If you’ve ever visited Amsterdam, you’ll know it’s a magical place. Mostly for the sights and the people of course, and definitely not the vast amounts of readily available weed. Whatever your views on recreational drug use anyway, it’s a great place to visit. Now, thanks to a a new dedicated gamer hotel, it just became even greater.
The Arcade Hotel in Amsterdam has been dubbed the “world’s first hotel for gamers” where guests can hang out, play retro classics as well as modern titles, and do all that other boring hotel stuff like sleep in luxury, eat delicious food, and drink half your weight in gin. If you’ve ever wanted to see if you’d still be any good at Duck Hunt after getting mashed on booze, this is the place to do it.
Located in the De Pijp area, the hotel has 36 rooms, each with a retro gaming console included – no extra charge. As if that wasn’t enough for you, you greedy devils, there’s a selection of comic books from the likes of DC and Dark Horse for you to read while you wait for your turn in one of the communal gaming lounges.
At the grand opening last week, guests were treated to an outdoor FIFA tournament, with street food and gin tasting. Hotel owner Daniel Salmanovich also spoke of plans to expand the number of rooms to 46 to accommodate yet more gaming enthusiasts from around the world.
So The Arcade Hotel looks all set to become a must see destination for anyone with a love of videogames… just remember if you go that there’s plenty of other great stuff to see and do in Amsterdam, as tempting as it would be to hole up and have a SNES marathon all weekend long.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.