Is that an arcade in my Walmart?

Earlier this year, Walmart made a huge push to get their selves into the used video game business. Could Walmart be getting into the arcade business now? I happened to notice this past weekend that one of my local Walmart stores had a new area labeled as “Gameplay”. It wasn’t much to look at, just a small room with a couple of arcade games and a variety of redemption / claw games, but the sheer fact that I was looking at coin operated games in the modern world put a smile on my face.

I have tried to dig up a little more information about “Gameplay” online, but there doesn’t seem to be anything official online. I am not sure if this is something officially owned and operated by the Walmart corporation or perhaps a franchise that is leasing out the retail space within their stores (similar to the other small shops in the front of most stores). There must be some sort of corporate muscle behind them though because I have found other locations online that carry the tagline “Powered by Sega”, so I am a little optimistic that this could be the start of something bigger than just a locally owned franchise.

Either way it's still good to see an arcade of any sort pop back up in this country since the industry has been dead for so long. I really miss seeing games scattered around stores, malls, restaurants, and theaters. Perhaps this is the jumpstart needed to at least encourage companies to get back into producing coin-operated video games.