Warsaw Arcade Museum

Practical information

What to expect

Over 120 arcade machines in a hall on the western stretch of Aleje Jerozolimskie, Warsaw’s main east-west artery - and every one of them is switched on. This is the Warsaw branch of the Arcade Museum chain, which also runs venues in Kraków and Gdańsk, and its stated mission is to show the history and evolution of arcade gaming over the decades. In practice that means a playable cross-section of forty years of game rooms: Pac-Man and Space Invaders Deluxe from 1980, Donkey Kong, Galaga and OutRun, the fighting-game canon of the 1990s (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, Tekken Tag), and Japanese rhythm games like Taiko no Tatsujin and Dancerush Stardom.

The formula is the standard one for this kind of venue: you buy a ticket for a time slot (one hour, two hours, or open-ended until closing) and then play everything with no coins and no extra charges - the museum states that all machines are free to play without restrictions. Beyond the classic video cabinets there are well over a dozen pinball tables (Attack from Mars, Stranger Things and Jurassic Park among them), light-gun shooters (Time Crisis II, The House of the Dead) and a collector’s curiosity: a 1986 Nintendo PlayChoice cabinet with serial number 00078, loaded with nine NES titles.

Do not mix up the address: Warsaw has several similarly named arcade and pinball venues. Warsaw Arcade Museum is at Al. Jerozolimskie 200 in the Włochy district, and it has nothing to do with Pinball Station on Kolejowa Street in Wola - separate companies, separate tickets. If pinball is your priority, Pinball Station has far more tables; if you want classic video cabinets and rhythm games, this place wins.

Tips

• The unlimited-time ticket costs 100 PLN (about 23 EUR); students up to 26 pay 90 PLN, under-18s 80 PLN. Timed versions: 1 hour for 70/60/50 PLN, 2 hours for 90/80/70 PLN. Given the small price gap, the 2-hour or open ticket almost always makes sense - one hour is not enough for 120 machines.
• Family ticket (2 adults + 2 children): 190 PLN for one hour, 250 PLN for two, 270 PLN unlimited. Children under 4 enter free with a paying adult.
• Coming back regularly? A 10-visit unlimited pass costs 500 PLN (student 450 PLN, reduced 400 PLN).
• Friday and Saturday run latest - open until 10:00 PM. Sunday closes earliest, at 8:00 PM.
• The entrance is easy to miss: the hall sits behind the main building at number 200, next to a bicycle shop - not on the avenue frontage.
• Rhythm games and light-gun cabinets are the most beginner-friendly; the scoring logic of the 1980s classics takes patience.

Getting there

Address: Al. Jerozolimskie 200, Warsaw - on the western, outbound stretch of Aleje Jerozolimskie in the Salomea area of the Włochy district, on the way out of the city towards Pruszków. This is a good 5 km west of the city centre, so plan the trip - it is not a walk-in from the Old Town.

By car: the simplest option - it sits on a major exit road, and the first 3 hours of parking are free.

Public transport: numerous bus lines run along Aleje Jerozolimskie; from the city centre allow roughly 20-30 minutes.

Nearby museums