Sassony Arcade

It was grimy but that’s what made this place fun. Used to come here to play Capcom Aliens vs Predator for cheap entertainment when I first started checking out DTLA.
Great dim atmosphere inside. Fun place to take go with friends after a few beers on Spring St.
The crowd playing pool in back wasn’t as dangerous as some reviewers made them out to be. No one was going to kidnap or shoot you.

To bad this place is closing in a week, one of the few places that had tekken tag 1, and marvel vs capcom 2.

The dim atmosphere is great and the prices can’t be beat, but I really wish they would get more pinball machines. I’d probably live there if that was the case.

My friend and I went to Ross earlier and then went to the LA Brewery. Upon exiting the brewery, we happened upon this arcade. My friend and I were pleased to see old school games for 25 cents! We played this fun battleship type game all in Japanese and then some OG House of the Dead. It was great. There are also some serial Tekken/​Street Fighter/​Mortal Kombat crowd happenings up in there. It was like an Asian nerd festival lol.
Another Unilocaler referred to having «Peter Pan syndrome.» Totally hit it on the money. This place won’t cure it but you’ll get your fix. My friend and I felt like kids again (especially since we grew up together). It is amazing how 25 cents can transport you into a realm of fun.
We took photos of it so we could remember the place. It’s not fancy but that’s the beauty of it. It’s almost like a dive arcade. Love it! What a hidden find!
Tagline: I’m not f*cking around. I came here to play games.

Is there a Cartel being run outta this place?
10 steps in everything looks cool once you pass the dance dance machine it’s all eyes on you. Once you reach the pool tables do not make any eye contact LOL
I felt like I was in real life Grand Theft Auto video game.
There’s a racing game called sega rally and the freaking wheel to turn doesn’t even work. WTF!!! It was hacked. FUREAL.
I feel I’m being watched at Denny’s lol I’m dead x/

Love this spot. 3 stars because it smells like sweat and half the games don’t work, but it’s a no frills place to come and goof around. Lots of open pool tables too.

Oh man I love this place. This is one of my favorite places to go in all of downtown. Me and my friends love to come here for a game of pool or just a few arcade games. Definite hidden gem highly recommended!!!

I have been here with my girlfriend twice so far, This place is really something special. Not clean by any means though (BRING HAND SANITIZER!!!). Please just do. Anyway, Its cheap and thus something really special! Not many arcades do this! The machines are as if you took a 90’s arcade left it and did absolutely nothing to the prices. However, Some machines don’t work (Mortal Kombat 2), Please repair or fix this! As of recent it is broken. This is not in a great part of town either. So your not going to get a mall arcade experience at all. Great place to spend a day… I will come here often. Love the vibe!!!

We stumbled on this place a few months ago, and we were like, no way? This is a real place? We both agreed, it felt a little bit like one of those places in stories, where you walk in one day and it’s like a time warp, and then you come back the next day and it’s like it never existed. But nope, it totally exists. We’ve been back since to confirm: p.
Only 4 stars because it’s pretty dingy, and not all the machines totally work the greatest. Still, most of them do, and mega-​points for authenticity: it totally feels like an arcade from the early 90s, complete with a handful of WTF-​ful imported games from somewhere or another in Asia. And most of the games are pretty cheap.

For all the fellow gamers with Peter Pan syndrome, this is a pretty legit arcade with old school games (street fighter pacman car racing simulation) air hockey and pool tables in the back… It’s kinda a Boys club /​predominantly male local after work crowd here so if you’re a bunch of girls may be an interesting experience …
Tip: without a doubt if you’re the slightest bit a germaphobe or kinda OCD like myself bring tons of pocket hand sanitizer. Not sure how often or when the games /​joysticks have been last cleaned.

Pretty interesting spot. There were a lot of men playing pool when I stopped in, and there is some interesting Latina models on the walls. Besides that, cool games and lots of fun for a few quarters.

An arcade in downtown???
It is so rare to see an arcade these days. Plus, this arcade has some good fighting games. What blew me away was that they have Street Fighter II: Hyper Edition! I believe that was the first fighting game to have air fireballs. You can do any special moves in the air in Hyper Edition.

This place is great. I actually think that Bastille shot a music video there for their Pompeii single. Check it out looks like the same place to me.

This place has tons of character. I felt like I was in some sort of creepy carnival you see in the cartoons. It’s definitely a hole in the wall, & despite it’s grime, I’m a fan, because this is something you don’t see everyday.
You can say ol Zoltar, lured me in. But I got ripped off & he never gave me my fortune! It was a $ 1 too. What a rip. So don’t give in to Zoltar, as he’s out of fortunes at the moment.
Everything else is pretty classic. It was cool to see a DDR machine & Pacman.
Another funny thing is that this arcade uses Chucky Cheese coins, lol.

