Time Rift Arcade

09/06/2026

What classic Dallas-Fort Worth 80s/90s arcade do you remember from your childhood?

The Time Rift Arcade is a family owned and operated arcade located in Bedford Texas. Arcade Games. B**r. Pizza. Fun!

09/04/2026

David The 8-Bit Guy here, and today we're talking about Wizard of Wor!

Released in June 1981, and it did not care about your feelings.

First... It talked trash! The Wizard had over 70 phrases to taunt you with, back when most games could only manage a beep. He'd heckle you before you even dropped a quarter. "Hey! Insert coin!"

And that voice came from a single chip. The Votrax SC-01, the same little phoneme synthesizer that gave us GORF and Q*bert. It didn't store recordings. It built words out of raw phonemes, which is exactly why everything sounded like a robot gargling.

The joystick? It has two stages! Push it a little and your Worrior walks. Push it all the way and he runs. One stick, two speeds, and a lot of players never figured it out.

The hardware? Wizard of Wor and GORF are practically twins. Same power supply, same board slots, same CPU and RAM boards. Drop a GORF board set into a Wizard of Wor cabinet and the game will come right up on screen. You just can't play it, since the controls are all wrong.

Two-player co-op, with friendly fire! You and your buddy against the Worlings. Except your shots hurt each other too. Many friendships did not survive the dungeon.

Come find the Wizard yourself. He's waiting, and he's got the jokes ready.

#1981

09/04/2026

Stern Pinball has announced Fallout! And you gotta know Time Rift already has a Premium version on order. :-)

08/26/2026

Mike here! A customer asked me five questions about running an arcade and I answered every single one. Number 4 is the one most people guess wrong.

Do we pull games nobody plays? How often is a cabinet broken? Do four player games really pull four players? Do you censor games?

Answers are up now. If you like this one, I'll keep it going. Put your questions below and I'll answer them in the next post.

The Time Rift Arcade is a family owned and operated arcade located in Bedford Texas. Arcade Games. B**r. Pizza. Fun!

08/20/2026

David here… Rally-X was developed using a modified Pac-Man board. It introduced several new features into the world of arcades. It was the first game to feature a musical sound track, multi-directional scrolling, and a mini radar map.

08/19/2026

Montezuma's Revenge on NES, 40 Years Late

08/15/2026

Well… we had an unexpected visitor show up at Time Rift Arcade today.

Apparently Springtrap needed a break from terrorizing people and decided to spend the afternoon playing The Simpsons. Honestly, we’re not going to argue with him.

Just another perfectly normal day at Time Rift Arcade.

Come see what (or who) shows up next!

08/13/2026

David here… here’s some interesting facts about Galaga that you may or may not know:

1 - Sequel to Galaxian
2 - One of the first games to feature boss fights
3 - The double firepower exploit was one of the first widely shared game strategies
4 - The dual fighter feature was revolutionary
5 - Has been seen in numerous movies and TV shows even old and new.

08/12/2026

BACK-TO-SCHOOL HOURS START THIS WEEK!

Summer may be winding down, but the games aren’t going anywhere!

Starting Wednesday, August 12, Time Rift Arcade officially returns to our Back-to-School Hours, which means we’ll be opening at 3:00 PM on weekdays.

Check out the graphic for our full weekly schedule and make sure you know when to launch your next trip to the Starship!

The kids may be headed back to school, but there’s still plenty of time after class (or work!) to grab some friends, play some games, and hang out with us.

$12 gets you an ALL-DAY PASS with over 120 arcade games set to FREE!

See you at the Time Rift!

08/07/2026

If you haven't heard, Tornado Terry's has been fighting for its life. Over a year of road construction on Keller Hicks made it nearly impossible for customers to get in and out, and this 35 year old family owned arcade came within days of auctioning off every cabinet.

Then the arcade community showed up and gave them an extra 1UP.

We want our crew of Time Travelers to be part of that story. Arcades don't compete with each other. We all compete with the couch. When one of us wins, we all win.

Here's how to help. Go to Tornado Terry's in Keller and spend money. Buy tokens, buy snacks, hit the prize counter. Revenue keeps a business alive long after the news cycle moves on. If you can't make the drive, their GoFundMe is the next best thing (link in comments)

The Time Rift Arcade is a family owned and operated arcade located in Bedford Texas. Arcade Games. B**r. Pizza. Fun!