Flynn's Arcade - Nerd "D"

Well it's that time of the week again; time to get your "Nerd" senses rolling!  I figure what better way than to talk about a video game arcade!  And I'm not talking about just any kind of arcade either, but an arcade that epitomizes and could easily define the atmosphere of everyone's favorite decade, The 80's!  That's right, since this is a Nerd "D" article, I'm talking about Flynn's!

Summary: Flynn's Arcade was founded by video game designer Kevin Flynn and made its first appearance (how cool is that?  An arcade making an appearance!) in the 1982 Disney classic film, TRON.  It was shown early in the film as a raging hot spot, with some fantastic tunes, for anyone who loved video games.  Flynn's resurfaces and reappears later, in TRON: Legacy of course.  Kevin's son, Sam, following up on a beeper page from the arcade, wanders in and powers everything up again one last time, complete with Journey's "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" blaring in the background.  Oh, and we also learn that it was home to a super-secret lab that Kevin Flynn used to enter and exit the high-tech world of the Grid.  Super-secret lab?  Sold!

Yeah, we know it's 80s cheese, but it's Journey and Steve Perry. Color us nerDs!

Why Flynn's was a GREAT addition at Disneyland: Recently, it's hard to find a good video arcade around.  Because of the home video game market and its soaring over the past couple of decades, and the way video games have evolved, no-one even needs to leave their house anymore to get their video game fix.  But for hardcore nerDs like us, there will always be that key factor we'll forever miss about going into arcades; the atmosphere.  And Disney did a great job bringing that into Flynn's.  What could be better than a group of people coming together, milling about, and playing old-school video games?  Think it can't get any better?  Well it can!  They've also done a fantastic job of matching up Flynn's with it's big-screen counterpart by giving it a kickin' playlist of great music.  We've heard Journey, Boston, Foreigner, Michael Jackson, and many more while hanging around inside Flynn's.  Heck, even a-ha's "Take On Me" sounds awesome while you're eating power pellets and chomping on ghosts!  The awesome tunes just make me want to hang around and stay inside as long as I can, whether I'm playing video games or not!

What games do they have?: Tons, and they're all classics!  Punch-Out and Galaga.  Donkey Kong and Centipede.  Dig Dug and Red Baron.  Pac Man and the Missus... need more?  Okay.  How about the big bad game itself, TRON?  Not enough?  They even have a copy of Kevin Flynn's Space Paranoids from the flipping movie!  NerDing out is not even an option at this point.  And that's barely scratching the surface; not even half way done!  In fact, how about I keep the rest a secret so you can go check it out for yourself?

If you're a nerD like us, and love video games and The 80's, there's simply no way you can say "no" to Flynn's.  It has everything that made The 80's awesome inside it's walls, and it's bar-none one of our favorite hangout spots at The Disneyland Resort.  It comes with our highest Nerd "D" recommendation.  Be sure and check it out on your next trip if you haven't already.  And if you have already been, it's about time to head on back, don't you think?