I’ve been to Guangzhou six or so times now, and I try to pop into their arcades to check out what’s available over there when I visit.
I thought it might be interesting to show how things used to be, and how they are now, so I’m gonna make a few posts that are basically picture dumps from some Arcades in Guangzhou.
All of these are typical “Mall Arcades” from different shopping malls.
Not really aiming to do much of a writeup, so enjoy the pictures.
How it used to be (back in 2013-2015 or so)
Back in ye olde days of 10+ years ago, the arcades still had plenty of old CRT sitdown cabs with old games. Lots of Neogeo, PGM and various boards. Just kinda a bit of everything.
There were some official Music Cabs around like Jubeat and Reflec Beat…
… but also a bunch of bootlegs like this fake Jubeat
… and plenty of Chinese originals like whatever this is, as well as a bunch of Driving games.
Condition of cabs was usually kinda shit, see this closer image for a good example. Lots of burnmarks from smokers and whatnot.
Overall, the variety here for classic arcade games was very high! Some games were also weirdly popular in China compared to the west. For some reason they really loved King of Fighters 97 over there instead of 98 and 2002 which are more popular in the west.
What its like now (2026)
All retro-style cabs seem gone. I didn’t see a single CRT cab. The only sit-down lever+button cabs I saw were some mame cabs like these ones:
There were however still a bunch of cool games.
For Music games, all of the places I went to had some officially licensed Bemani/Sega cabs licensed to China by Wahlap. There’s also some fun clones available of various games.
I did pop into three different Arcades on this visit.
嗨森汇 HAPPY 动漫娱乐
Medium size Mall arcade with pretty good variety. Good selection of music games.
Funloop Land
Technically I think Funloop Land is a chain of arcades run by Wahlap, and this is just one of those from some mall. Pretty small place, but some fun games in there.
Grandview Mall Cyber Street
Now this is a proper cool place! The entire arcade feels very futuristic, and especially the Entrance. Lots of Music games and this place is significantly larger than the other two. Recommended.
Not a single lever+button cab in sight though. Such are the times.
Quick video walking through Cyber Street
Shot a quick video of walking through the arcade mentioned above.