. After some technical difficulties (at which point the waitress sternly warned me NOT to mess with the system while she rounded up another employee to figure it out), we were up and running. The two games we chose were Outlaw and Frogger. (Sure, they're not rare, but it's not like this was my only chance to play 2600... I just wanted to have some fun!)

 

I had to laugh at the fact that their Frogger cart was missing its label (!) and had a homemade label, with a drawing of a frog and a car, taped on.

 

The food was great. The Atari experience wasn't quite amazing (the Jr. was rather battered, and the RF switch made for a mediocre picture), but where else can you do this? (Seriously... is there anyplace else where you can do this?)

 

There was another TV nearby that had an NES under it, but I'm not sure if you can rent NES games there too or not.

[SteveW]

They had a 2600Jr.? If it was supposed to have a '70s to '80s look, the old Woody would have been more appropriate. But in the end, it doesn't really matter, since it's so cool that you can play Atari games while eating! That's a pretty unique idea for a restaurant.

[Nukey Shay]

I'm two blocks away from it Tho they really need decent controllers. There used to be two 4-switchers there, but they changed to a Jr. when the NES went in (dunno about the story behind that). And yeah, you can loan games there...old board games too.

[Room 34]

Tho they really need decent controllers.

No kidding! One of the joysticks they gave us didn't work well in the "up" direction. We decided I should be the one to use it, to make the games more fair (sort of like setting the difficulty switch). It was a pain for Frogger though!!!

 

I'm glad we didn't decide to try a paddle game...