Fun at Funtopia USA

Our next stop was to Funtopia USA, also in Queens inside a mall in Middle Village.

When we walked up to the counter ready to play I was surprised that they required a minimum of four players to a game and asked us to wait while they rounded up more players.

Aztec and I are both in agreement that if only two customers want to play then that should be enough to let those two into a game, but fortunately it wasn’t too long before they found a couple of kids to join the game. They wanted to be on a team together, leaving the two of us on the opposite team and a game master opting to play solo against everyone. I guess we must have looked like we didn’t know how to play Cyber Blast, lol?!

We entered what at first glance we though might have formerly been a Lazer Runner arena.

Except…Lazer Runner should be spelled with a Z. Hmmm…some arena identity crisis going on here?

I must admit, I don’t know when/where changes are made to this system as versions are not rolled out with sequential numbers the same way they are with other systems. All I know if that there were things about this Cyber Blast gear that caught my attention as being a little different.

For example, the shoulders and the clear plastics are a little different. And the logo at the bottom of the pack caught my eye as well.

When we entered the arena there were some other noteworthy indicators.

This arena had several targets. I noticed the pink one stopped coming on after awhile. Aztec thought they activated randomly, but my past experience was that they should be a sequential cycle based on the order in which they were tagged, which is why the absence of the pink target midway through caught my attention.

Regardless, bare in mind we were playing against kids, so this was a truly lighthearted game just to experience the space and the system. I enjoy seeing these “homegrown” arena designs more and more as the industry keeps moving towards cookie cutter FECs. There is really something cool about the unique style of an arena like this.

Even a touch of neon on the tube structures make it a little more distinctive.

So it was fun to see this arena and experience a game just for the sake of having a little fun at Funtopia USA. Also, congratulations to this business on their 20th anniversary year!