Our next Trading Card Spotlight features Michael Lepsch with Arcade 92 who is displayed on card number 4706 from the Superstars of 2025. Michael owns an arcade at the Flower Mound, Texas location, as well as one in McKinney, Texas. Michael loves playing arcade and pinball games as well as the retro consoles from his childhood. His arcades combine all of that into one big gaming party. Looks for this interview in the next issue of Old School Gamer Magazine.
Are you originally from Texas?
So, I’m a Yankee, I was born in New York, lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma for a short bit. Tulsa was my first interaction with video games as an eight-year-old. I’ve been in the Dallas Fort Worth area for now well over two-thirds of my life. I’m not from here, but most of my life I have lived in Texas.
When did you decide you wanted to open an arcade and a why did you choose these two locations?
The funny thing is I want to say that I decided to open an arcade sometime in 2018, and while going through my parents’ attic, I found a box of some drawings I did in the third grade. Inside that box was a drawing of myself that I did, and it says one day I am going to have $1 thousand dollars, with that money I am going to open a video game store. So apparently, I had this idea when I was in the third grade, and I just forgot about that.
I chose the McKinney location based on the community they have in that area. We wanted places that had community naturally plugged into it. So, historic downtown was perfect for that because they do events like crazy, almost every weekend. We wanted to go to a place where community was kind of just understood. Also, we are six minutes from DFW Airport and over to the more north of us here on the main part of Lakeside, they do community events there when it’s not scorching hot or cold, they do a music series. So, every Friday night they have a band playing usually has a pretty good turnout that you event events for Christmas and major holidays, so it was just an easy plug in for us to look for places that already have a natural community aspect and that worked out right for both locations.
Do you own both locations, and which one did you open first?
We opened our McKinney location at the very end of 2019. In fact, we opened on November 29th because that’s the anniversary of Pong. I specifically wanted that date, and we got it to work out. I really wanted to open on that same date here at Flower Mound, but we missed it by a week because of some city inspections, so we opened here on December 4 of 2023.
How was the reception when you first opened? How is the turnout?
In McKinney, it was great, this is like a retirement job. So, when I first had this idea, I was like, I’m pretty sure this will work. And I can honestly say that when it came to opening day in McKinney, I remember unlocking the door after spending an insane amount of money on construction and all those things and being like, this was a good idea, right? You know that that weekend we were packed, and it stayed that way for a while, so that was great. Here in Flower Mound, I felt a lot more confidence. Like it kind of had the same beginning to it, but like I felt much more like I knew what I was doing. So, I think that McKinney had that excited nervousness. Here it was, you know, far less. but it’s been great. Both locations have done fantastic, and I like I said, McKinney met and exceeded all my expectations, so I was like, hey, why not do it again. We’ve been here in Flower Mound for just a little over a year now in the second location. I’m having a great time.
How did Covid-19 affect you with the first location that opened in late 2019, and what did you do during the shutdown?
Yeah, it was tricky because we were open for about three months, and then we were we were kind of forced to shut down. So that was very tricky. and obviously it hurt. I’ve got a couple of business partners and at the time, as I had had my own business for about 20 years before that, but it was on a much smaller scale.
One advice they gave us is that, before we open, a lot of businesses will go out within the first or second year, like this pandemic aside, and usually, they have got a great business idea, but they didn’t put aside any operating capital. So, if you’re going to spend a million dollars on a business, you should put away $1.1 million, right? If you spend $500,000 dollars, you should raise $600,000? That first year is tricky, and you really need to have operating capital. so, I was like, all right, it seems kind of goofy to have that much money just sitting in a bank account. But now, of course, that was a really good idea to put aside some operating capital to help us get over that Covid-19 hump, that was brutal for sure. A lot of times we saw that they would say that if you’re a movie theater you can re-open, if you’re a bowling alley you could re-open. but arcades you can’t.? Why? You know, like, the bowling alley is touching things, right? What is the difference? So, there was a lot of frustration about that in because arcades are not as prevalent as other businesses, it’s almost like they never even gave us permission to reopen, because we weren’t a major box, if that makes sense.
What are some of your favorite games here at the arcade?
I have to give you my two favorites because they are my favorite for different reasons. My first interaction with the video game was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I lived there for about two years. I was about seven or eight years old, and the first exposure I’ve had was that a gas station with Super Mario Bros. arcade in the back. That is the first time I was ever exposed to a game like that? When we were living in Oklahoma at the time I had to get back to the gas station so I would get quarters out of the cushions and run across Tulsa traffic to try to get to the gas station. Then as a teenager in the early 90’s is when I was at the arcade every day I could possibly get there. And Mortal Kombat 3 was my jam. It is still my favorite. It is the game that just never gets old. I beat it a thousand times and with every character, that’s a great one. I still play today the PlayStation, and strategy games like civilization. With the kids, I will play Marvel Rivals and Fortnite together.
