So you may have heard that the Theater 6 in Nashua NH has been repaired. Within an hour of hearing the news, I immediately went on a road trip to the arcade. Sure enough the game was working. I regret to inform you that there have been some teething troubles, and the game needs to be repaired once again. But in that brief window of operation, I played a few times. Here's what I have to say.

The twin LaserDisc backgrounds are awesome. I never got more than three players playing, but I can confirm that the difficulty scales with player count. The game is quite difficult, and I haven't managed to beat it yet. The intercom voices are awesome. When you defeat the first boss, one of the voices says "Zolgear's next!". There are lights everywhere. A red light flickers throughout the entire theater when you are about to fail. The explosions are color coded. If the explosions are orange, the ship got hit. If they are blue, the enemy got destroyed.

The true beauty of this game doesn't come from being a particularly great video game. The gameplay is is admittedly mediocre. But this is less of a video game, and more of an experience. When you have six people coordinating to take down the bosses, panicking as the alarms go off, and voting on which level to play next, you see the Theater 6 truly shine. That is the beauty of Attack of the Zolgear.

I frequently visit Funworld in Nashua, NH. They have a Galaxian 3 that shows Attack of the Zolgear, but it had a tarp over it and was non functional. Recently, the tarp was removed. I asked about it, and they stated that some technicians have been trying to fix the game. Here?s hoping they succeed.