Two Bit Circus Is a High-Tech Oasis of Games, VR and Interactive Entertainment

Arcades are no longer a retro novelty. Thanks to local chains like Free Play and Cidercade and national chains like Main Event and Dave & Buster’s, they are one possible answer when one of our friends inevitably replies, “I dunno. What do you wanna do?” on a weekend night.

One of the newer arcade options in Dallas is Two Bit Circus, a collection of original video games and interactive concepts that moved into The Shops at Park Lane — and it’s far more than just a place to play NBA Jam.

Two Bit Circus is the creation of Brent Bushnell, the son of Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari and Chuck E. Cheese as well as several nonprofit STEM education initiatives and Synn Labs, which created the famous Rube Goldberg machine for OK Go’s music video for This Too Shall Pass. The same ingenuity and love for creation that went into those ventures shines through in Brent’s passion for Two Bit Circus.

Just like most modern arcade chains in the vein of Dave & Busters and Main Event, pretty much all of Two Bit’s arcade games run on electronic card redemptions that you purchase and load up with points at the front desk. The entire experience is centered around The Midway, a collection of eight original games with simple mechanics but complex tracking technology. The most fun of that group is Wrecking Crew, a targeting game that uses a swinging wrecking ball. Players try to wreak as much damage as they can to a scrolling, virtual building while avoiding construction workers on scaffolding.

Mother Ducker is one of the brand’s newer games and it’s ridiculously simple, but it can get quite addictive if you play it in a group. Players control one of four ducks on a pond with an oversized steering wheel and are tasked with gathering ducklings of the same color to follow them back to the nest. You can approach it as a child’s game and will walk away giggling like a kid as your competitive nature kicks into high gear.

The other aspect that sets Two Bit Circus apart from other arcades is its “Story Rooms.” They’re like escape rooms, the trendy attraction venues in which groups of friends are locked in a room and must solve a series of puzzles to escape. But Two Bit’s play more like actual games in a variety of settings.

One of the more interesting creations is the room called “Dr. Botcher’s Minute Medical School.” A group can enter this hospital room and take one of six colored lanyards that identify each player as “Dr. Red” or “Dr. Grey” and so forth. A large plastic patient sits in the middle of the room on an operating table, and a puppet named Dr. Botcher appears on screen to take everyone through the procedure. Tasks are randomly assigned to different stations — such as a microscope that displays an electronic screen where a doctor has to blast bacteria out of the patient’s bloodstream, or an anesthesiology lab where a pair of doctors must deliver drugs like “Unicorn Blood” and “Sugar” into the patient through a series of color-coded tubes.

The two doctors in the middle of the room are tasked with sticking needles and thermometers into the patient using a sliding tablet that identifies the part of the body that needs probing and tools with springs on the end that they insert into various orifices. If the springs touch the sides of the openings, the patient yells or reacts with a well-timed “Ow!”

The Story Rooms are a fun, new take on a tired concept like escape rooms because they aren’t linear experiences, and there’s more than a win or a loss as the goal. You’ll find yourself wanting to go back so you can get a better grade from Dr. Botcher.

Two Bit Circus’ most impressive attraction is its virtual reality corner, which offers a wide variety of virtual experiences. The Hyperdeck is probably the most intense because it mimics movement and environments in some startling ways. Players wear a VR headset and stand on a platform behind one of four gun turrets. It’s a shooting gallery game, but there’s more to the experience than blowing away the competition. The enclosed space is surrounded by high-powered fans, and the platform itself can move and vibrate.

So when your VR environment has you “flying” at ridiculous heights while you’re being pursued by zombies or monsters, the air and the floor mimic what you’re seeing, so it feels like you’re actually in the virtual environment. It’s not for people who fear heights or suddenly dropping out of the sky.

Two Bit Circus may sound like a place exclusively for kids, but the vast majority of the people who were there were grownups, and all of the games could be played by almost anyone of any age. Most big-chain arcades don’t know how to bridge the gap between offering something for kids that adults can play while being challenged and games so difficult that kids are excluded. All the games at Two Bit Circus are appeal to groups of kids, groups of adults or some combination of the two who can play together. At the least, they can compete or work together on an even playing field.

Plus, if you’re an adult who gets his or her ass kicked by a child in a game, there’s a bar to help ease the pain.