How important is the maintenance of the machines and how do you handle the wear and tear?
When we first got started, I was the technician, and now we have four people who are techs, but I will chime in when things get busy. I kind of Google taught myself to fix the machines. All four of my tech crew are under the age of 25. so that’s cool because I’ve been able to kind of keep that going. I try to put out an ad for a retro game technician and no one’s answering those. I go in, but sometimes they must cross pollinate. But I’ll tell you it’s I it is not easy. One of the tough things is when a monitor goes out, you can’t get new monitors, so a lot of times you must sacrifice a game to make a new game work, and that’s a tough decision you don’t want to ever want to see, taking a game out of circulation. Every retro game we have in Flower Mound is a CRT, and in McKinney, we only have one that’s running an LCD. and that one was like kind of a custom built Teenaged Mutant Ninja turtle game that we had someone make for us. I will say one of the biggest struggles, though, is on our modern games. A lot of those modern games like your guitar heroes, dance, dance, revolution. Our Terminator Salvation, Aliens, and Armageddon, all run on Windows XP or Windows Vista, and wow PCs are fussy? I’ll work on a Smash TV, Rampage, Q*Bert or anything before then to open up a windows platform.
What does it take to keep Arcade 92 fresh, and do you try to circulate different games?
We have a general strategy about every month we recycle three titles. So, three games go out, which makes sense, and it’s easier now that we have two locations because we can swap between those. We have about 120 games at the Flower Mound location, and I’ve got 100 at the McKinney location plus we’ve got about 30 or 40 games in storage. most of which are working. I try not to have too many projects, and we just kind of keep cycling these about every month. We would do more if we can, but one of the big struggles on the retro games is we need time to move a machine, it’s a 50/50 shot it doesn’t turn on, so you got to spend a couple hours combing through all the wires trying to figure out what is wrong.
What’s your favorite handheld system?
I do have an odd one for that. The Atari Lynx absolutely and there were only a couple games on it. It was just fun to play through on the handheld. It was just such a really good system. There were so many great handhelds out there being affordable and good but absolutely dominated by Nintendo’s marketing. The Atari Lynx was way ahead of its time, it just got smoked by Nintendo.
What’s your favorite video game character?
That’s a good one that I don’t really get too often as a question. You would think it would be Mario, but a couple of thoughts are running through my mind right now, Sonic the Hedgehog is definitely up there and part of why Sega had to break through the Nintendo noise. They really did not pull that off. They had Alex Kidd and tried, but it was Sonic the Hedgehog that finally broke through. When it comes to Mortal Kombat, Sub Zero could be my favorite. I really like him, but my go to character is Kabal, which is like not typically anybody’s favorite. which is why I guess sometimes I can win as the people weren’t expecting it.
What is your most popular game in the arcade? Can you keep track of that?
Our modern games, they have a counter. Every time somebody hits start, I can literally tell you based on a chart, the same thing on pinball machines. On the retro games, we have no idea. We just have to kind of observe. So, as far as pinball goes, it’s it always bounces back forth between Star Wars and Stranger Things. Those are always together too and a lot of it is the recognition, right? So, people gravitate towards those, doesn’t mean it’s that they’re the best pinball machines, but it means the general public walks in, they see those, that’s what they gravitate towards.
As far as our newer games, it’s the Halo Fire Team Raven machine, but that one is just barely above the Jurassic Park. and that Jurassic Park is like from 2016. It is almost 10 years old. and it’s still, played like new. As far as like the retro arcades go, I mean, I it’s got to be like your typical Pac-Man, Galaga. Donkey Kong.
Do you see yourself expanding and opening more arcades?
Maybe. It is kind of like a retirement job for me. I did this because I could never not work, and I wanted to do something fun. I also did this because, you know, my story goes back to when I retired from the industry I was in before, I was definitely working too hard.
My story started with me in my garage with, first collecting consoles, then I recollected arcade games that I used to play, and I just one day realized this is bigger than me, so that’s when I opened the first location. It was a personal mission and message, but also just something fun to do. Here we are six years later than that, and we have two locations. So, is there location three or five or ten on the horizon? Maybe, but I will keep going and if it makes sense, open a few more, or maybe it ends here.
You must be logged in to post a comment.