In the second instalment of the Naughty Dog franchise, you can roam through recreations of real Seattle locations, including the famous arcade.

Times are tough in the arcade world. The ‘boom’ years are long gone when you could stand in long lines to drop a few coins into the latest fancy slot machine. Nowadays, they have a much smaller audience and have become almost like small museums of a significant part of video game culture.

The Gameworks venue opened in 1997

However, the global health crisis spelt the end of many of these large arcades, which were forced to find that social distancing measures had significantly reduced player traffic. In Naughty Dog’s last significant creation, The Last of Us: Part II, we were transported to a post-apocalyptic Seattle, with many of the city’s locations and street elements rendered in a way that was easily recognisable to anyone who had been there before.

Among them was a two-storey row of arcades, abandoned and deteriorating with time. It was home to several arcade machines, which could be seen as a cute reference to classic Naughty Dog games. This place was none other than Gameworks, one of Seattle’s premier arcades.

However, according to GamesRadar, the venue, which has been open since 1997, has sadly been forced to close its doors to the public. Sadly, the company, which has had several gaming places in different cities, is also in the process of liquidation, Kotaku reports. Japan recently experienced another sad episode when news broke of the closure of one of SEGA’s iconic venues – but thankfully, Sega Ikebukuro Gigo would reopen in a new building shortly afterwards.

Source: GamesRadar, Kotaku

Gameworks is closing, apparently. This is the day I've dreaded for years. Seattle about to lose significant cool points pic.twitter.com/L6NxD7lEz6

— c o r e y y y ✦ (@coastalcoreyyy) December 22, 2021