I pretty much instantly felt like I was getting sick upon entering this dungeon of an arcade. It felt a little moist in the hot LA weather and I could feel my immune system growing stronger by the minute.
Yes, it’s true, it’s a member of a bygone era. If you grew up with these games you’ll notice that some of your childhood favorites are here. Mortal Kombat II is still alive and kicking and you can still order the comic book on CD if you write to the address on the screen. Whether you will get that comic book remains to be seen but I wouldn’t try if I were you.
Some of my early 90’s favorites were here and it definitely sparked nostalgia. It’s grimy as all hell but it’s not overrun by kids. The place is kind of greasy too — kind of like if you were riding the Metro and they had video games onboard. That’s how this place feels.
Anyway, I’m a fan of it and I’ll give it 5 stars.

One of the last decent arcades in L.A.
Sure it’s grungy and most of the machines have seen 20+ years of wear, but it’s one of the few places you could still play many of these classic games. It’s been a long time since the last time I saw «Mortal Kombat» with seven characters.
Several of the machines have had their screens swapped out for HD TVs (photo:
), and thus are much clearer though the appearance stretched.
Other machines were simply X-​Boxes and other consoles, but weren’t quite set up at the time we were there (photo:
).
Compared with other arcades in town, Sassony is larger (and probably subsists mostly on the pool tables in back, with the TVs persistently airing a soccer match) and has far more machines and still at the going rate of 25-​cents-​a-​play.

Remember the scene in Rocky III where Paulie staggers into an arcade and throws a bottle of Jagermeister at a pinball machine? That’s Sassony!
It’s grimy, eerily lit and most of the aging games don’t match their casings but it’s a delightful subversion against the antiseptic mall arcade culture. About a third of the machines housed Marvel vs. Capcom, another third were turned off and the rest were a random collection of games popular in the early to mid 90s. Nice to see an arcade that hasn’t stooped to game inflation– most games were still a quarter.

After Pac-​Man Arcade closed in Pasadena, I thought that the arcade scene was pretty much dead and buried. Sure, there was a couple of stragglers left here and there, but none of those really captured the true essence of the classic arcades of my youth.
Well, it was because I hadn’t come to Sassony Arcade in forever. It’s a little hole in the wall dive arcade that has billiards in the back with tons of TV’s that are more than likely not playing anything you could understand in English. But for the most part you’re here for the arcade games. Let me tell you, this place has it all.
I can’t state it enough, there’s like a half dozen Street Fighter II machines. So you can flood the screen with fireballs on Turbo all you want.
The majority of the machines have seen better days. The place has that neon funk going and it’s pretty gritty, but it will remind you of the days when you saw someone get shanked for throwing one too many times in Street Fighter.
One great destination for when you’re wandering about Donwtown L.A. and want to get some history that hasn’t been gentrified or turned into apartment lofts… or some Mexican trinket sellers booth.
Yeah, one of the last remaining awesome arcades around.

you know what? they have like 6 street fighter II machines
and a Tijuana hot dog cart.
is there anything else to write? nope.

I don’t even know how to express how much I was filled with delight when I stumbled across this spot.
Its grimy. Its dark. Its a little eerie. Its the shadowy world of childhood trapped in the early 90s… with some modern games and pool tables.
The perfect setting to battle the kid that took your weekly allowance and wiped out the three letters that initialed you into fame during your brief, awesome moment of awkward puberty.
You remember how it felt to type in those three holy letters?
In case you were wondering, My signature was always W.A.L.
This place is obscure L.A., in that magical way.
And when you are on your way out, you may swear that at any moment, even though you are located in D-​town Los Angeles, California and not a subway in New York…
A group of gigantic, martial arts weapons wielding, green, mutant, roid rage turtles eating pizza are going to pass you by, one of them possibly on a skateboard holding a ghetto blaster playing «Where is My Mind» by the Pixies.
I rarely love areas that are snapshots stuck in time and this one has a special spot in my heart.
I just need to get some bazooka bubble gum, a back pocket full of jingling wasted youth, a pyramid studded leather jacket with cropped sleeves, and my red fingerless gloves.
8:00pm sharp. Don’t be late! Loser buys winner a slice of pizza from down the street or gets a dirty shampoo wash while gargling toilet water from the public bathroom. See you there!
In short, if this atmosphere is not old school I don’t know what is… Remember that people tend to remember the past as being grander than history really was.
The arcades of yesterday were grimy, greased out joy stick, germ infected push button havens for bullies, nerds, and pedos to escape reality. They just seemed magical at the time (and still do for a person with a dark sense of humor such as myself).