Belles & Chimes at StarFighters!

Saturday was a good day. The whole family spent the afternoon at StarFighters Arcade in Mesa, catching up on some awesome arcade games and cheering on Leslie at the latest edition of Belles & Chimes. If you haven’t been to StarFighters, go NOW. And if you haven’t checked out Belles & Chimes, do it NOW.
Need more convincing? Check out these pics:

Within this nondescript warehouse complex in east Mesa (and behind the kid you won’t believe is only 7 years old) resides one of the best places in the Valley, StarFighters Arcade!

StarFighters opened around the corner in 2014 and moved to this location, 4840 E. Jasmine St., #102, two years ago. The good folks behind the place, Mike and Kathy Lovato and “Wolfman” Steve Thomas, longtime video game enthusiasts, wanted to share their personal game collection with other fans.

Along the walls of the place, you can find all kinds of video game goodies, 150 of them in fact, from Journey the game to stalwarts like Centipede, Q-Bert and more. Of course, there’s Paperboy, as Milo found early on.

And what’s more fun than Paperboy? A whole family playing Paperboy!

There are a good number of driving games, too, as Max quickly found. There’s a whole room of fighting games, and another room full of Dance Dance Revolution.

But Saturday was mostly about pinball, as Belles & Chimes, the new city-wide women’s league, held its fourth tournament.

StarFighters has greatly expanded its pinball collection in the past year, and now has 28 games in the middle of the room. That’s the largest collection in Phoenix. They saw some good games on Saturday, to be sure.

And then there was the worst ball ever on Atlantis. Go, Leslie!

After a grueling eleven rounds of competition, the winners emerged! Tracy, Casey, and Jennifer, L-R. (Photo courtesy Tracy.)

Hey, what’s almost as good as winning? Consolation prizes! Hurray! (Photo courtesy Tracy.)

Seriously, this was a great afternoon. Many thanks to StarFighters for hosting this event, and also for hosting a lot of other great events, and for giving back to the community with such philanthropy and love. These guys are really following through on their mission of preserving, protecting, and promoting classic arcade games. Get down there now, or at least Friday through Sunday, when they’re open.