Island Bowl (Wildwood NJ), 4K arcade walkthrough & tour, August 2024

One of the few bowling alleys still remaining in Wildwood, NJ, Island Bowl is located off the boardwalk on New Jersey Avenue and can be found taking up the entire second floor of a rather large building. With dozens of lanes, a food service counter and full service bar, a pro shop, and a dedicated arcade section, they offer up a lot of family fun especially on otherwise rainy days. If you've got a downpour at the shore, this place will be PACKED. First things first; let's talk about the arcade section. All the way to the right of the building, in the back, they have a decent sized room filled with, well, definitely not the latest and greatest, but there's a pretty good selection of some all-time classics as well as some more off-the-wall stuff. Back here you'll find a hoops machine, two air hockey tables, and a few video games. That includes stuff ranging from Ms. Pac-Man to Terminator Salvation, Cruis'n USA to Radikal Bikers, Tekken 3 to Ultimate Arctic Thunder. This section also has one single pinball machine, the underrated 90's classic Junk Yard. Now, outside of the arcade section, you've also got a few more pins, claw machines, and another racer lining the back wall of the bowling alley. This is where you'll find The Walking Dead and The Shadow pinball machines, as well as a hacked-together Fast & Furious Super Cars. The last part to talk about is the bar section. This specific section is very hard-line 21+. No minors allowed at any time, and on days when there's a lot of youngsters running around, they will straight up close the bar section altogether. So as it stands, I didn't get a chance to play any of the classic electromechanical pinball machines they had in there, including Stardust, Big Hit, and Top Score. They also had pool tables and shuffleboard bowling in this section as well, but again, no dice on this drizzly Friday afternoon. While most of the machines were in decent enough shape, Walking Dead was just eating credits and not starting games, an