John Teti thought I was nuts. He didn’t say it, but I could tell: here I was, a game journo who lived just an hour away from Funspot, and I’d never been there once.

But to be fair, when I got there the first time, it didn’t look like much. Funspot is a touristy-looking lakeside amusement complex by Lake Winnipesaukee. But gamers know it as Mecca. Legendary for its collection of 230-plus classic arcade games dating back to Pong, plus a pinball collection, miniature golf, candlepin bowling, battered old games of skill, and the Braggin’ Dragon, where you can get fried eats and cheap pizza. The whole place smells like pizza and old carpets. It’s a rambling building that goes on forever, and it’s open year round, even the holidays, which is when I met Teti to talk about the game writing biz and get in a few games of Mappy.

Not many people drop by at the end of December, but there were a few in the Classic Arcade Msueum, pumping tokens into coin-op games that I remembered from my childhood. I’m the perfect age for this – I grew up losing my allowance in arcades before I had a Colecovision – but I didn’t get the pangs of nostalgia: it all just felt familiar, like the basement at your parents’ place. They call it a Museum, but aside from a few plaques that list the years and donors, the games aren’t behind glass. They break all the time. There’s been a gap next to the Mr. Do! since this summer, and when I went to reminisce over a game of Venture, the joystick barely worked.

I mean, I’m not knocking it. But when I tell you it’s a Mecca, you probably expect me to say I saw God. Instead, I saw John Teti and we played some games.

But the place stuck in my head, and I came back that spring, with my four year old. He had never played a video game – that’s a whole ‘nother story – and he was wary, like he knew these things would be fun but he wasn’t sure why. I tagged along with a cup full of tokens and a footstool, and we worked out a way to play: I aim, he shoots. Asteroids and Tempest taught him the first lesson of gaming – “If it moves, kill it” – and when we teamed up on Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, we almost blew up the Death Star together.

Veteran gamers all know this place. Maybe you saw some of them in the documentary The King of Kong. Every year Funspot hosts a gaming tournament for the best palest gamers from around the world, and I drove up to check it out. Brian Kuh was there: his face is plastered around the walls for all the world records he’s set here, including 16 in one day. That guy who plays Crystal Castles with his foot also showed. (I brought Purell.) And Twin Galaxy’s Walter Day – the authority on high scores - held court in his referee uniform, while would-be world record breakers perched in front of their games, camcorders over their shoulders capturing their every score. (Here’s a list of the world records that were set this year.) As for the tournament itself, it looked just like I expected: a bunch of guys lined up at the machines, chasing fame and glory beside an indoor miniature golf course.

I don’t have any special affinity for coin-op games. I grew up in arcades, but I got trounced at the arcades, too. Obligatory history lesson for the young’uns who grew up with quicksaves: arcade games are hard. Playing Contra in an arcade is hard. Even Moon Patrol was kind of hard when I gave it another spin, but this time, I could pump in tokens ‘til I got to the end of the course. I don’t have an allowance any more.

Back again in late August with my kid, we caught Funspot at its craziest: the vacationers were in town, and it was raining. Mobs of people swarmed every corner of the place, and the musty air was frantic. We won prize tickets by throwing bean bags in trash cans, or knocking over ducks on a track. Thanks to me, my kid scored enough tickets to get two rings, a plastic spider and a tin skull. He’ll give one of them to this girl who’s sort of his girlfriend, but he hasn’t decided which one.

Oh, and we finally blew up the Death Star.

For his awesome podcast A Life Well Wasted, Robert Ashley did an episode on game collectors, and the funny thing about all of them is, they let people play with their games. They’re the opposite of those people who never take their toys out of the blister packs: a video game doesn’t mean anything if you don’t switch it on and play it. Funspot has a Leprechaun machine, incredibly rare, and it’s just sitting in the kid’s area by the playset and the bumper cars. You can spill pizza on history in here.

And the pizza’s another reason that this is no “museum”: a museum couldn’t replicate the smell of it, the lack of taste of it, the entire experience of sitting in the Braggin’ Dragon and chowing on vacation spot food. But each time, I’m eating with my kid, or with my friends. Funspot didn’t look like much at first, but now I’m making memories. Video games don’t belong in museums, and they don’t mean anything in a warehouse. But they mean something at a place like this, and they mean something new with every game.

Photos by John Teti. Chris Dahlen writes about games, music, pop, and tech. You can find him online at @savetherobot, or drop him a line at chris [at] savetherobot.com.