(techno music) - Abari is a play on words for Bar and Atari, right?

I can't take credit for that.

My girlfriend is the one who basically is like you should call it Abari.

(upbeat music) You know, originally we were off of North Davidson Parkwood.

We opened there in about 2016.

- I heard about it when it first opened years ago.

There was a post that a barcade was coming.

(upbeat music) - Late summer 2020 I really started to look for other locations.

So I got lucky.

A friend of mine was like, hey my friend's a leasing agent for this building.

He's like, you should go take a look at it.

So I kind of came in here and just from the beginning, like it, this is completely different in here now, but that kind of like helped get my creative juices going a little bit more.

And you know, from there, I signed the lease and got to open the new spot here in Belmont.

Rhythm Game is kind of like DDR, Guitar Hero.

You know, you're listening to music and you're kind of matching a beat.

So this is one of our newest rhythm games.

We have to import these from Japan, which is sometimes not the most fun process.

It takes a while, but you're not gonna be able to play this many places in the US.

(upbeat music) - I'm 36.

I, again, like it just brings me back to childhood.

You know, you walk in a place like this, the smell, the lights, the noises, everything just kind of brings you back to that golden age.

- One of our regulars, Amar, he made this game and then what we did is we made the cabinet for him.

This is actually an old blitz cabinet that we changed into this crab volleyball cabinet.

So this was originally a one of a kind piece.

- The drink options are really good.

The game options are really good.

They'll let you bring your own console if you want to play upstairs.

We're playing Street Fighter Six now, too.

So we got a little bit of everything.

It's fun, it's a fun environment.

- You know, the first, like my fondest memories are my parents' house was being built.

We were living in my grandmother's basement.

I kind of knew I was addicted at that point because you'd be like 4AM 5AM sneaking up getting the TV playing Super Mario Brothers Two, you know and that's a really early core memory for me.

(upbeat music) (people chattering) - My favorite nostalgia game here at Abari is definitely just pinball in general.

That's something that I played as a little kid.

Every time I went to the movie theater, every time we were at a restaurant or something that had one in the back I had to be ripped away from it to focus on whatever my family was there to do.

But all I wanted to do was play pinball.

- As a guy who grew up mostly in the 90s you know, born in the mid 80s, arcades to me were what I think this bar is.

- It's a good vibe, it's fun, it's really fun, like it really is.

- The biggest challenge playing this game as a kid was playing it for more than a minute.

As you can see, I just played through three balls in about 45 seconds there.

So not much has changed over time.

- When I was quite a bit younger the older kids would never tell you the moves.

They were kind of kind of keeping it secret and you couldn't really look 'em up back then, you know you just kind of had to play or know or read a magazine or something like that.

Now everything's online.

- The people you'll meet here are gonna be some of your best friends for life.

I promise you it's a place for everyone.

We have people who don't even care about gaming who come in here just because they like to hang out.