Games 'R Us

Games 'R Us
Years active	1981 (?) - 1983
Number of games	20-30
Located	U. S. A.
Status	Closed

Games 'R Us was a video games-only arcade (i. e. with no pinball machines) located at approximately 1939 North Gessner Road in Houston, Texas. The games operated on tokens for the majority of the time it was open (believed to be five for a dollar), which they then reverted to quarters during its last several months in business (see Trivia section).

Known games

• Asteroids
• Cosmic Alien
• Galaxian bootleg of some sort
• Meteoroids
• Missile Command
• Robotron: 2084
• Scramble
• Space Fever (Color)
• Space Firebird

Trivia

• When the game room first opened, several of its early machines were of questionable legality, due to the Galaxian bootleg and many of the games being housed in generic cabinets lacking side art, stating "____ (company name) presents Scramble" and the like on the marquees, yet the company that produced the actual game was different than what was stated on the cab.
• Venture Line, the producer of Meteroids, was sued by Atari due to their Asteroids and how similar the two games were as far as gameplay mechanics. Venture Line would eventually win the lawsuit, as the court ruled that a game idea in itself was not necessarily copyright infringement. Before the ruling, Meteroids saw very little distribution, and was not at Games 'R Us for very long, presumably due to the ongoing litigation at the time.
• Originally the games ran on tokens, but after the video game crash of 1983-1984 taking out most video game businesses in general, the effect was felt by all, as textbook covers at nearby Spring Woods Senior High had ads, one of which was for free tokens at Games 'R Us for the school year beginning in 1983. The games no longer ran on tokens by then, however, but a free quarter was given to those who brought in the ad, rather than tokens. The arcade closed up several months later.
• The Space Firebird machine was almost never in working order.

This arcade was featured in January, 2016.