The Last of Manhattan’s Original Video Arcades

Chinatown Fair, which opened on Mott Street in the 1940s, has survived generations of gaming innovation, new players and rising rents in New York.

Video arcades — those recreational arenas of illuminated screens and 8-bit soundtracks — have been fading from the cultural landscape since the end of the Donkey Kong ’80s. The advent of home video game consoles, handheld gaming devices and smartphones has all but rendered them relics of a Gen X childhood.

Yet somehow, Chinatown Fair Family Fun Center lives on. The cramped downtown institution is among the last of the city’s old-school arcades, often filled with gamers too young to remember Street Fighter IV a decade ago, let alone Missile Command in the Reagan years.

“Chinatown Fair should have closed years ago, along with all the other arcades in the city, due to rising rent and the shift to online gaming,” said Kurt Vincent, who directed “The Lost Arcade,” a 2016 documentary about the arcade’s enduring legacy in the city.

“But it’s still there on Mott Street after all these years because young people need a place to come together.”